A version of the following commentary appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
I will admit that calling for the privatization of the United States Postal Service (USPS) by free-market, limited-government policy people like me is hardly new. It’s a pretty standard viewpoint for people in positions like mine, sort of the libertarian equivalent of progressives calling for the government to fully fund public schools. But having said that, it really is time to privatize the post office.
In 1934, a federal law was passed that banned any entity except the USPS from placing items in any mailbox. That is the law that limited UPS and, later, FedEx, to parcel delivery. Even your neighbor is not allowed to put that party invitation in your mailbox. (If you are the type of person who reports neighbors who do so to the USPS, you probably don’t receive many party invitations in the first place.)
Until recently, the best defense of the post office monopoly was that, in all honesty, it worked fairly well. Sure, it was a monopoly that somehow managed to lose money each year, but at least the post office did a good job at its primary job of delivering the mail. You put a stamp on a piece of mail and it was delivered the next day if it was going nearby; two days later if it was going a little further; and three days if it was going a long distance. Big-picture concerns about USPS finances could be overlooked because stamps were cheap and the mail reliably went where it was supposed to go. That is, unfortunately, no longer the case.
A recent report on the post office by federal inspectors general found that, on average, on-time delivery of first-class male has dropped 16 percent over the past year in the exact areas the post office has targeted for improvements. In St. Louis, over just two days in June at the downtown mail processing center, 2.6 million pieces of mail were delayed. There was no weather or mechanical reason for the delays, just bad operational management. Worst of all, sending mail in St. Louis puts your personal finances at risk. There have been multiple federal court convictions in the past year of St. Louis-area postal workers for stealing checks from the mail. The author knows two people who have had their identity stolen and finances ruined in this manner.
If the post office is no longer doing its main job well but is continuing to lose money, the entire system should be opened to competition. I’m well aware that FedEx won’t deliver a Christmas card for 78 cents (the current USPS rate), but if someone wants to pay more to make sure their Christmas card reaches Grandma before Christmas Day, why shouldn’t they be able to? UPS and FedEx should absolutely have a right to deliver first-class mail and place it into a mailbox where it will be better protected from rain and theft. (A reminder that you buy your own mailbox—the government doesn’t give it to you.)
USPS has long had a less-promoted role as a jobs program for political supporters and interest groups. When he was serving as a presidential advisor in the 1960s, former U.S. Senator Patrick Moynihan famously recommended changing to twice a day mail delivery, for the sole reason that it would allow the federal government to double the number of mail carriers.
It seems that, at present, the purpose of USPS is to deliver mostly junk mail in order to fund over $400 billion in postal-retiree pension and healthcare costs. Maintaining a failing monopoly to benefit those retirees may be politically popular, but it’s hardly good public policy. As the use of mail continues to decline, hard choices have to be made. Rural post offices shouldn’t be kept open just to appease rural interest groups, and urban post offices shouldn’t be protected against competition just to appease federal employee unions.
I would favor an attempt to sell the entire post office off to private operators. In 2025, the mail is no longer a necessary function of government (I will agree that it used to be). However, simply allowing other operators to compete against USPS by removing the mailbox monopoly would be a great step, too. You get to choose which phone, television, and internet services you use. You should have choice for your mail delivery, too.
