Hibbs Contracting Case Study

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A Christian must never violate this Inner Voice. Rather, we must hold it up to the authority of Scripture and the experience of fellow believers. To force a medical procedure on a Christian who does not bear witness with it, and believes the LORD is leading them away from it, is to violate their conscience and cause them to sin. A seventh reason many Christians are abstaining from these vaccines is that these vaccines do not prevent them from either contracting or spreading SARS-CoV It would be moot even if the vaccine actually did stop the spread of SARS-CoV-2 because as was described in reason one, the ends do not justify the means. It is also could be an act of un-love in that many virologists are saying the vaccinated are contributing to ADE at a worldwide level including Dr.

Robert Malone. But seeing these vaccines do not stop the spread, and even the CDC is requiring that the vaccinated still wear masks in many situations and get tested, this means the primary reason someone is getting vaccinated is to protect themselves. In fact, all of the vaccine manufacturers admitted this from the beginning claiming that their vaccines do not stop one from contracting or spreading the disease. They only promised that one would be spared of severe symptoms and death.

We now know even this initial promise was not fully true. Many other countries, like Israel , are experiencing similar numbers. Another example being the boxing superstar, Oscar De La Hoya, who was at the peak of health ready to go back in the ring, recently was hospitalized with a severe case of Covid even though he was fully vaccinated. These examples could be multiplied thousands of times over. One study of over , participants in Israel shows that vaccinated people were 13 times more likely to get infected with SARS-CoV-2 compared to the Covid-recovered. It also shows that a vaccinated person is 27 times more likely to show symptoms if infected than someone who is Covid-recovered.

The Hill has reported on this study here. A George Mason University professor of law recently won a lawsuit over being banned from the university even though he has natural immunity. In fact, he has strong naturally immunity even 18 months after his recovery. An interview with him can be seen here. Even Dr. Fauci admitted in an interview with Dr. This current strategy is unscientific and has motivations that have nothing to do with public health. The reason natural immunity is better is because God is the one who has designed the natural immune response. Vaccine safety: current and future challenges. Pediatric annals. Identifying and addressing vaccine hesitancy.

Risk as feelings. Psychological bulletin. View Article Google Scholar Tversky A, Kahneman D. Availability: A heuristic for judging frequency and probability. Cognitive psychology. Slovic P. Perception of risk. A meta-analysis of experimental studies. Miton H, Mercier H. Cognitive obstacles to pro-vaccination beliefs. Trends in Cognitive Sciences. Effective messages in vaccine promotion: a randomized trial. Willingness to vaccinate children against influenza after the Coronavirus disease pandemic. The Journal of pediatrics. Determinants of influenza and pneumococcal vaccination in elderly people: a systematic review.

Public health. Attitudes and risk perception of parents of different ethnic backgrounds regarding meningococcal C vaccination. Vaccination coverage and sociodemographic determinants of measles—mumps—rubella vaccination in three different age groups. European Journal of Pediatrics. Demographic and socioeconomic determinants of influenza vaccination disparities among university students. Influenza vaccination uptake and socioeconomic determinants in 11 European countries. The influence of political ideology and trust on willingness to vaccinate. PloS one. Luton R, Hare C. Conservatives are more likely to believe that vaccines cause autism. The Washington Post. Reinhart R. Fewer in US continue to see vaccines as important. Donald Trump and vaccination: The effect of political identity, conspiracist ideation and presidential tweets on vaccine hesitancy.

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. Ortiz J, Hauck G. Coronavirus in the US. USA Today. Elflein J. State of Health. United States Census Bureau. Quick Facts. A survey instrument for measuring vaccine acceptance. Preventive medicine. Wooldridge JM. Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data. MIT press; Oct 1. Feise RJ. Do multiple outcome measures require p-value adjustment?. BMC medical research methodology. Civil war and social cohesion: Lab-in-the-field evidence from Nepal. American Journal of Political Science. Bowles S, Gintis H.

Origins of human cooperation. Genetic and cultural evolution of cooperation. Gneezy A, Fessler DM. Conflict, sticks and carrots: war increases prosocial punishments and rewards. The nature of collective resilience: Survivor reactions to the London bombings. International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters. Cooperation versus competition in a mass emergency evacuation: a new laboratory simulation and a new theoretical model. Behavior research methods. Nature Human Behaviour. Meta-analysis of the relationship between risk perception and health behavior: the example of vaccination. Health psychology.

