USPS Slowdown

Democrats have failed to remove Trump’s USPS head (Louis DeJoy) from office and now he has announced both a slowdown of service and a rate hike. On its face, it seems like DeJoy is sabotaging the US postal system, but we also know that the politicians who control the Democratic Party do not have our interests at heart and are living in a weird fantasy land. A closer look is definitely warranted.

CNN quotes USPS spokesperson Kim Frum as saying:

These changes would position us to leverage more cost-effective means to transport First-Class packages via ground rather than using costly air transportation, which is also less reliable due to weather, flight traffic, availability constraints, competition for space, and the added hand-offs involved.

Well, that’s interesting. Are we saying that now — in a time where we know that climate change will destroy humanity if we can’t figure out how to spew less carbon into the atmosphere — the USPS was still using aircraft to move letters and parcels within the continental United States? Yes, that appears to be the case, and Democrats are calling this way of doing things “efficient” as in, “Why would you make the USPS less efficient by ending domestic transport of mail via air?”

The Democratic Party is the party of pure capitalism unadulterated by the complexity of traditional hierarchies. Capitalists and their lackeys have a really nonsensical definition of “efficient” that seems to have more to do with maximizing private profit than with actual efficiency. In this case, they might be defining “efficiency” solely in terms of speed of delivery, but that’s not efficiency, either. Real efficiency is a ratio of work accomplished to resources used (and waste produced). To be truly efficient, you might have to do things a little bit more slowly.

To be fair, it is almost certain that DeJoy is working to undermine the US Postal Service. He has a conflict of interest because he owns millions of dollars in shares of a USPS competitor. Moreover, conservatives hate any public service that is working well, and the USPS has been doing just that for ages despite being required to encumber the entirety of employee pensions in advance — something that no private company is required to do.

But let’s pause yet again — is it bad to require a company to maintain sufficient funding for the retirement of its current employees? The other option would be to roll the dice and just hope things work out. If we’re going to leave the majority of working people’s retirement income up to the company that they used to work for, isn’t it a better idea to force all corporations to encumber the totality of their employees’ retirement? In terms of what is sane, it’s either that or we could just have socialism — but I understand Americans don’t like that idea.

My conclusion is that unless DeJoy’s policies are slowing down mail delivery unnecessarily (i.e., outside what is required for actual efficiency), then there isn’t a problem. I understand that Democrats are claiming that this is going to affect elderly and rural customers, but frankly I will believe it when I see it. My only concern is whether this would affect mail-in ballots during an election, and the answer there isn’t to make the USPS less efficient by forcing it to move mail faster, but rather to change the law regarding how mail-in ballots work to allow for the increased delivery time.

This debate reminds me of the debates around the creation of this country, where you had people on one side trying to create a strong banking system that could dominate political and social life, while the other side was trying to make sure they could keep owning slaves. I’m exaggerating, but you get the point — the correct path forward is lost when the only people with power are two cabals of jerks.