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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.
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.