Jurkowitz M, Mitchell A. Pew Research Center. Echo chambers: Emotional contagion and group polarization on facebook. Scientific reports. Garrett RK. Echo chambers online? Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Anderson J. The New York Times. Bump P. Coronavirus has come to Trump country. Quinn M. Fauci warns U. CBS News. Improving vaccination demand and addressing hesitancy. Capraro V, Barcelo H. The effect of messaging and gender on intentions to wear a face covering to slow down COVID transmission. Journal of Behavioral Economics for Policy. Chintagunta P, Labroo AA. Journal of the Association for Consumer Research. Hsiao C. Panel data analysis—advantages and challenges. View Article Google Scholar. Private businesses make such adjustments all the time as demand for their products fluctuates.

Government organizations undermine growth by keeping resources employed in low-value activities, even as tastes and technologies change. That is why Drucker said, "[T]he strongest argument for private enterprise is not the function of profit. The strongest argument is the function of loss. In the 20th century, many economists supported government ownership because they thought that expert planners could efficiently organize production. But they ignored the dynamic role of businesses in continuously improving products and production techniques. In a Journal of Economic Perspectives article, Andrei Shleifer said that many economists did not foresee the "grotesque failure" of government ownership, and they did not appreciate the private-sector role in generating innovation.

Lacking incentives to control costs, government organizations tend to employ excess workers. Empirical studies of privatization generally identify the downsizing of a bloated payroll in SOEs among the main sources of efficiency gains. Governments the world over have employed too many workers in their state enterprises. Many of these enterprises were in fact designed as vehicles for job creation and political patronage.

Protection from competition, lack of hard budget constraints, and security of tenure of public sector positions have led to chronic overstaffing. Surveying international experience, John Nellis found that layoffs of 25 percent are not uncommon after privatization. When employment falls after privatization, labor productivity output per employee generally rises. One study found that the typical labor productivity increase after privatization is about 20 percent. In the United Kingdom, labor productivity doubled in the electricity and gas industries in the decade after privatization.

Japan privatized much of its passenger rail system in the s. The railroads reformed their rigid union rules and slashed their workforces. Labor productivity shot up percent as the bloated railroad workforce was chopped by four-fifths. Higher productivity generally translates into higher worker earnings and greater output in the overall economy. One study found that privatized firms in Mexico reduced their employment, on average, by about half. Surveying the international literature, William Megginson found, "most privatizations result in some employment shedding, but.

Initial job cuts are often just a short-run phenomenon. As productivity improves after privatization, employment often rebounds as companies find new markets and expand sales. A review of privatizations in Canada found that often "employment initially fell, only to rise again over the long term. In sum, privatization often dislocates workers at bloated companies in the short run. But over the longer run, privatized companies grow, employment expands, and compensation rises.

The overall economy gains because higher productivity translates into rising incomes. Economic change can be difficult, but governments can ease the process with tax and regulatory reforms to spur creation of new businesses that will create new jobs. In the private sector, businesses have incentives to maintain their facilities in good repair and to invest to meet rising demands. To fund expansions, they reinvest their profits and raise financing on debt and equity markets.

By contrast, government organizations often consume their funding on bureaucratic bloat and have little left over for repairs and upgrades. Government infrastructure is often old, congested, and poorly maintained. Capital investment falls short and tends to be misallocated. This was a common experience with British industries before they were privatized, and access to private funding to increase capital investment was an important factor in the Thatcher government's privatization drive.

The same problems of run-down public infrastructure are apparent in the United States today. The National Park Service has many poorly maintained facilities and billions of dollars of deferred maintenance. Urban subway and light rail systems across the nation have tens of billions of dollars of maintenance backlogs. Politicians enjoy launching new parks and rail systems, but they put little effort into maintaining what the government already owns. Federal agencies cannot count on Congress for funding. The system needs billions of dollars in investment to meet rising passenger demands, but the FAA has not secured stable long-term funding from Congress. Furthermore, the FAA mismanages its capital investment projects, which often experience delays and cost overruns.

