Highway fucking robbery.
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2025
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The UK have privatised most of their fundamental public services – post, water, electric, gas, rail, busses, communications. ALL are more expensive and poorer quality than state equivalents in Europe and most are asking for huge sums of money to do investment they have avoided whilst trousering obscene profits (see Thames water)
Oh great, another plan to turn a public service into a corporate cash cow. Billionaires don’t need more help, the rest of us do.
Even if Congress has to prop up the USPS from time to time (which it has/does), it’s better than having the USPS wind up being beholden to shareholders, investors and owners.
But good luck stopping the Trump Train’s ideas at this point.
/Hopefully a ‘sane enough’ Congress will ensure the USA doesn’t completely implode… *looks about nervously*
And they will refuse to deliver to unprofitable areas.
Good time to remind people that the biggest source of losses for the USPS is the 2006 congressionally mandated program that requires them to prefund retiree healthcare plans 75 years in advance.
This is something no other government agency is required to observe and also something no private company would be held to with modern accounting practices.
You know what privatizing the post office would do? Because I can tell you.
It’s a legal requirement, right now, that the post office has to serve *everyone*. It’s called the “Universal Service Obligation” and it dictates a lot of things the post office *has* to do.
And in cities, it’s meaningless. They make so much money in cities. Anywhere there is a dense population of people, the USPS rakes in cash with a backhoe.
But in rural areas? They’re required to have a post office. They’re required to do delivery six days a week in places where it makes zero financial sense to do so. They’re constrained in their pricing. You use the same stamp to send shit across town, as you do to send something to Alaska.
So privatize it, and who does that hurt? Because they’re going to cut the places where they don’t make money, and we all know where those places are.
UK here, holy crap don’t let them do this.
As they rattle on about the ”benefits” you can point to our water, rail and post, it’s all lies.
Isn’t the postal system required in the Constitution?
‘In what universe is that better?’
The universe of those connected and can afford to buy in to cash in on it – aka the universe none of us occupy
The easiest population to control is a dumb population!
Elect a rapist, get raped. That’s what happens.
Republicans AND Conservatives simply don’t care about people. They care only for themselves and how they can enrich themselves WHILE blaming EVERYONE ELSE for any problems that may arise.
That should help slow down those mail-in ballots. Anything to rig the system, right Donny boy?
Every single thing about privatization is about creating arbitrage for the owner class. That’s all it’s ever been. The owning class skims labor or value and sells it as “more efficient.” This country was built on scams and rackets and tax dodging. That is America.
That’s an important point to make, to privatize national mail service would require a company of a size that it would definitely be a traded company.
Any publicly traded company is required by law to maximize profits and act solely to the benefit of the shareholder. There is case law going back to the days of Henry Ford.
We already have mail carriers working in 100+ degree weather in vehicles that don’t have air conditioning being penalized for taking water breaks.
Per piece of mail delivered, the “last mile” to rural addresses is the most expensive part of the post office’s operations. First thing a privatized PO would cut back on. Cue the face-eating leopards.
That should help slow down those mail-in ballots. Anything to rig the system, right Donny boy?
You know, if it ends junkmail, I’d be open to it.
We have so much junkmail now because someone decided that the post office needs to be profitable. But every month I throw out a garbage bag of junk mail.
I cannot stand how wasteful it all is to chop down a tree, pulp it into paper, send it to a printer, send to to a USPS facility, send to my mailbox, then to my trashcan, then to the garbage truck, then to the dump.
Um, well, on the plus side, I get fewer mass mailings cause the price will double or triple?
I mean…
It seems like the bulk of my mail these days is HomeVestors trying to do vulture capitalism at the expense of my home, or Andersen Windows wanting to bankrupt me.
RIP NALC union members 😞
Haven’t the republikkkans broken the postal service enough?
Sean is optimistic that there will be shareholders in these privatization schemes. Wildly optimistic. You can’t funnel taxpayer money to the “right” people with a publicly traded entity. Silly goose.
So if i dont subcribe to a more expensive service then i wont get mail? Including letters from the IRS?
I live in a city and have three or four delivery services competing for my business. Small town America voted for this and I think they should get it.
Does this mean I won’t be getting any more junk mail????
Worked for the Federal government for 35 years. Some of it overseeing contractors. The contractual requirement to “provide equal or better service” was never observed. In my experience, privatization or contracting always resulted in more expense and poorer service until the contractor simply walked away because they could no longer make a profit. Once the “Beltway bandits” infect a government agency, it is nearly impossible to remove the infection and the costs continually increase (looking at you Lockheed Martin in particular).
We also already have privatized versions of those. The post office cuts into their profit, which I actually think is a great way for the government to regulate the market. Let’s have more Goverment run competition.
Oh, you wanna charge 7 dollars for eggs? Well, I’m just going to the Freedom Market and pay 4 dollars.
The goal would be to turn a reasonable profit with reasonable prices.
And if Walmart wants to try and keep undercutting them like they do for all the mom and pop grocery stores, well, good luck trying to go into more debt than the US government.
Our taxes payed for this infrastructure….are we just giving this capital to the “ highest bidder?”
This shouldn’t be a surprise. The GOP defunded the USPS, made pension requirements that’s no other department has, cut routes, and then shout about how the post office is failed. Their voters eat it up. This is the textbook GOP play to get something privatized or eliminated.
In the universe where you want to own the postal service, clearly.
In the universe where shareholder interests come above all else.
Lmao get fuked.
Rural voters screwed themselves once again. Enjoy paying way more for mail and delivery services.