We've all heard, certainly, about the increasingly desperate situation of the U.S. Postal Service. Revenues are down because of less mail traffic, and we're told something has to give (maybe several things). The USPS appears to have won its fight to change the way its pension obligations are paid; it is also arguing for cutting service to five days a week, while also reviewing several thousand post offices for possible closure. Yet even these steps are unlikely to solve anything. It's uncertain what the real cost savings of these steps will be, and the decline in pieces mailed is unlikely to abate as people increasingly switch to different technologies.
Some of these band-aid solutions, I fear, could just accelerate existing trends. For example, the idea of five-day delivery. Surveys suggest that people are not too perturbed about this prospect, but I've always thought that six-day delivery was one of the areas where the USPS had a clear advantage over its rivals. More seriously, cutbacks in delivery can easily become a slippery slope. As people and businesses register that their packages, bill payments, and other mail can't be sent, delivered, processed or moved on that extra day, I'd expect them to migrate increasingly to alternatives.
It's a lot like what has happened in public transportation in some areas - the frequency and reliability of service are a key element in maintaining volume. When that bus runs only once an hour instead of once every 30 minutes, or stops running entirely at 7:00 pm, people start making other arrangements. No doubt economists have a name for this phenomenon; it definitely exists.
I don't pretend to have a better answer; only the suggestion that it's a more difficult problem than it seems, and it's unlikely to be solved with a few tweaks here and there. I suspect the answer lies in recognizing that our whole concept of "mail delivery" must change in rather far-reaching ways; we may as well begin to consider a new structure now.
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