> It is ideological. Many point to private courier services as an 'obvious' point of comparison.

On a couple different levels:

1. Some people (like libertarians) have an ideological opposition to government-provided services, and believe all or nearly all services provided by the government should be abolished and replaced with the "free market."

2. An ideological belief that private business is "efficient" and government is "bloated and wasteful" by definition.

3. An lazy belief that "the government should be run like a business," therefore the tools you use to evaluate a business (like profitability), should be used to evaluate government.

4. etc.

I think those are distinct beliefs, but they kind of feed into each other and support each other. Like if you believe government services are wasteful and business efficient, it would follow you would improve things by abolishing the government services.

Yes, very ideological. Some people want government to run like a business. Is your state/county/city not profitable enough? Then your state gets fired or downsized. Or maybe sold to the highest bidder.

In any event, the US Constitution requires a post office.

US Constitution, Article 1, Section 8

> The Congress shall have Power ...

> To establish Post Offices and post Roads;

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcri...

I'm sorry, what? You didn't give society 3, you gave it 1+the value of your added work, and pocketed the difference between that amount and 3. And before anyone jumps in to claim that people paying 3 means the item is actually objectively worth 3 - no, government services are often essential and irreplaceable, people are often willing to pay anything for them. This is like saying I somehow added 10000 of value to society by refusing to extinguish someone's burning house for anything less than that amount, despite the actual work costing me far less to perform. As for any non-essential services, that difference is covered by advertising and all sorts of manipulative tricks humanity has come up to force people to make irrational choices, especially over the last century.

Profit-seeking for essential services is the epitome of selfishness that can only be justified through twisted ideologies. When applied to governments that are supposed to take the least and give the most, it is pure evil, just skimming off goods and services someone desperately needs to put that in your pocket.

I like this analogy. The government should of course aim to make as much money as possible

Exactly. Therefore "Have postal employees still be federal employees [...] because their unions would strike [...]" can be translated to "If we allow them to strike (by them not being federal employees), then they will strike".

Wasn't that requirement finally repealed recently?