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Privatize or downsize the USPS? Rural customers worry either option will hurt them
(www.iowapublicradio.org)
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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I have a rural address.
USPS already is broken for my community. They won’t delivery at all off the paved highway. We have a line of mailboxes.
The issue is that the mailboxes are constantly broken into, so we all also have a PO Box. P.O. Boxes are not cheap.
My mailbox no longer exists to prevent packages from accidentally getting delivered to it.
If usps doesn’t want to deliver to rural addresses, fine, but set up some alternatives. Create a secured remote mailbox, or offer P.O. Boxes for free.
The fundamental problem here is that the US population doesn't really want to pay for stuff where they don't directly benefit. In "me first" politics, rural populations are screwed.
And may they have the day they voted for.
Exactly. Nothing is free, and having free po boxes just means the public will pay. And since you can't pay for things you don't directly benefit from in the current zeitgeist, it's not happening.
This is true everywhere, not just rural areas. In suburbs we have “community mailboxes” and they are constantly broken into. Law enforcement takes a report, and that’s it. For something that’s a federal crime with its its own enforcement arm, mail theft sure isn’t taken seriously anymore.
I think the postal inspectors have their hands full at the moment. In my neck of the woods people are robbing mail carriers for their mailbox keys. It's not a great time to work for the USPS, it used to be though
The republicans have been trying to starve USPS for years because they want to privatize it, just like everything else.
Which is perfectly congruent with their ignorant jackassery given that USPS delivers magnitudes more mail than UPS and Fedex and DHL. The private alternatives are vocally upfront that they could never cover the slack, should USPS cease to exist.
Not one Republican ever argues a point in good faith.
Exact same thing in my area. Maybe we are neighbors.
Where I grew up they had these outdoor lock boxes where everyone had a slot with their own key and then there were a couple larger spots where they could put packages and then put that key in your mail slot. Postal worker just opens the whole front face and loads the mail for like 50 people. They put them at the beggining of the road out so people could stop and check their mail on their way in/out. Seems like a great solution for rural areas.
We have the same thing in urban and suburban areas, like apartments, condos, subdivisions. People end up stealing the master keys from the postal carriers. It’s fucked up.
That's exactly what we have in the neighborhood where my camp is. I don't have one because I don't have an address. :(
Shit it sucks in the city. Just spoke to someone that owes me a check. The company said it went out n the mail Tuesday. This is local the place six blocks away (wish they had let me pick it up) should had it next day.