Maybe it is just a step towards a more efficient delivery system. The
agreement allows FedEx to do what it excels at (getting packages from one
hub to another swiftly), and allows USPS to do what it does best (daily
postal delivery - the last mile to your door).
Absent competition, how do we know tht USPS does anything particularly well,
save for preseving their monopoly through political activity?
Is anyone else concerned about what would happen to the quality of mail
delivery "if this restriction were eliminated"?
FedEx, and companies like it, are not good at delivering parcels to rural
areas far away from their hubs, and they are not good at this because the
work does not pay.
I like getting mail delivered to my door on a
daily basis and am not at all sure I need five companies competing for that
work.
Imagine the postal monopoly were eliminated. Imagine that one effect of that
would be much higher postal costs for people living in rural areas. This
implies that people living in rural areas are receiving a (unknown) subsidy
because of the monopoly. The question then must be asked: why do people
living in rural areas (or people who "like getting mail delivered to my door
on a daily basis") have a right to force others to pay the costs of that
preference? Don't we as a society always want to internalize costs to
consumers absent the well-known public good conditions?
John Samples
Cato Institute
