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ShumaGorath wrote:Perhaps you would like to specify a time frame then? The advent of rail, road, and air travel significantly reduced in each case the cost of long distance communication. Something that would have been seemingly inconceivable given a standard pricing structure in the 1920's became quite standard specifically due to the one price system. It meant that rather than focus on cost benefit, an infrastructure that was publicly funded could take hold and vastly outstrip the capabilities of all comparable services of the day. You are looking at the postal service through the lens of modern capability, where no one writes any more, packages are primarily airmailed via international businesses that own their own airports, and where a telecommunications infrastructure has all but relegated the concept of mail to formal cards and small business documents. During the postal systems hayday it would have been prohibitively expensive to mail cross country given a distance based pricing pricing structure, and that coast to coast cohesion between civilians, the military, and businesses is one reason why the American economy managed to grow and exploit natural resources so quickly. National cohesion is more important than a sensible business practice in a mailing department.

I was talking about modern times primarily, as this is a discussion about the necessity of a national mail system in modern times, specifically in regards to being able to level pricing.

As an alternative, why exactly is it better to treat post with a distance based pricing structure? Given that the concept of subsidization is inherently part of the conversation, always has been, and always will be, what is the benefit of charging greater prices for longer distances when that would logically damage the populations ability to communicate and do business at those distances (we're a pretty big country).

If you're talking about reasons to subsidize a mail system, you're talking about something that I'm not. It hasn't "always been" part of the conversation, except in my specific exclusion of it. Subsidization is neither necessary to level prices, nor is a leveling of prices necessary for subsidization.

The "right" to clean water free of charge doesn't logically exist either. Not everything is about the money, and a government exists to provide for the ease of it's citizens, not be cheap or profitable.

Not really, though I was referring more to the posts attitude towards social class and income levels. Having long distance communication be affordable to the lowest levels of society (something not really possible up until the invention of the phone and airliner) is unbiased. When something is unaffordable to a segment of the population it is biased towards a higher income segment.

I don't have much to say to these, as they tie back into subsidization. I'm only talking about a rather specific pricing structure.

I was talking about modern times primarily, as this is a discussion about the necessity of a national mail system in modern times, specifically in regards to being able to level pricing.

Thats what I get for entering in late. Why are you having that discussion at all?

If you're talking about reasons to subsidize a mail system, you're talking about something that I'm not. It hasn't "always been" part of the conversation, except in my specific exclusion of it. Subsidization is neither necessary to level prices, nor is a leveling of prices necessary for subsidization.

If you're discussion a sea to shining sea true mail system then you are. The U.S. has never had a post system with that capability that was not in some way subsidized until the very recent international air mail conglomerates came into being. In modern times a leveling of prices does not require subsidization thanks to the advent of air travel, that's notable by simply viewing UPS or fedex, however those are both significantly more costly than standard post, and significantly more vulnerable to economic woes and the unaccountability inherent to private business. A non level pricing scheme would be possible as an alternative, but the metrics driving a national post system make the idea fairly problematic for any time period.

I don't have much to say to these, as they tie back into subsidization. I'm only talking about a rather specific pricing structure.

Are you talking about a specific price structure within an instance of reality, or simply the ethereal concept of pricing per difficulty of item sent? I would note that the vast majority of products sold in the vast majority of regions in the world are done so independent of distance. A television in Maine and California cost the same, despite a thousand miles of travel for the big box that television sits in. Not all businesses require such models for pricing, and while delivery companies market their pricing as such, it's not truly a requirement and could well be a detriment should competition with flat rates appear (as is the case now, most people send letter via post over fedex despite speed and reliability due to convenience and cost).

ShumaGorath wrote:Are you talking about a specific price structure within an instance of reality, or simply the ethereal concept of pricing per difficulty of item sent?

The "ethereal concept", mostly.

Kilkrazy said that one of the reasons we needed the USPS was to level prices based on distance, I disagreed with that specific rationale.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:I fail to understand how a national mail system somehow skews my ability to communicate more locally.

If the national system prices communication between shorter distances higher than it would otherwise be, so that it can price communication between longer distances at lower amounts, then it impedes short distance for greater long distance communication.

If you use taxes to subsidize long distance communication then this wouldn't occur, but in that case I see little reason to subsidize long distance communication in preference to shorter distanced communication if you do use taxes to do so.

.

It's not tax. The Post Office uses flat pricing to charge customers in cities a bit more, so it can charge customers in rural areas a lot less.

