"Going Postal"

It seems like the Postmaster General knows what needs to be done -- and has a plan for accomplishing it -- if the United States Postal Service is to remain a viable entity into the 21st century.

Now the unions and politicians (editors) need to get out of the way and let him do it.

It's getting ridiculous, that most of the money now is going to pay for lifetime pensions and benefits (for people not working) -- so that there is "no money left over" to do the jobs they were created to do. In many states, the teachers' pensions, benefits and career advancement programs consume all the education budget so there is no money to actually hold classes.

The unions (and workers) forget that the reason for a job, is not just to get paid for life, whether one does anything in exchange for it, but to actually create value in exchange for those compensations.

The key issue is whether we create value -- in those exchanges, and not just unilaterally one side being able to extort, all one's life, as much money as they want -- as their idea of "fairness" and "justice," not to mention "entitlement."

If worse comes to worse, we can probably go with just one mail delivery a week -- because there is email, cell phone, news forums 24/7, delivery services, and not just the Postal Service as our sole lifeline to the rest of the world anymore.

But everybody is still trying to own the monopoly to happiness whereby they alone can collect the toll -- which is not the world we live in anymore -- ruled by the Boss Tweeds, Jimmy Hoffas, bin Ladens, etc.

We can't freeze the clock so that no more inventions, innovations and discoveries can be permitted anymore -- so that those getting paid high wages for producing what nobody needs anymore, or the only thing they need anymore, can continue to have lifetime security -- as the wet dream scenario of government (union) workers.

Government shouldn't be the only "option." The value of government, is the choices and alternatives they create -- and the crippling dependency of only the one way, as the only way it can ever be.