I've driven through plenty of what amounted to ghost towns in this country, places with a population of 20 or 50, and right in the middle of all the abandoned buildings is a functioning post office. I have no doubt that there are many hundreds of post offices in the country that deserve to be closed.

I sent three packages at Christmas using priority mail. One made it fine in only a few days. One (the most expensive, of course) never made it. The third looked like it had been run over with a truck.

Why is this so bad? UPS, FedEx have far fewer facilities, and are just fine at getting things to me.

And I imagine most of these are in the boonies. (This is all good to me as long as they don't close the post office that happens to be a few blocks from where *I* live.)

I propose we close all of these commie socialist post offices. That way, no one can send me certified mail anymore! Fuck you bill collectors! Take your subpoena and stick it up your ass!

Back in the last century, the government decided everyone should have access to telephone service. In cities, it was profitable to string up telephone lines because there were lots of potential subscribers, but in rural areas, it was a guaranteed money-loser. The solution was to divide up the areas without phone service into chunks, then hold auctions for the exclusive right to operate phone service and collect subsidies in return. The auction process ensured that the provider chosen received the minimum possible subsidy that guaranteed access to telephone service.

The post office is exactly the same. If we want to ensure everyone has postal delivery, we can have a private system of mail distributors called the Postal Service, mandate that everyone is reachable, and enforce whatever kind of regularity we want (e.g. rates, availability of information, &c.)

this is a bad idea. Think about. Thousands of laid off postal workers. POSTAL workers!!! The streets are going to run red.

Spindles is right. This is the setting for a horror film.