Reply #177: Yes, eBay is popular, no doubt

[customerserviceguy]

And for tens or hundreds of thousands of Americans, it provides a living, or at least a family's second income. But about half of what I get from there and online sources comes through UPS or FedEx. Today, I came home to seven packages, four of them were potatoes I sent to myself on my recent trip to the Northwest. Yes, I was willing to pay about a dollar a pound for flat rate boxes to bring my farmer friend's tasty tubers to my (and my friends') dinner table. They lost money on me.

I assume that most shippers figure out which way to ship has the lowest cost. Every time they choose USPS, it likely costs that organization more to ship than they receive in postage, you can thank the flat rate mailer for that. Of course, when a shipper becomes big enough for the sweetheart deal from UPS or FedEx, they'll pick that option. And when the USPS raises rates to cover a bit more of their costs, more will switch to the private carriers, driving their per-package costs down, and allowing them to offer lower rates in the future. The vicious circle will continue.

At one point in time, it was way easier to own and maintain a horse than it was for an automobile. Now, it is clearly cheaper to have the car than the horse, and that's what's going to happen with the USPS. Frankly, it wouldn't surprise me if another company were to somehow materialize to challenge UPS and FedEx; every industry, no matter how much it costs to get into, eventually attracts competition. You can bet that will happen if either one of them tries to charge $300 to ship something.

In any case, you still haven't answered my question: What's wrong with doubling the cost of junk mail to keep the thing running, with or without fiddling with the pension and retirement health funding?