We, as a country, need to agree on something important: that the post office is not a business but a service every American directly benefits from, and therefore every American should pay into. In fact, it is difficult to imagine anything more deserving of tax dollars than a peaceful, civil service that binds every American together, promotes commerce, and serves as a link of last resort to vulnerable populations. Instead of feeding the good thing, we, as a country, have decided to starve it. Reversing this policy would require not just reversing a bad law, but admitting we were wrong about some very big ideas. That is what makes it so difficult, and also so important.

DeJoy testified that his only big change at the post office was to order mail trucks to run on time. But that was never the problem to begin with. --- "The truck leaving on time is a good thing if the mail is in it," one employee at a distribution facility told Motherboard. "But this is not the case." Under DeJoy, the USPS has accomplished its goal of spending less money—by delivering less mail. […] But the most telling element of DeJoy's plan is that, despite his fondness for citing this report as the impetus for his disruptive changes, he did not follow the report's recommendations. There are two different "Recommendations" sections, and neither of them suggests a sudden mandate to run all truck trips on time. Instead, the report recommends a slate of extremely mundane bureaucratic tweaks to get the distribution facilities to run better, such as putting signs on or near the machines that clearly lay out mail processing schedules and truck departure times.

The tech giant’s rise has pushed mail clerks and carriers to the breaking point.