The latest assault on the U.S. Postal Service comes from some libraries, if you can believe it.
According to the Billings, MT Gazette, five libraries in the state have joined forces to start up a courier service that will transport books between the libraries in Butte, Great Falls, Missoula, Helena and Anaconda, MT.
Complaining that the USPS is too slow and expensive, Butte library officials assert this new service, run by a local courier company, will deliver books the next day between those libraries at a fraction of what the postal service charges.
Sounds good, but this sort of thing has been tried before.
Way back in 1988, when the USPS raised rates by 25%, a slew of companies sprang up promising they could deliver better and cheaper the USPS. In the intervening years catalogers in particular have been hit with whopping rate hikes.
If this library venture is successful, the local courier company may get ideas about further expanding its mail delivery since private companies must expand in order to survive.
It’s worth noting that none of the 1988 generation of alternative postal couriers lasted in their original form.
Why?
Direct mailers generally found the USPS—despite all its flaws—was way more reliable in the long run, even with draconian unpredictable rate increases.
In fact it was these rate hikes that helped lead to the passage of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 which mandated that the USPS could only raise rates in proportion to the rate of inflation.
That same law also required the USPS to pay $5.5 billion per year to cover healthcare cost of retired workers. This- helped lead to the USPS’s fine financial mess and has it wanting to close postal facilities and push or five-day delivery to help stem its hemorrhaging of money.
Private companies can always do things better than public ones, right?
Not necessarily.
For one thing, the USPS was and still is obligated to provide universal service and meet delivery standards. Private companies have no such requirements.
This is something to think about in a place like Montana where the weather can be extreme at times.
Maybe this library venture can work in its limited form. But it’s questionable if it can go any further despite doctrinaire beliefs some people may have that private enterprise is always superior to anything to anything governmental or quasi-governmental.
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