The Libertarian Alternative – United States Postal Service

usps-USPostalService“The only security men can have for their political liberty, consists in keeping their money in their own pockets.” – Lysander Spooner

“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” – Inscription on the General Post Office in New York City, originally a statement written by Herodotus about 500 B.C. to describe the fidelity with which the work of the Persian mounted postal couriers was done

Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the U.S. Constitution says “[The Congress shall have Power] To establish Post Offices and Post roads.”

So there you go. It’s cut and dry. The Constitution says it so that’s the end of the story. Article done.

Or is it? Does this Congressional Power say anything about Congress or the Federal Government having complete monopoly control over postal mail? Does it say anything about a private citizen not competing with this service? Of course not, but the Federal Government sure acts like it says that. Just ask Lysander Spooner. More on him in a bit.

But how could we possibly trust someone other than the Federal Government to handle such a precious commodity as mail? To begin with, it seems like all the time we read an article of some mailman hoarding mail. In Raleigh, NC in 2008, authorities found enough mail to fill three-fourths of a semi trailer in the residence and buried in the yard of mailman Steven M. Padgett. Jill Hull hoarded 9,000 pieces of mail in Fowlerville, FL in 2005. David Blauser kept 13,000 pieces in Philadelphia. 20,000 in Detroit for James Stempnik in 2009 and another 20,000 by a different carrier in Philadelphia in May of this year. These are just a few stories of this happening.

nsun136lWho could possibly provide a better service experience than the government? In early 2007, the Post Office did some research and was surprised to find that customers at the nation’s 37,000 post offices were not happy about wait times in line. In response, the Post Office came up with a brilliant idea, something that could probably only come from the federal government. They removed the clocks from all 37,000 post offices.  Stephen Seewoester, a Postal Service spokesman said, apparently with a straight face, “We want people to focus on postal service and not the clock.” Also gone are the vinyl stickers promising service in five minutes or less. Seewoester said that was part of a discontinued service program.

But the Postal Service is an income generator for the government, right? Well, no. In the last fiscal year, the Postal Service lost $8.5 billion dollars. This was up from the previous year’s loss of almost $4 billion. This is even with all of the special benefits it gets, like not having to pay taxes, borrowing money at a heavily discounted rate, and the ability to take private property under eminent domain.

FedEx, in contrast, made profits of $1.14 billion in the fiscal year ending May, 2010 up from $98 million in profit the previous year. Comparing these two is not really fair, since FedEx cannot directly compete with the USPS for First Class Mail, but it is as close of a comparison as we can have in today’s environment. It’s also not fair in the fact that FedEx must make a profit, or it’s shareholders will leave in droves and it’s Board of Directors will make tough changes and could possibly decide to close them down. USPS doesn’t have to worry about this. If it loses money, it has the tax payer to prop it up, which we have done repeatedly.

The USPS is the second-largest civilian employer in the United States after Wal-Mart, even after cutting more than 100,000 jobs in the last five years. Now, they want to cut out Saturday delivery. They are facing a projected $238 billion deficit over the next decade.

So, since we have seen that the USPS does not provide a cost effective, efficient, profitable service, what would mail service look like in a Libertarian Alternative?

For most situations, we can only speculate how things would look in a Libertarian society. In the case with mail service, we only have look back in our own American history to find some answers.

In 1844, it cost 18.75 cents to send a half-ounce letter between 150 and 400 miles. Over 400 miles, it was 25 cents. A letter sent from Boston to Albany, NY written on a 1/4-ounce sheet of paper and carried by the Western Railroad, cost 2/3 as much as the freight charge for carrying a barrel of flour the same distance. [1]

spoonersepiaLysander Spooner began the American Letter Mail Company in 1844 to directly compete with the Post Office. His rate began at  6.25 cents per half-ounce with no weight limit, or you could buy a book of 20 stamps for a dollar, which reduced this rate to 5 cents per half-ounce. He opened offices in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Boston and he had daily runs between these cities and two runs a day between New York and Philadelphia.

The Post Office had an almost immediate affect on its revenue because of the American Letter Mail Company. When Washington began to see this, they began filing suit against Spooner. Congress told railroad heads that if they didn’t refuse to passage to private letter carriers, they would not be allowed to carry government mail. This till didn’t daunt Spooner. He fought in court and won some major legal victories.images

In March, 1845, the Postmaster General, after pleading to Congress, lowered prices dramatically. Now, half-ounce letters under 300 miles were 5 cents. Mr. Spooner countered, and lowered his rates as well (as you would expect in a free market with competition).

In 1851, Congress lowered their rates again, this time to 3 cents for delivery anywhere in the country. They were obviously feeling the pressure. They also enacted a law to protect the government’s monopoly on the distribution of mail. The law forced Spooner to disband his American Letter Mail Company. His experiment of competition against the government had worked, so well, in fact, that the Post Office didn’t raise rates past 3 cents until over a hundred years later, in 1958, when it was raised to 4 cents.

After raising 1 cent from 1851 to 1958, one hundred and eight years, the prices have now risen 1433.33% from 1958 to 2010, with no end in sight. Isn’t it about time for another Lysander Spooner?

[1] Spooner vs. U.S. Postal System by Lucille J. Goodyear. American Legion Magazine, January 1981

Rodger Paxton is the Chairman of the Libertarian Party of Arkansas. For more information on the Libertarian Party of Arkansas, please go to https://my.lp.org or email info@lpar.org. If there is a topic you would like to see in this blog series, please email me at chair@lpar.org and I will consider using your idea in the next blog!
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