Re: Government competition

[Steve Cohen <stevecoh@mcs.com>]

Brett Glass wrote:

> At 09:12 AM 12/11/98 -0500, Steve Cohen wrote:
>
> >The key word is your "allow".  Unless potential private carriers are
> >required to
> >provide all the services the Postal Service is required to provide to every
> >address in the country, you are allowing cherry-picking with inevitable
> >decline of
> >service to the areas not covered by the cherry-pickers, as the USPS is left
> >with
> >the losers.
>
> The best anti-cherry-pickiing scheme is, again, direct subsidies (perhaps in
> the form of chits that can be used exclusively for that type of service).
> Users in less desirable areas will be able to afford higher prices, so
> their areas would become more desirable.
>
> --Brett

You may well be right.  I haven't had the time to analyze your idea fully, so I
didn't want to comment on it, but it does appear, at least, to meet my
objections to most of the privatization schemes that come along - you're not
ignoring the problem of cherry picking and therefore not comparing apples to
oranges (or should I say cherries) by pretending the problem doesn't exist.
Most privatization schemes say "Private is good, government is bad" and that is
as deep as their analysis goes.  You are at least thinking about the real
problems.