Postal Service is an Oxymoron
2 October 2006This morning I went to the local Post Office. I have a small business that I’ve run part time for several years and now I’m taking it full time so I wanted a post office box to keep my personal and business dealings separate. After standing in line for about twenty minutes I arrived at the window and told the postal worker what I needed. I was told that in order to get a post office box I’d need TWO forms of ID. When I asked if a photo debit card from my bank would do, in addition to my drivers license I was told no. So I had to waste another hour going back home and digging out my passport, then drive back to the post office and wait in line again.
Not long ago I blogged about Republican legislation in Congress to require voters to show government issued photo ID in order to vote. But as important as voting is and as important as it is to ensure that the ballot box is inviolate, the Democrats howled about how requiring a photo ID would disenfranchise the poor in this country by adding an insurmountable obstacle to voting.
So let me get this straight. I can’t get a stinking post office box without not one, but two forms of ID, yet I can go vote for the President of the United States and I don’t have to prove a thing! There is something dramatically wrong when both of those statements are true simultaneously.
As for the US Postal Service, the requirement for two forms of ID is simply stupid. Think about it. I don’t need any ID whatsoever to mail something but I need two forms to receive something. That means that a terrorist can put anything in the mail and send it anywhere with no fear that his identity will be found out. But the recipient of a letter bomb or anthrax or whatever the terrorist wants to send can’t get that package without TWO FORMS OF ID! I’m sorry, that’s beyond stupid.
This sorry state of affairs exists because the post office is a government supported monopoly. Everyone knows the post office could never survive with its current state of no service (as Clark Howard likes to say) if they had to compete in the marker place. Their survival depends entirely on their monopoly status. Were they to be privatized and lose their monopoly and be forced to compete, the level of service would increase dramatically and the prices they charge would come down instead of being raised every year or two.
The moral of the story is never trust the government to do ANY job that COULD be done by private business. And if there is truly a need to have two forms of ID to obtain a post office box, surely asking for one is legitimate when attempting to vote!
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