Amtrak's investment budget is also mismanaged. Because of politics, the company invests in rural routes that have few passengers instead of higher-demand routes in the Northeast. In his book on Amtrak, rail expert Joseph Vranich argued, "Congressional requirements that Amtrak spend money on capital improvements to lightly used routes are outrageous. Throughout Amtrak's history, it has devoted too much of its budget to where it is not needed, and not enough to where it is. Privatization solves these sorts of problems.

Privatized businesses use customer revenues and capital markets to finance upgrades. They do not have to lobby Congress to receive needed funding. And they have strong incentives to invest where the actual demand is, free from political pressures that plague government-owned businesses. When the government produces goods and services, it tends to squelch competition, either directly by enforcing a monopoly, or indirectly by deterring entrants unwilling to compete with a subsidized government producer. Devoid of competition, government organizations resist change and are slow to adopt better ways of doing things. The FAA runs the air traffic control system with outdated technology.

The USPS is being undermined by email, but it does not have the flexibility to adapt. Airlines and intercity buses have improved their efficiencies and reduced costs under competitive pressures, but Amtrak's costs remain high. In the economy, major innovations often come from upstarts, not industry-dominant firms. Big advances in industries, from computers to retail, have come from new firms doing things in new ways. So economic progress depends on open entry, on the ability of entrepreneurs to challenge existing providers. That is hard to do when the existing provider is the government. Privatization abroad has often been paired with the removal of entry barriers. The European Union has urged member countries to open their markets as they privatize their airline, energy, telecommunications, transportation, and postal companies.

British postal markets were opened for competition, and then Royal Mail was privatized. The privatization of British Telecom was followed by deregulation and then the rise of competitors such as Vodaphone, which is now one of the largest telecommunications firms in the world. The government should privatize USPS, Amtrak, and other companies, and at the same time open industries to new entrants. Open entry attracts people with new ideas and encourages the dissemination of new production techniques.

The best and the brightest do not want to work for moribund bureaucracies such as the USPS and Amtrak. As a result, those companies today are essentially closed to external know-how and global best practices. The American economy is rapidly evolving, driven by globalization and new technologies. We can keep up with all the changes by making our economy as flexible and open to new ideas as possible, and privatization and competition are the best ways to do that. If America opened its postal industry to competition, there would likely be many entrepreneurs ready to revolutionize it. Citizens have difficulty monitoring the activities of government agencies. The goals of agencies are often vague, and their finances are difficult to understand.

Government officials are protected by civil service rules and can be secretive in their activities. Even members of Congress have difficulty squeezing information out of agency leaders, as we often see at congressional hearings. By contrast, private companies have clear goals such as earning profits and expanding sales. Performance is monitored by auditors, shareholders, and creditors. And consumers monitor companies in the marketplace, giving feedback with their purchasing behavior. Moving government activities to the private sector would make them more "public. But after the facility was privatized, a new sign went up: Private Property: Public Welcome.

British privatizations revealed problems that had been hidden inside government businesses, such as unknown debts, pension liabilities, and performance issues. In the U. Or consider the USPS's accounting. The postal company provides some services in its legal monopoly and other services in competitive markets, but its financial statements make it difficult to determine how much it earns or loses on each. Economist Robert Shapiro found that the USPS manipulates its accounting to raise prices on letters, and then uses the extra revenues to subsidize its express mail and package delivery. Amtrak similarly hides cross-subsidies behind its opaque accounting, so it is difficult to determine the profits or losses on each of its routes.

The Tennessee Valley Authority TVA has long been a secretive organization and immune from outside criticism, particularly with respect to its safety and environmental record. The TVA had been aware of the risk but failed to take needed steps to avert it. Federal auditors blamed TVA's management culture, which focuses on covering up mistakes. A final transparency issue is that federal agencies that operate services are often the same agencies that regulate them. The FAA operates air traffic control and regulates aviation safety. The Transportation Security Administration operates airport security and also regulates it. In such cases, privatizing the operations would eliminate the conflict of interest, and agency decisions that are now made internally would be made externally and publicly.