Imagine people in London send each other 100,000 letters a day priced 30p each and 36 letters a day to people in Stornoway.

If the letter posted to Stornoway has a delivery cost of £10, the total cost of deliveries is £360, divided by 100,000 is an overcharge in the cost of the London stamps of 0.36p each to pay for the deliveries to Stornoway.

I made up the figures for the sake of the illustration.

Does this really matter that much anymore? Letter writing is a long dead art form, much to my chagrin. I realize you send more then letters through the mail, but I only ever used the USPS to mail letters, and a private company for packages. I find them to be more reliable and much quicker. TBH though, I have always been a fan of the USPS.

Kid_Kyoto wrote:The same big government that conservatives don't trust to run health care, Social Security, schools or anything else magically becomes infallible when it comes to torturing terrorists and holding them without trial. So the same people who can't do anything right can tell who is a terrorist wtih 100% accuracy using their detect evil powers.

Because they're a bunch of hypocrites? Because they're benevolent dictators, and we just let them run our lives?

It's part of the political process. "The government is doing everything wrong! Elect me, and I'll fix it!"

I think the issue of detainees is a bad one, and one without a good answer. I don't like the Bush administration policies. However, putting them on Riker's Island and trying them in NY court probably isn't the best answer either. But, I'd take the NY trial over the "we'll detainee you as long as we like" mindset.

Orkeosaurus wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Are you talking about a specific price structure within an instance of reality, or simply the ethereal concept of pricing per difficulty of item sent?

The "ethereal concept", mostly.

Kilkrazy said that one of the reasons we needed the USPS was to level prices based on distance, I disagreed with that specific rationale.

My idea is that if a government wants to maintain social cohesion, which at some level it always does, there have to be ways of connecting distant parts of the nation together.

Flat priced postal services are an example of this.

I can't see why a profit-motivated company like Fedex would charge on the same model unless it was compelled to by the government or perhaps subsidised to do so.

In the UK we have competition between various private companies for the delivery of parcels and letters. They always pick the most profitable routes.

Kilkrazy wrote:It's not tax.

I know, I was trying to contrast it with taxes.

JEB_Stuart wrote:Does this really matter that much anymore? Letter writing is a long dead art form, much to my chagrin. I realize you send more then letters through the mail, but I only ever used the USPS to mail letters, and a private company for packages. I find them to be more reliable and much quicker. TBH though, I have always been a fan of the USPS.

Yeah, it's kind of pointless. That every mail system is aided heavily by public infrastructure is pretty obvious, so a contrast between mailing systems isn't necessarily a great contrast between public and private enterprises to begin with.


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Kilkrazy wrote:My idea is that if a government wants to maintain social cohesion, which at some level it always does, there have to be ways of connecting distant parts of the nation together.

Flat priced postal services are an example of this.

I think the imposition on net communication imposed by deadweight loss is worse for social cohesion than the gain from long distance sending. To what degree communication still occurs by mail, anyways.

I disagree.

Like JEB, I've always liked and had good results from the USPS.

I never said the USPS was of poor quality, or even of poor efficiency. Just that it wasn't lent any by a specific pricing policy.


Let's roll all of this back for a minute, and look at the broader issue. There are some things in which the government is far more efficient than a private corporation would be. Highways, for example. There are also plenty of examples of government running things very poorly (the Yugo!). From this we can tell that whether something is done privately or by the government alone isn't an indicator of efficiency. This means that if we are to look at the likely efficiency of a government (or private) program, we need to consider how it relates to prior programs that have been successful or unsuccessful, look for the underlying cause of efficiency or inefficiency in either the program or its competitors, and of course agree on the desirability of different goals and how much of a liability certain costs are in comparison. If expansion of government power is deemed a bad thing, then it should probably be considered separately from efficiency; Mussolini made the trains run on time, Hitler and Stalin had powerful armies at their disposal, and so on and so forth. Any thoughts so far?

Governments are usually considered to be good for doing things which are not done well by free markets.

Examples: natural monopolies, the law, armed forces.

Management education says that objectives and methods should be thought about in terms of efficiency and effectiveness.

Effectiveness is basically idea of whether what you want to do is a good thing or not. Efficiency is how well you do it. It doesn't take much thought to see that efficiency in pursuit of an ineffective objective is a bad thing.

The objectives of rich people and businesses are not always congruent with the objectives of society as a whole.

Seems logical enough.