What the hell happened to the US Mail?

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds." USPS Motto

"The Postal Service is a vitally important institution for the American people. It must be saved." Senator Bernie Sanders

I've heard more complaints about mail service this year than ever before in my life. Deliveries that used to take a week or less can take a month or more. Everyone seems mad at the postal service, including the employees themselves. How did we get here?

During much of the 20th century, the US Postal Service was the life blood of American communication. Letters, catalogues, bills, and packages traveled far and wide across the nation with nary a problem. Postal jobs were in high demand, and way more applicants took the test to work there than they had positions. Companies sprung up to help applicants get hired at what were considered stable, well-paying, and enjoyable jobs.

The year that I was born, 1958, saw postage stamps that only cost 4 cents and guaranteed delivery anywhere in the country.

An actual stamp from 1958!

Now stamps cost 73 cents and are likely to keep rising even as the services decline, leading to a death spiral that will chase away more and more customers. It's a shame because this was one area of the beleaguered government that both Democrats and Republicans could agree actually worked.

So what happened? The postal service was done in by a perfect storm of factors that made it almost irrelevant.

• The rise of the internet for information exchange, bill paying, and basic communication.

• Competition from emerging private delivery services such as FedEx and UPS.

• A congressional requirement that it was the only agency that had to pre-fund its retirement package, making profitability impossible.

• An anti-government bias that has only grown since Ronald Reagan began demonizing government services and touting private ones instead.

I pay almost all of my bills online now, and only use the postal service for some packages and Christmas cards. Email is faster and cheaper, so why do we even need the postal service? Good question. It was inevitable that mail volume would decrease by over 50% as more people got used to doing stuff online. That decline helps feed the death spiral that we see today.

I strongly believe that no matter how bad it gets, we need to save the US Postal Service and restore it to some sort of equilibrium. Private delivery services are good for some things, but not all. The government has to step in where private enterprise finds no way to make a profit. Private companies can get bought up, go out of business, or just decide they don't want to deliver to certain areas that aren't cost effective.

The big problem arises with rural and remote destinations. Only the postal service can be relied on to deliver out in the sticks, and even the private companies contract with the USPS to handle many of these areas. Government services are mandated to be in the public interest, and thus they are more likely to provide secure post office boxes, mailboxes, and certified mail. They will deliver anywhere, from Alaska to Key West. Without the postal service, people in rural areas could have to travel long distances to pick up medications, orders, or even Christmas cards.

Another problem arises with the unreliability of individual states and individual companies. What would happen if a state decided that a certain class of people in certain neighborhoods couldn't use mail-in ballots? Or couldn't use private mail at all? Or if one and only one private company came to dominate all of delivery service and jacked up prices so that they became unaffordable for a large minority of Americans? There HAS to be some sort of national, guaranteed delivery option that exists alongside of the private ones to protect against these and worse possibilities.

The 2020's are a bad time for government and for communications in general. Government has been demonized by those who would profit from its decline, and communication has been cut into thousands of walled-off silos that prevent information from getting in. The Postal Service is just one of many services now under attack.

In a way, this is a microcosm of the public vs private debate that's been going on for the last century. Private enterprise and capitalism is better at a lot of things, but there are too many areas where it falls short that government needs to come in and provide support. Much research and development has to be done by the government because the long-term expense isn't sustainable for a private company. Private schools can only exist because public schools take on the students they don't want. Private insurers can only function if government takes on the costs of patients with pre-existing conditions. FEMA and national flood insurance covers natural disasters that the private insurance market can't. There are thousands of examples like this. So it is with the USPS and private delivery services. They can both exist, but we need a publicly mandated delivery option to make sure the whole thing works smoothly and reliably.

I for one, am glad to have postal employees still out there every day moving things along and I support their continued existence. Thank a postal worker the next time you interact with them- their morale is at an all-time low. Hold your political leaders accountable for keeping this agency afloat. We need to reimagine what the postal service does best and make it a healthy working partner to the private delivery services.

The first postmaster-general of the postal service was Benjamin Franklin, who believed strongly in the value of a national system to deliver the mail. Over 250 years later, that system endures, bringing vital deliveries to those who still need them. Let's not mess this up for our children and grandchildren.

Watch the video below to see some positive interactions with the USPS