This transparency issue is one reason the Thatcher government figured that — even if an industry had monopoly elements — privatizing that industry would improve it because the government regulator would be split off from the entity being regulated. Economic theory indicates that general welfare is maximized when prices for goods and services are set by supply and demand in competitive markets.

With government goods and services, however, prices are often set too high or too low. Setting prices too high induces people to reduce their purchases, and they gain fewer benefits than optimal. Setting prices too low induces wasteful overconsumption. The government tends to set prices based on political and bureaucratic factors, not market supplies and demands. That results in misallocating resources, meaning that capital, labor, land, and commodities are used in low-value ways that reduce overall welfare in society.

Government-owned resources are often underpriced. Irrigation water from federal dams in the western United States is subsidized, which reduces incentives for conservation. The use of federal lands is also subsidized in many cases. Some government agencies, such as the USPS, underprice some services and overprice others — they cross-subsidize. An advantage of privatizing water, land, postal services, and other items is that private and unsubsidized providers set prices on the basis of supply and demand. Market pricing is efficient and fair. It is also environmentally friendly because it creates incentives to minimize waste.

Privatizing water and opening water markets in the western states would ensure that water is not wasted on low-value crops when the rivers could produce more value by supporting recreation and wildlife. Privatizing Amtrak and ending rail subsidies would discourage the company from wasting energy running trains on low-value routes. When the United Kingdom privatized its regional water utilities in the s, people criticized the subsequent price increases. But water prices had been too low under government ownership, which encouraged overconsumption and wasteful leaks. Under privatization, leaks have fallen one-third over the past two decades. Governments are often the butt of jokes for their poor customer service.

Not all government agencies provide poor service, and people have bad experiences with private companies, of course. But public polling shows that Americans have a dim view of the service they receive from federal agencies. One poll found that just one-third of the public thinks that the government gives competent service. The problem is one of incentives. Government employees usually receive no tips, promotions, or other benefits for providing good service. Unlike sales people in private companies, they do not have to compete to find customers, so they have free rein to be unfriendly and slow.

A British Treasury study found that "most indicators of service quality have improved" in the privatized industries in that nation. With British passenger rail privatization, on-time performance improved and customer satisfaction has been quite high, despite a huge increase in ridership. In the United Kingdom's privatized water industry, supply interruptions are down, the number of customers with low water pressure has fallen, and water quality has improved. Decisions in government organizations often reflect political factors that raise costs and misallocate spending.

Comparing government and private ownership in the Journal of Economic Perspectives , economist Andrei Shleifer argued, "Elimination of politically motivated resource allocation has unquestionably been the principal benefit of privatization around the world. A British finance expert said that in the years before Thatcher, "there had been frequent interference in running the nationalized industries," with politicians often making conflicting demands of companies, such as favoring higher prices one day and lower prices the next.

In America, federal businesses are unable to end unneeded spending because members of Congress defend activities in their districts. To please politicians, Amtrak runs low-value routes that lose hundreds of dollars per passenger. And Congress blocks the USPS from consolidating mail processing centers and closing low-volume post offices. The agency's least-used 4, rural post offices average just 4. The story of the FAA is similar. Politicians prevent the agency from closing unneeded air traffic control ATC facilities, and they prevent the elimination of jobs in FAA facilities in their districts.

More than U. Members of Congress from both parties have blocked attempts to cut tower hours or merge radar rooms, according to interviews and documents. Such pork barrel politics make us all poorer by raising the costs of services. The environment also suffers because it is wasteful to run low-value trains and to keep open low-value ATC facilities and post offices.

One reason nations have pursued privatization has been to attract foreign investment. By selling equity in postal or energy companies, a country can attract foreign capital to help build its economy. A substantial share of privatization proceeds in OECD nations has come from foreign buyers. The British were the pioneers. The British Telecom privatization in was the largest IPO in world history to that date, and it was the first truly global share offering. New Zealand pursued a large amount of privatization in and raised billions of dollars by floating shares in numerous companies. Commenting on the sales, a New Zealand finance expert said, "Privatizations help the development of capital markets in terms of liquidity by attracting greater offshore and domestic participation and encouraging other unrelated listings.

