Obama and the Post Office

Lew Rockwell reports:

If the Post Office were really a market institution, it would go belly up in about half an hour. So, no, there is no competition here. Only the government is permitted to deliver first-class letters. How do UPS and Fed-Ex get away with it? They slip through a hole in the law by delivering packages, not mail. And it wasn't easy to survive even then. Just as in the 19th century when the federal government waged war on Lysander Spooner's American Letter Mail Company and on Wells Fargo (and Benjamin Tucker defended "private enterprise in the letter-carrying business"), the government has been hounding private services in our time, whether through wicked labor union bullying or by restricting their services as much as possible.

The freedom of UPS and Fed-Ex to operate at all is hard won. But the government has succeeded in destroying the private marketplace in the one area that government monopolizes by law. It took the innovation of digital messaging to finally horn in on that area. And this has worked in a big way, with a massive collapse in the number of people choosing government mails over digital alternatives.

You'll want to read this one.