Yes, even with the Post Office it costs more to ship things further, so it would probably be a similar sliding scale, but without healthy competition the prices could end up much higher.
I don't know of any plan to get rid of the Post Office. The plan is to eliminate offices and processing plants that aren't needed. I'm in a little community 12 miles from a small city. There are two small Post Offices between me and that small city. Those two small offices could close and the mail would be delivered out of the small city and no one getting delivery would know the difference.
There's a plant in a bigger small city near here that will be closed. When it opened it was manned by well over a hundred clerks who sorted the mail by hand over three shifts. Today its manned by about a dozen clerks per shift (about half that on the day shift) to clear and maintain machines as well as loading up the sorting machines. What we forget is that when that mail was sorted by hand it took 4-7 days for that mail to get delivered 500 - 1000 miles. Today very often its overnight and seldom longer than 3 days because of the sorting machines. Closing that plant will consolidate the machine sorting of mail to three plants in the state of Alabama where there are now up to ten. The additional delivery time might average a day more, but I doubt it.
"If a politician found he had cannibals among his constituents, he would promise them missionaries for dinner."
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable."
H. L. Mencken
Ahem, one coud easily argue that it was the end of war (or at least profitable once) that caused Rome's stagnation and decline both in economic and social terms. That and Rome's rise was highly tied to their foreign wars.
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Again though, I think the win-win solution is to try and copy the model we have here in Taiwan, Taiwan's post office have actuall ran a pretty signficiant profit. in 2010 it ran a profit of roughly 25 million USD which is actually the lowest in many years, in 2007 it was over twice that (of course , it helps that was at the last phase of the crazy finance bubble), you have to remember that Taiwan's not exactly a huge place and this is a public company with a big load of government mandated (unprofitable) commitments.
Taiwan's Post office essentially double as a basic savings bank, and also offers other basic finance operations like insurance , thats how it's making it's money these days, and it (as well as the USPD) have alot of preexisting advantages in this regard, the extremely wide service branchs.... the fact that it's state backed... etc...
Taiwan's post office is now drowning in cash, since pretty much all rural residence desposite their savings there, as well as a significant amount of urban dwellers . for folks who have no interest in investment banking (and that's like at least 80% of the population) the idea that the post office with it's branchs everywhere could double as a savings bank is eminently attractive.
I don't use the mail for anything.. let em close..
The eastern world, it is exploding, violence flaring bullets loading. you are old enough to kill , but not for voting, this whole crazy world is just to frustrating, and you tell me over and over and over again my friend, you don't believe we are on the EVE of DESTRUCTION.
Never approach a bull from the front, A horse from behind, or a fool from any direction.