Foreign investment is not just about attracting money. Capital inflows often come with inflows of foreign technology and management skills. An analysis of European privatization by Deutsche Bank said, "[W]hen foreign investors acquire stakes in companies, the influx of capital is in many cases also accompanied by an inflow of important expertise. Government monopoly companies tend to be cut off from industry innovations occurring abroad. If European postal services adopt new and better practices, the current monopoly USPS could simply ignore them. By contrast, private postal companies would have incentives to adopt innovations from anywhere in the world.

They could also hire foreign executives who have unique talents. The executive who led British postal reforms, for example, is a Canadian with experience in both privatization and the postal industry. Typically, federal government businesses do not export their goods and services. They have no incentive to do so. They are content to quietly fulfill their domestic roles. But that artificially restricts growth opportunities in our economy. Private businesses that develop specialized products and expertise often pursue sales in both domestic and foreign markets. Those earnings are plowed back into the company, which encourages further research and product development.

Canada privatized its ATC system in The new company, Nav Canada, has become a leader in ATC innovation and has developed numerous technologies that it exports abroad. One expert noted, "The technical expertise at Nav Canada has led to a thriving business marketing innovative ATC hardware and software and advising other air navigation service providers on modernization. There are other export successes from Canadian privatization. In the government privatized Canadian Arsenals, which was the entity that manufactured large-caliber ammunition for Canada's military.

Today, the company is owned by General Dynamics; its manufacturing facilities supply not only Canada's military, but also the militaries of a dozen other countries. Canada also has an interesting history with its bank notes and postage stamps. The government has long contracted the printing of those products to the private Canadian Bank Note Company. The company has used its domestic expertise as a base to go global, and today it prints stamps, bank notes, and various high-end security products for more than 60 nations. Bureau of Engraving and Printing, an agency that supplies only the domestic market. The lesson is that we waste the talents of American workers when we keep business activities trapped inside the federal government.

Moving in-house government activities to the private sector opens the door for workers to capitalize on their skills and sell their innovations worldwide. An important goal of privatization in many countries has been to deepen equity markets and widen share ownership. By , about half of the global stock market value outside of the United States was from companies that have been privatized in recent decades. William Megginson found that privatization has "massively increased stock market capitalization and trading volume in many developing and more than a few developed countries. As a result of British privatizations, the share of British citizens owning equities soared from 7 percent to 25 percent during the s. Germany, for example, heavily advertised its privatization of Deutsche Telekom and convinced two million citizens to buy shares.

Privatizations have created new opportunities for households to save and allowed more people to benefit from economic growth. Investors around the globe have generally earned solid returns from share issue privatizations. Still, it was this "popular capitalism" aspect of Thatcher's program that helped inspire President Reagan to push for privatization in the United States. America's economy would gain from federal privatization, and so would the government. The federal budget would benefit in three ways. First, sales of federal businesses and assets would raise revenues, which has been an important political motivator in many countries.

Second, subsidies to government businesses could be cut with privatization. Privatizing Amtrak, for example, would allow the rail system to run more efficiently. Similarly, privatizing the air traffic control system would allow it to be fully self-funded without the need for taxpayer subsidies. Third, privatization would raise money for governments over time as newly privatized entities paid income, property, and other taxes from which they are currently exempt. Government businesses and facilities do not pay federal or state income taxes, and generally they do not pay property taxes to local governments.

Privatization would allow governments to broaden their tax bases, thus generating revenues that could be used to reduce overall tax rates. Without major reforms, the federal government faces a financial crisis down the road as spending on entitlement programs soars in coming decades. Policymakers should cut programs in every federal department. The main focus of reforms should be the major entitlements, such as Medicare and Medicaid, but privatization can make a modest positive contribution to fixing the government's fiscal woes as well. President Ronald Reagan started a discussion on federal privatization in the s. His administration explored privatizing the postal service, railroads, electric utilities, the air traffic control system, and federal land.

A Reagan-appointed commission issued a major report in proposing various privatization options, but the administration's efforts mainly stalled. Bush issued an executive order supporting privatization, but he made little progress on reforms. President Bill Clinton had more success. The George W. Bush administration proposed partly privatizing the Social Security retirement system, but that effort was blocked in Congress. On the other side of the ledger, Bush signed into law a bill nationalizing security screening at U. The administration has also pursued the sale of excess federal buildings. Recent decades have seen more of a focus on partial privatization. Bush, for example, the Pentagon moved a large number of military families to , private housing units.

