It’d Be All Right

The USPS is planning on raising their first class mail rates to 58¢ from the current 55¢ and raising the rates on their other mail classes by 6.8%-8.8%.

This is another example of price-fixing by the Federal government. Maybe the increases are legitimate, maybe they’re not. But we can’t tell because market forces aren’t at work here, only government bureaucrats’ impressions are at work.

It’d be all right if we privatized all of mail delivery. Let a free, competitive market determine prices. Recognize the ubiquitousness of email, texting, Skype, Zoom, etc, etc, etc as competing communications techniques, and let a privatized snail mail system compete in that same free market.

It’s doable; our Constitution only says that

The Congress shall have Power…To establish Post Offices and Post Roads

It doesn’t require Congress actually establish Post Offices, much less have the Federal government run them. The establishment (and operation) are easily done by letting free enterprise do them.

All it takes is the political will to do so.

Fascism in Action

The People’s Republic of China has given its instructions to two of its largest and most prosperous private companies, Ant and Tencent.

China is calling on private-sector pioneers Ant Group Co and Tencent Holdings Ltd to help it develop a state-backed digital currency that threatens the pair’s highly popular payment networks.

Private companies will be allowed to prosper and grow to their owners’ hearts content—so long as they produce what Government instructs them to produce.

Such government control of the means of production by controlling what is produced is at the core of the fascism variant of socialism.