[Constitutionalist Conservative]

And I'm not truly convinced the USPS has a monopoly. Maybe on the raw letter carrying, there's plenty of competition in the parcel business.

You are right regarding the parcel business, but the USPS does have a legal monopoly on delivery of first class mail. Why does the fedgov consider this necessary?

[discostu]

The best reason I can think of for a monopoly on first class mail is simplicity. Trying to setup a way for multiple organizations to put stuff in your mailbox (think of apartment mailboxes with the backend key) would be rough, how many companies get keys to your box? Who decides who gets keys to your box? What happens if somebody sends you something via a company that doesn't have a key to your box? Also how do you setup payment systems, does everybody sell their own stamps? Do most systems have to operate like FedEx?

I don't think there's anything to gain by breaking the monopoly. We can tell by how regularly USPS loses money that there isn't a high profit margin in first class mail, apparently the Founding Fathers realized that mail wouldn't work well as a private system since they put the post office in the Constitution.