That program has been very successful: housing quality has improved and costs are down. Privatization will likely be on the agenda in coming years. Budget deficits are here to stay, so policymakers will be looking for ways to reduce spending and raise revenues. Policymakers will also be looking for ways to boost America's sluggish economic growth. As time passes, policymakers will be able to draw on ever more foreign privatization successes. We know that postal services, air traffic control, passenger railroads, and other activities can be successfully moved to the private sector because other countries have now done it.

Any activity that can be supported by customer charges, advertising, voluntary contributions, or other sorts of private support can be privatized. Government activities may be privatized as either for-profit businesses or nonprofit organizations, depending on the circumstances. The important thing is to move activities to the private sector, where they can grow, change, and be an organic part of society connected to the actual needs of citizens.

Following those discussions are shorter discussions of additional businesses and assets that the federal government should privatize. The USPS is a major business enterprise operated by the federal government. Revenues from the sale of USPS products are supposed to cover the company's costs. But with the rise of electronic communications, mail volume has plunged, and the ,worker USPS has been losing billions of dollars a year. Other countries facing falling mail volume have privatized their systems and opened them to competition.

America should follow suit and liberalize its postal industry so that it can adjust to changes in the modern Internet-based economy. Congress confers on the USPS a legal monopoly over the delivery of certain types of mail: first-class mail letters under 13 ounces and standard mail bulk advertising items. The USPS also has a legal monopoly on access to mailboxes, which is a unique protection among postal systems in the world. It impedes USPS plans to close unneeded post office locations, even though the bottom 4, rural locations average just 4. Private businesses make such adjustments to their operations all the time as demand for their products fluctuates. The USPS's costly union workforce is another problem.

USPS worker compensation is substantially higher, on average, than that of comparable private-sector workers. And, in some cases, unions have resisted the automation of postal functions. The postal system's financial challenges stem from the decline in first-class mail volume, which fell from a peak of billion pieces in to 62 billion pieces in , a 40 percent drop.

The USPS's financial challenges have been compounded by a requirement passed in to pay down the company's large unfunded liabilities for retiree health care. But the vast majority of private firms do not even offer retiree health coverage. Also, since traditional mail faces a continued, long-term decline, it is better to tackle these costs now than to leave them to taxpayers down the road under a possible federal bailout. Other nations with money-losing mail systems have either privatized them or opened them to competition — or both. Private companies have more flexibility to deal with today's challenges. And with the rise of the Internet, the claim that mail is a natural monopoly needing special protection is weaker than ever.

The European Union has recognized those realities and pressed its member nations to deregulate their systems. Most European Union countries now have a more entrepreneurial postal industry than we do. In many countries, dominant national carriers now have some competitors, often focused on niches such as business mail or bulk mail. Some privatized companies, such as Deutsche Post, have expanded internationally. Progress toward full competition has been a slow but steady process. Experience has shown that both privatization and open competition create efficiency gains.

In New Zealand and Sweden, government postal firms slashed their workforces by about one-third when they were restructured and opened to competition. Congress should privatize the USPS, repeal its legal monopolies, and give the company the flexibility it needs to innovate and reduce costs. Those reforms would give entrepreneurs a chance to improve America's postal services. In , when the USPS — under political pressure — lifted its monopoly over "extremely urgent" mail, we saw the growth of innovative private delivery firms such as FedEx.

Instead of privatization, some USPS supporters want the company to expand into banking, payday loans, grocery delivery, and other activities. But rather than solving any problems, such expansions would create more distortions. The USPS would have to find activities in which it could earn above-normal profits to funnel excess cash back to support the mail system. But a government agency — if not subsidized — is not likely to be able to out-compete private firms in other industries.

Past USPS forays into nonmail areas, such as electronic bill paying, ended in failure. In a study, economist Robert Shapiro found that the USPS raises prices on its monopoly products and uses those revenues to subsidize express mail and package delivery. For FedEx, United Parcel Service UPS , and other private firms, however, such cross-subsidies are unfair because — unlike USPS — they have to pay taxes, borrow at market rates, and follow all the normal business laws and regulations. Shapiro thinks that without receiving special breaks, the USPS "probably could not compete at all" against the more nimble private firms.

