Mail Fraud

The U.S. Postal Service defies truth in advertising.

Nick Gillespie from the June 1996 issue

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"Not too far in the future," says Kovacic, "the Postal Service will have its business basis--first-class mail--eaten out from under it. Five years from now, every bill we pay will be paid electronically. The mail is being blown away by alternatives that ar e not governed by the regulatory structure." The Postal Service's Brennan agrees that electronic media, especially faxes and e-mail, are reshaping the world of mail.

Indeed, a high level of anxiety about the future of first-class mail pervades the "Postal Notes" campaign. One installment celebrating something called "National Card and Letter Writing Week" stops just short of declaring letter writing a patriotic duty. "Letters," reads the ad, "express the thoughts and feelings that hav e shaped civilization. They are indispensable to historians....In this electronic age, a letter is personal and permanent....The point is, write....Encourage [your kids], because they're learning about the value of the written word." Forget the silliness o f the claims (don't faxes and e-mail value the written word as much as a posted letter?) and focus on the tone: These are not the sentiments of a secure organization.

Although crafted to tug at the heartstrings--the ad notes that "a batch of letters tied with ribbon shows how Grandpa courted Grandma, and why Mom married Dad"--such pleas are more and more likely to fall on deaf ears. While first-class customers are disco vering alternative methods, analysts are looking at successful postal-service privatizations in England, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Sweden.

Although hard-and-fast legislative reform plans have yet to take shape, Kovacic says, "There is a much healthier debate about institutional options than at any one time since World War II." More optimistically, he adds, "Even if Congress doesn't lift a fin ger, the situation will be changed due to e-mail, fax technology, and new options that have yet to be invented." That's a trend that no amount of clever advertising can reverse.