It's Past Time To Privatize The Post Office

Submitted by QTR's Fringe Finance

A new piece from the Cato Institute lays out how bad things have gotten at the post office, arguing that the United States Postal Service is facing a severe and worsening financial crisis. According to the article, USPS has been losing billions of dollars annually for well over a decade and is now at a point where it cannot realistically fix its problems without major structural changes. I could have told you this after the horror show I lived through at the post office back in September of 2025.

The USPS now is the predictable outcome of trying to run a massive logistics operation through a government bureaucracy that moves slowly, resists change, and answers more to politics than to performance. The piece makes clear that USPS was built for a world that no longer exists, yet it continues operating as if nothing has changed because, as usual, government institutions are the last to notice reality.

The problems outlined are extensive and, frankly, not surprising. Mail volumes have collapsed as Americans switched to faster, cheaper digital alternatives, yet USPS continues to behave like it’s still 1995. What mail remains is increasingly dominated by low-value marketing material, while the agency struggles to compete in package delivery against companies that actually specialize in logistics.

Even Amazon, a company that started as an online bookstore (what could be less efficient to ship than godd*mn books — bricks?), has figured out how to build a better delivery network. Meanwhile, visits to post offices have fallen off a cliff, but the system has barely shrunk its footprint. Labor costs remain enormous, productivity lags, and the workforce is structured in ways that...(READ THIS FULL ARTICLE 100% FREE HERE).