These problems are difficult to solve under the current postal structure because the USPS hides the cross-subsidies in its books by attributing a large share of costs to overhead. Policy experts are coming around to the need for major reforms. Economist Robert Atkinson proposed that the USPS focus on delivering the "final mile" to homes, while opening collection, transportation, and the processing of mail to competition. The Atkinson and Kamarck proposals move in the right direction, but foreign reforms show that full privatization is both feasible and consistent with universal service. In Germany, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, the dominant firms continue to provide universal service.

Postal companies have a strong incentive to provide universal service because, as a network industry, the value to customers of the service increases the more addresses that are served. USPS supporters fear that rural areas would be left out if the government no longer required universal service. But economist Richard Geddes argues that is probably not the case. Economists Robert Carbaugh and Thomas Tenerelli looked at nations that have privatized or opened their postal systems to competition. They found that, rather than the price increases and service reductions that some people fear, "liberalizing countries have shown the ability to offer affordable, reliable, universal, and increasingly efficient postal-delivery services. Other countries interpret universal service more narrowly than we do — some countries have cluster boxes for communities, some exclude bulk mail from universal service requirements, and some allow more flexibility in pricing.

All that said, a universal service obligation for paper mail is not needed in the modern economy. Electronic communications bind the country together without it. Household-to-household personal letters have plunged to just 3 percent of total mail volume today. Bills and other business statements are the second largest type of mail, but those are being replaced by electronic bill payments, which now account for 63 percent of all bill payments. Essentially then, Congress imposes a rigid monopoly on the nation so that we can continue to receive mainly "junk mail" in our mailboxes six days a week — while billion emails blast around the planet every day.

In a Washington Post op-ed, former U. Congress should wake up to changes in technology and to postal reforms around the world. Other countries have shown that postal liberalization works, and it would work in America as well. Private passenger rail service thrived in the United States between the mid—19th century and the early—20th century. By the late s, however, passenger rail was struggling because of the rise of automobiles, buses, and airlines. Railroads faced large tax, regulatory, and union burdens not faced by other modes of transportation. Railroads also paid heavy property taxes, and the federal government imposed a special excise tax on rail tickets from the s until After a number of major railroads, including Penn Central, went bankrupt, Congress stepped in to take over passenger rail by creating Amtrak in Amtrak is structured like a corporation, but the government owns virtually all the stock.

It was supposed to become self-supporting and begin earning profits after a transition period. Amtrak has many woes. Its operations are so inefficient that it even loses tens of millions of dollars a year on its food service. For the overall system, only about three-quarters of Amtrak's trains are on time, and its long-distance routes have a particularly bad record. Amtrak has an expensive and inflexible workforce. They resist innovation and create a more rule-laden workplace. Former Amtrak head David Gunn complained that at Amtrak's maintenance facilities, workers from different unions were not allowed to share work on projects outside their narrowly designated specialties. With a rail system plagued by late trains and endless losses, Amtrak's management has been subject to much criticism.

Over the years, federal auditors have charged Amtrak with a lack of strategic planning, inefficient procurement policies, weak financial management, and insufficient accountability. However, most of Amtrak's problems are created by Congress, which prevents the company from making rational business decisions. In particular, Congress insists on supporting an excessively large nationwide system of passenger rail that does not make economic sense. Nor does it make environmental sense for Amtrak to run many routes that have low ridership. Amtrak operates 44 routes on 21, miles of track in 46 states.

Amtrak owns the trains, but freight rail companies own about 95 percent of the track. The few routes that earn a positive return are in the Northeast, whereas the biggest money losers are the long-distance routes, such as New Orleans to Los Angeles. Privatization would increase rail efficiency and bring costs down. A private rail company could prune excess workers, base worker pay on performance, and end harmful union rules. It could close the routes that are losing the most money. Passenger rail makes sense in the Northeast corridor between Boston and Washington, D. Other routes may also make sense within a lower-cost privatized system.

A privatized Amtrak could close the most uneconomic routes and shift investment and maintenance efforts to the core routes to improve service quality.