Andy Kessler wrote recently in Wired about whether we really need the US Postal service. What would happen, he asked, if this 180-year-old dinosaur disappeared tomorrow? Plenty of good things.
The mailing of bills is this giant’s Achille’s heel. Because paying bills on line makes so much more sense–it costs $2-10 per bill to send them, open them, deposit the checks and record the transaction. Noboby really needs to do it this way, it’s just that we’re creatures of habit. Kessler suggests that those who don’t have computers could simply visit their local banks to pay the bills. Private carriers would love the chance to deliver first class mail….but are prohibited from doing so by the monopoly. If home delivery of packages, which UPS and Fedx hate (all of that ringing of doorbells and backing up the driveway), was combined with delivery of first class mail, costs for both would go down.
Kessler also points out that while the 550 million pieces of mail that the USPS delivers is impressive, each day 35 billion emails, one billion SMS messages and two billion instant messages are delivered by AOL alone. And none of these require the 707,000 workers, with benefits, that are employed by the Postal Monopoly.
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