The legal obligation that explains why the USPS cannot stop

Postal workers go to 169 million doors six days a week, rain or shine, and lose money on most of them. That isn't a management failure. It’s the job description. The United States Postal Service is bound by law to deliver to every address, no matter how remote or unprofitable, and that law was written on purpose. People forget that when they see red ink in the annual report.

So when pundits and senators complain that the USPS isn’t run like a business, they’re complaining about the thing Congress told it to be. A carrier driving two hours to leave a package at a ranch gate is not a business choice; it’s a legal command. FedEx can pick its routes. The Postal Service cannot. That’s the whole story. Pretending otherwise just muddies the argument for people who want to carve up the agency and hand the profitable lanes to private carriers.

We're skeptical of government bloat, sure. But this one is on Congress, not the mailman. Either change the law or pay the bill. Don’t demand a constitutionally-flavored universal service and then mock the postmaster for losing money on it. The service is the mandate. The cost is the price. If you don’t like the price, have the courage to say you want to stop delivering to the middle of nowhere. Otherwise, stop pretending the post office is broken because it’s inefficient. It’s efficient at something you asked it to do.