The Penny Post

In 1836, Rowland Hill was tasked by a Member of Parliament to propose a reform of England's cumbersome and expensive postal system.  He examined it systematically and concluded that postal customers were overpaying for useless aspects of the post.  For one thing, most of the resources of the system were eaten up by armies of clerks engaged in a finicky counting of pages; Rowland proposed to substitute a simple weighing of each missive.  Rowland also concluded that the differences in distance of travel were such a trivial part of the cost of each letter that they didn't justify the time spent calculating differential charges.  Finally, he advocated getting the Post Office completely out of the business of collecting a fee for postal services after the fact, by the simple expedient of charging up front.  Up to this time, the cost of postage traditionally had been borne by the recipient, who sometimes would refuse delivery rather than pay.  What's more, over 12% of mail traffic was delivered cost-free to customers with "franking" privileges, particularly members of government.  The result of Hill's improvements, enacted by Parliament over howls of protest, was to permit a wholesale revamping of the Post Office in which a standard letter could be sent anywhere in the country for a penny.

About time we took another fresh look at a creaky old system.  When systems go on long enough without the discipline of competition, they take on barnacles:  good, government jobs that are doing no earthly good for anyone except the clerks receiving the benefits package.


10 comments:

Gringo said...

For example, as the quantity of mail has dropped in the last 10 years, there is not as much need to deliver daily.Many of us do not check our mail every day anymore. due to the reduced volume.

Grim said...

I have kept a PO Box the last few years, which I get by to check now and then.

E Hines said...

Most of the Post Office's functions have already gone to private enterprise in competition with the Post Office; only first class mail remains the sole province of Uncle Sugar's Postal Sewer. The USPS even has gone into contract package delivery in competitive response to its new competitors, the FedExes, UPSes, DHLs of the world.

It's time to allow private enterprise competition in the first class mail venue, as well. And then let the USPS disappear down its dead letter hole and depart from our lives altogether. Along the way, get Government out of the way, and let the USPS charge what it thinks it can get away with in a competitive market for its first class delivery efforts. Which also would necessitate Government getting out of the way of the USPS and letting management deal with its labor force as it and that labor force see fit, not as Government dictates they must deal with each other.

Eric Hines

Anonymous said...

I do check the mail daily, because of bills and letter. But I'm decidedly Olde School.

I agree with Eric on the idea that getting the federal government (and federal unions even more) out of the labor side would be a wonderful start. People should not be penalized for doing their job well and quickly, which is what happened to several people I know who worked at least part time for the USPS. Their behavior "put too much stress on coworkers and violated union rules."

LittleRed1

Texan99 said...

Our P.O. won't deliver packages to our house; anything too big to fit into the mailbox half a mile away goes back to the P.O. ten miles away for us to pick up the next day. Well, it used to be the next day, but since the hurricane, it takes two days to be available again. The P.O. has moved back into its old building from the trailers and tents where it operated for some months, but the building is nowhere near finished being repaired, four months after it was damaged. They strangle in their own silly rules, surviving only because they enjoy a Congressionally mandated monopoly.

Most of our U.S. mail is catalogs, useful only in cold weather as kindling. If it weren't for Amazon's annoying habit of farming out our Prime deliveries to the Post Office instead of leaving them in the capable hands of UPS--which delivers to our door--I'd ignore the federal service almost completely.

David Foster said...

Related, Trump just denounced the deal that Amazon is getting from USPS for delivery.

E Hines said...

Their [quality performance] behavior "put too much stress on coworkers and violated union rules."

YGTBSM. That makes feather bedders look like pikers.

Gee, Tex, if you didn't live out in the swamp-sticks on that dangerous coast, maybe some of those workers wouldn't be so timorous about delivery, instead of acting like those at LR1's PO. On the other hand, "Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night" has anything in their about the badlands of a Texas coast.

And Sears catalogs used to be prized for other uses than kindling, too.

Eric Hines

E Hines said...

...has anything in their about....

Nor anything about grammar, either. ...in there.... Jeez.

Eric Hines

Texan99 said...

I assume the P.O. saved innumerable jobs for its feather-bedding workers by cutting that deal with Amazon. I only wish Amazon would offer a Prime-Plus zero-P.O. service, but I'm afraid there aren't enough of us out here in the swamp-sticks to matter. I'm willing to go to considerable lengths to avoid monopolists.

douglas said...

I've heard that the Amazon contract is actually one of the better business moves by the post office, but I don't really know, though as it's market related, rather than mandated service, it's possible.