Nicholas Conrad on Nostr: The post office was intended to bring mail to every American, not make a profit but ...
The post office was intended to bring mail to every American, not make a profit but to deliver to everyone.
The post office is only a thing that the federal government was allowed to create, not a thing it is required to maintain in perpetuity. It also wasn't a delivery service until the 1860s, and even then only in select cities. Before that you were expected to pick up your own mail from the post office or if your village was too small for its own post office, there would just be a 'mail hut' where everyone's letters and papers would be dropped for all the neighbors to sort throughout looking for their own correspondence. Or you could pay a courier to bring your mail to you. Delivery to every home in the country was never so much as contemplated by the framers. Incidentally the constitution doesn't give the post office the monopoly on mail delivery it has now, congress had to do that later because the post office was so crappy at it's one job that private mail services like the pony express were eating its lunch.
Also think about the implication of the post office being specified in the constitution. That's the granularity the framers brought to the powers of the federal government. I'd happily conced not cutting the post office if you're willing to conced cutting every agency, department, and program not mentioned in the constitution.
Published at
2024-12-18 12:12:58Event JSON
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