Don’t Kill the U.S. Postal Service. Unshackle It.
The network, which still provides a vital lifeline to many, just needs to be reconfigured and repurposed.
Many people still rely on mail carriers.
Photographer: David Ryder/Getty Images
The U.S. Postal Service has had a foot in the grave for years, with fatalists regularly urging it to accept the inevitable. “The Post Office Is Dying Because We Don’t Need It Anymore,” a tech- savvy writer advised in 2011. “The U.S. Postal Service Is Dying. Let It,” a libertarian blogger suggested in 2017. “Why Do We Have U.S. Mail And How Much Longer Will We Have It?” a self-described “customer experience futurist” asked in Forbes last year.
Mother Nature recently decided to weigh in, too. The coronavirus pandemic has delivered a potentially fatal blow to the postal service, a 228-year-old mainstay of American life that traces its roots to the Constitution and whose services and ubiquity are made real by carriers visiting mailboxes and post offices that remain neighborhood fixtures.