Residents in Santa Monica are up in arms because they will probable have to travel a few miles away to deliver and receive their mail.
What has led to the prospective closures of area post offices?
The United States Postal Service, which does not subsist on taxpayer dollars but receives backing from the federal government as one of the powers enumerated to Congress and the President in Article One of the United States Constitution.
The US Postal Service has suffered a $25 billion loss over the past five years. The reason? Electronic media and the rise of private shipping firms, Amazon.com for example, are eating away at the market share and customer base of the post office.
From the days when the postman always rang twice, bringing the mail two times to day, to the growing call to end Saturday service, the US Postal Service is going postal, losing its bearing and sharing in the widespread decline that technological innovation brings to long-lasting institutions.
One reason to reduce the role of the government in our lives: the state cannot renovate its procedures or innovate its business practices, in large because for many services the government does not compete with another service for customers.
Furthermore, the crushing pension obligations, now reaching $5.5 per year, and further sinking its teeth into the ailing department. The power of the public unions has once again undermined their own employers, threatening to bankrupt the hand that has fed and fluffed them for so long.
I find it intriguing and compelling that the state institution of the mails is the number one argument for the role of government offered by liberals, yet the very institution they stand by is crumbling under its own inefficiency.
The Art Deco-era Post Offices are a symbol of a long-gone era and ideology, one in which state subsidy and union deserve to hold sway and stay in action for the good of all. After decades of collective action and generous benefits handed to public sector employees, the once sterling example set by these artistic post offices and the pro-labor murals are now hollow, ludicrous shells of themselves, a worn-out image of the former substance which commanded so much power and attention in decades past.
Keep the post offices as a historical monument, as a reminder to future generations that the best that the state can offer can never outlast the inexorable laws of supply, demand, consumer confidence, and efficiency.
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