The announcement of a Sunday delivery agreement between online retail giant Amazon and the U.S. Postal Service could be a boon to online shoppers and a potential blessing to the economically embattled federal mail carrier.
Rick Geddes, author of "Saving the Mail: How to Solve the Problems of the U.S. Postal Service" and a professor of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University, has testified before Congress on the privatization of the U.S. Postal Service. He is available for media comment.
Bio: http://www.human.cornell.edu/bio.cfm?netid=rrg24
Geddes says:
“Amazon announced today that it is teaming up with the Postal Service to offer package delivery on Sundays in the New York and Los Angeles regions. This comes on the heels of the Postal Service’s announcement that it is partnering with Staples to offer a variety of postal window services in those stores. This is in addition to its longstanding, successful partnership with Federal Express. “Such partnerships are a welcome development for the Postal Service as it becomes a more commercialized entity, which is critical in the face of massive technological changes in the electronic marketplace. The advent of e-mail, cellular phones, texting and many other options has cut drastically into the Postal Service’s main revenue source: delivering first-class letters. Partnerships with the private sector will make the Postal Service more efficient. “If the Postal Service is to survive in the modern electronic world without large, ongoing taxpayer subsidies, it must be allowed and encouraged to adapt. A key aspect of adaptation is the ability to become more entrepreneurial and flexible, which includes forming alliances with industry partners. “Such commercialization is sometimes confused with privatization, which refers to the sale of ownership shares in the Postal Service to investors. There are many steps that must be taken before such a step could even be considered, including liberalizing postal laws and corporatizing the Postal Service.”
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