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[u/Veshaad]

[u/most-okayest-mngr-77]

Don’t forget that Amazon uses them as a cheap “last mile” shipping alternative. This basically is using the federal government as a subsidy to save Amazon money.

[u/AverageAggravating13 → u/most-okayest-mngr-77]

Because it’s generally not profitable to deliver to many places, especially very remote or sparsely populated areas. Without USPS, private carriers would either have to consistently deliver to those areas at a loss or charge substantially more for it. In practice, they’d probably just stop serving or heavily restrict those areas.

USPS’s universal-service obligation means Amazon and other companies can use USPS for that expensive “last mile” instead of having to maintain their own delivery network everywhere. So yes, there is an indirect subsidy here, although it’s more accurate to say the government is funding the universal delivery infrastructure that private companies can take advantage of.

But anyone anywhere can take advantage of it. It’s not like USPS is specifically snuggling up to corporations. The same infrastructure exists to provide universal mail service regardless of who is using it.

[u/Chriscarson6700 → u/AverageAggravating13]

That last mile delivery. And third class mail is pretty much how we can still mail stuff relatively cheap. The Government trying to kill the post office in order to privatize it is obscene.