Is the post office really an "u
njust monopoly," as some libertarian anarchists apparently
believe?
For most of its history, the post office was a tool of an older sort of nation-building. It was never intended to be profitable; its first duty was as national infrastructure. Everyone knows that "universal service"--long a buzzword in postal circles--implies subsidies for rural mail and mail to far-flung places, subsidies that are footed by urbanites whose per-unit mailing costs are typically much lower. Indeed, even in the post-1970 era, the agency has run at a loss two out of every three years. Americans have allowed this and have mostly found it to be unobjectionable.
The Constitution, after all, explicitly authorized Congress to establish a postal system for national purposes--not necessarily commercial ones-- and like national highways, we expect the post office to provide universal service at reasonable cost. The post office lies well within the spirit of the Federalist Papers, which argued for a capable central government with taxation and regulatory powers (though, it should be noted, without explicitly advocating a national postal function). Railroads feature prominently in tales of how the West was won, but the less glamorous post office clearly mattered too. In war, the national mail has been indispensable for keeping up morale among Americans overseas without compromising security. Even free-market advocates who favor privatizing the Postal Service recognize the attraction Americans see in the national mail, and realize how dim are the prospects that United States might implement a private mail system like that of the Netherlands. Clearly, in America, despite our free-market instincts, arguments that a national mail is a public good serving worthy national interests remain popular and strong.
