Saturday, November 18, 2017

Amazon opts for private package delivery

Your New Mailman Works for Amazon - Foundation for Economic Education - Working for a free and prosperous world - Jeffrey A. Tucker:

November 17, 2017 - "There he was dropping off packages in the mail room. I picked up mine and walked away. Then I did a double take. The patch on his shoulder was not USPS, FedEx, or UPS. It was the familiar lower case 'a; of Amazon.

"'Wait, do you actually work for Amazon?... The company that sells things online now has its own warehouse-to-doorstep delivery service?' 'Yes, it’s been around for a year, but expanding by the day. I love my job. It’s a great company'....

"We should take time to appreciate what this means. For many decades, the government monopolized mail, crushing competitors at every turn.... When the US government cracked down on private mail services in 1834, two thirds of existing services were private. Criminal penalties were imposed and they all gradually went away.

"The rise of FedEx and UPS crawled through a loophole in the law. The government maintained its monopoly on first-class mail, but permitted exceptions for packages and special deliveries. Then came email. Once the monopoly was shattered, the government’s protected sector became nearly worthless, as we all know. People under the age of 30 hardly even go to their mailboxes anymore ... the government’s long-held control over mail was shattered not through reform or privatization but by technology, entrepreneurship, and the forward motion of history itself.

"But the entry of Amazon into the delivery space is just incredible.... Today, Amazon is a job machine. You can go to Flex.amazon.com and get a job delivering packages, doing exactly what the government has been trying to prevent since 1834.

"Forgive the term but capitalism is working.... All this competition is making everyone better off, and bringing new levels of consumer service to the market. CVS has announced that it is offering prescription delivery services just on the rumor that Amazon will enter the market. And the package delivery service will keep price pressure on everyone else.

"The real drama of our times is embedded inside these seemingly small improvements in how we live, all being delivered by private enterprise. Forgive the term but capitalism is working, despite its poor reputation. It’s not the political parties that are doing this. It’s not the bureaucracies. It’s not even the Ivory Tower. The world is being made more beautiful by the profit-and-loss system that is working to serve you and me every day."

Read more: https://fee.org/articles/your-new-mailman-works-for-amazon/
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