We're cur­rent­ly get­ting a vivid, painful reminder of why we need a pub­lic sec­tor. The col­lapse of pub­lic ser­vices, in par­tic­u­lar the pro­vi­sion of pub­lic health, has tor­pe­doed the entire econ­o­my as a dead­ly pan­dem­ic rav­ages the coun­try. The end of the road in our cur­rent devo­lu­tion may be the assault on one of our old­est pub­lic insti­tu­tions -- the ven­er­a­ble and very pop­u­lar U.S. Postal Service. 

The inter­net has come to take on much of how we com­mu­ni­cate in the 21st Cen­tu­ry, but the fact remains that Amer­i­cans still rely heav­i­ly on the deliv­ery of phys­i­cal cor­re­spon­dence. And it's not just assis­tance checks and life-sav­ing med­ica­tion, all kinds of com­merce in pri­vate goods is facil­i­tat­ed to a sig­nif­i­cant extent by the Postal Service's pack­age deliv­ery. Trans­port of peri­od­i­cals, the busi­ness of non-prof­it orga­ni­za­tions, and now the very fea­si­bil­i­ty of our nation­al elec­tions, also all depend on a well-func­tion­ing Postal Service.

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