In the age of the internet, cellphones, Fed Ex and UPS, why does the Post Office exist? Yes, I know: politicians and special interests adore boondoggles that devour our taxes. And the USPS has become newly indispensable to Our Rulers with its role in stealing the election.

But why have the serfs tolerated its colossal waste of their money? And why, when Marxists supposedly loathe corporations, do they never condemn the PO’s subsidizing of corporate “junk mail,” i.e., catalogs and circulars? Those comprise my mail most days, and I’m doggoned if I can understand why my taxes should pay for Estee Lauder to snail-mail me ads I immediately pitch. 

So I wasn’t surprised when a great many of you seconded Mark Carroll’s dismissal of the USPS’s claim to employ “heroes.”  Anthony Powell, for example, “mailed a life insurance payment in Waynesboro, Mississippi on January 4.  It delivered to Chicago January 19.  I literally could have delivered it myself, driving 200 miles a day, in 4.5 days.”

For what it’s worth, had Anthony’s payment sailed aboard a packet from “New York to Liverpool … in the period 1818-1832,” it would have taken only 6 days longer to arrive, for a total of 21 days in transit. 

Meanwhile, the “banner saying Post Office workers were ‘heroes’” nauseated Michael:

My experience was the same over Christmas. An hour and a half waiting in line to pick up a package where the moronic obese lady waddled off and checked every which where, except for the spot closest to her stand, which is where it was.

It’s a great example of the infantilization of Americans where just about everyone is a HeRo.

Indeed. 

Nor is it your imagination that the IQs at the PO are about par with sponges’. CP offers first-hand testimony to the imbecility at the USPS—and I daresay at all bureaucracies:

I used to work for FedEx Freight and from time to time I would deliver pallets of mail to the main post office in let’s just call it a larger city in the Midwest. Always hated going there. I could always rely on a much longer than necessary amount of time being spent to unload those pallets and then get the paper work signed so I could go on with the rest of my deliveries. I remember one visit, where a supervisor was receiving my delivery and this person could not, and I’m not kidding, count past five. There were five pallets on one bill of lading and she could not get past four no matter how many times I demonstrated to her that all five pallets were there. The pallets had been unloaded by their forklift driver and placed in a cross pattern in their receiving area. Since the pallets were not laid out in a straight line, this somehow confused her greatly. Was amusing at first until I realized that this is the genius level most postal workers operate at. Maybe they should all take to wearing capes.

Or dunces’ hats. I’ll treat.

Finally, David Maharaj wants to know

What … a postal worker and a stamp have in common? They both sit in the corner and do nothing.

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