The Postal Service
I have to say, I felt a weird convergence between pop culture and government management today as I sat in this morning's hearing on the dismal financial state of the Postal Service. I don't know if any of you are indie rock fans, but in 2003, Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello recorded this amazingly melancholy album under the name The Postal Service, and the loneliness of their song "The District Sleeps Alone Tonight" seems about right for the depressing tone of the hearing:
Matt writes that "I'm not really sure what the long-term future of public sector mail delivery really is in a universe where snail mail is less-and-less a core element of our communications apparatus," and that specter certainly loomed over the hearing today. There's no question that use of the mails is down substantially, although the Postal Service certainly isn't helped by the $5 billion-plus it has to pay towards the future cost of retiree health care it has to pay every year until 2017. It looks like that obligation will be alleviated somewhat by Congress this year, just so the Postal Service can stay afloat, but there are a lot of questions about route reorganization, downsizing, office closings, elimination of Saturday delivery,flat rates, and other things the Postal Service can do to make itself leaner and more relevant.
But I'm pretty sure we're always going to want--and need--a Postal Service. As long as there are birthdays, rural areas without great broadband access, poor people without computers, prisoners, legal documents to be exchanged, people we want to surprise, a cross-country market in used comic books and KitchenAid blenders, etc., we will need to send things through the mails. The Postal Service is established in the Constitution, and since then, no one's come up with a way to beam gifts, business supplies, or certified documents from one place to another, no one has solved inequity problems that make the mails vital for certain communities, and no one has found a way to replace the pleasure of getting an unexpected or long-awaited letter, addressed by hand, and with the stamp on just a little bit crooked. For business, equity, and aesthetic reasons, the Post Office, in some form, will have to survive.