........And has been losing money on every transaction since 1970. Financially better off as a country if the post office did not exist. If there is a need for post office type service, someone will fill the void.
Maybe, maybe not. I occasionally do work in a country that has no mail service. None. Zero. Nada. No post offices, no FedEx, no UPS, no Interstate highways, no long haul or short semi-trucks, nothing. Anything we ship there has to go one of two ways, a) somebody carries it in their luggage, of b) we put it in a seagoing container (full or partial, we can pack waterproof "barrels" that will be loaded, with others, into a container) and ship it, literally, and then make arrangements of our agents there to pick it up on arrival. There is, potentially, a third option, air freight (basically buying cargo space in a passenger airliner) but most airlines won't do it, and corruption is rampant enough that the odds of losing the package enroute are pretty high. It is difficult to image how hard it is to do... most everything, when you can't mail checks, buy spare parts, get drawings from school children, send thank you notes, and all kinds of everyday things that we regularly take for granted. It is even difficult to navigate to find someone's residence. Why? Because it is the Post Office that organizes and regulates street addresses. Without a functioning post office, there are, sort of, street names, but determining a house address (most often such a thing doesn't exist) or an apartment number are nearly impossible. Even on passport and visa applications we write in the address box things like "near the corner of these two streets, on the top of the hill."
Look at a map of the United States. The Post office, and home mail delivery, was never profitable, nor available, outside of any major city until the federal government determined that such a service was needed to unify the country. That decision created RFD (rural free delivery). Then, for a very long time, the profits made from shipping packages paid for/subsidized, the cost of first class mail. But the advent of package deliver services (UPS, FedEx, et al.) stole the most profitable piece of the Post Office's business. Without the Post Office, most rural (non-urban) addresses might still not be able to get mail and that would be bad for anyone who sold most anything. Why? You can't send them a bill. You can't send them a notice that their package is at the post office in town. They can't use credit cards because the credit card company can't mail them a bill. Your local newspaper will probably go bankrupt since most newspapers are currently surviving on the advertising revenue generated by the grocery store ads that the post office delivers each week. And, since most of the major media outlets have already laid off most of their reporters, when those local newspapers close, the entire nation will lack access to accurate reporting (other than Twitter and Tik Tok) about anything that is happening outside of urban areas.
And, if your sentiment was consistent, then all those folks in rural areas wouldn't have electricity either. Why? Because since RFD was so successful, and so important, a few generations later, the government similarly mandated that those same rural areas be given access to electricity (Rural Electrification). Selling electricity in many parts of our country still isn't profitable, nor is telephone access, or internet. Those parts of the country still receive subsidies to offset losses that are collected on everyone's electric bill, or phone bill, etc.
And all those things are good.
Why? Because most of those utilities (and we call them that for a reason) are more useful to ALL of us, when all of us have access to them. My telephone (or cell phone) is more useful when I am able to call the people that I care about. My newspaper (or television news) is more useful when I can hear about important news from other places that effects me (like droughts or pandemics where my food comes from). Businesses find it more useful to accept credit cards when their customers can use them. And so on.
The Post Office does a great job given the constraints under which it is required to operate. Congress complains about it's profitablility and then shackles it with pre-funding pensions that it doesn't require of any other business AND at the same time, doesn't allow the Post Office to set it's own pricing as any other business would.
The problem ISN'T the Post Office. We NEED the Post Office more that we often think we do.
The problem, as it often is, is with our Congress.