My Baby Just Wrote Me A Letter ... Now Where The Hell Is It?

Like the government itself, the U.S. Postal Service rarely misses an opportunity to be both arrogant and inefficient. Recently, as the Washington Post reports, the Post Office (it will always be the Post Office to me) has taken to “delivering mail to communal cluster boxes as a way to keep pace with booming residential growth while controlling labor costs” or, more simply, to keep providing less and less service for more and more money.

"Instead of going from door to door, from lawn to lawn, from driveway to driveway, we have a central location," said Luvenia Hyson, a postal service regional spokeswoman.

But see, Luvenia, that’s the problem. People don’t want a central location, they want their mail delivered right there to their homes, and not, by the way, by having the mailman – he or she will always be a mailman to me – traipsing all over our lawns, dammit! Sure, multiple residence locations have central mail delivery; but, um, you know, that’s one of the down sides of living in an apartment or condominium complex, not one of it’s friggin’ advantages. (Where do they get these spokesmen – they’ll always be spokesmen to me – from Microsoft, fergawdsakes?)

First class mail, the only sort we still care about at all, is less and less convenient and more and more expensive all the time. Perhaps it simply isn’t possible to run a mail delivery service the size and scope of the postal system efficiently or economically or well enough to satisfy customers. Possible or not, though, it sure as hell isn't going to get done by a government protected monopoly.

But first class mail is also less and less important all the time. There really aren’t any good arguments left why the postal system shouldn’t be entirely privatized and opened to competition. If the wiring infrastructure of telephone service and electricity isn’t a sufficient reason to preclude competition, there sure as hell is no reason why mailboxes should be.

Okay, so this isn’t exactly up there with Iraq, health care or immigration, but the candidate who was willing to say let’s get rid of the postal monopoly once and for all would certainly pick up more than a few votes from those suburbanites who have to go fetch their mail down the block.