Wells Fargo Is Plotting to Privatize the Post Office

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4d ago

Wells Fargo Is Plotting to Privatize the Post Office

jacobin.com /2025/03/wells-fargo-usps-privatization-trump/

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And then the people rose up and burnt Wells Fargo into ash on the ground

The current Postmaster General and Trump pick (DeJoy) has a conflict of interest (owns stock in UPS and DHL). He tried to sabotage the 2020 election by performing "maintenance" on mail sorting machines to prevent mail-in ballots from being counted.

Wells Fargo stole our house (illegal foreclosure) and nothing happened to them. They also took 5 years to mark our debt as paid, so it stuck on our credit reports for far too long.

Wells Fargo, who was creating fake bank accounts and signing up customers for services they had no idea about? Fraud! Never trust this 'bank'.

What is this the 1800's?
- I know, right? They sure as hell are trying to bring us back to their so-called "good ol' days."

Are there any other nations that have privatized their postal services? Really curious to see who that's worked out for so far.
- The Belgian Post was half privatized (50% minus 1 share) about 20 years ago, so that it could modernize without direct political meddling and so that there would be external (non politicized + professionel) oversight. That modernization was really needed and it worked out well enough. The company hasn't been without controversies, but it's not a disaster either.
  Since that time, they were still given lucrative government subsidies/contracts to provide certain services that were deemed impossible to be made profitable (according to them), but on which they secretly made billions of euros of profit. Hidden subsidies basically, but still far less than what they used to cost the Belgian state before the modernization.
  
  This isn't that far off from the USPS model, but USPS isn't protected from republicans out to destroy it.
  
  So, far, far more corruption and inefficiency than before.
- Don't know any nation that does, but also US already has FedEx, UPS, DHL and others. They could deliver letters if they wanted, but they don't think that's profitable.
  The privatization looks like it's essentially stealing all assets USPS has.
  BTW there are protests about it https://nalc.org/march23 I recommend to attend them.
  
  So there is a little bit of nuance. They could deliver letters, but they wouldn't have legal access to mailboxes... Which is a pretty big hinderance.
  Not saying I disagree, just that it's one edge USPS has verse their massive mandate.
- Royal Mail in the UK was privatized.
  https://www.fool.co.uk/2023/05/18/royal-mails-privatisation-10-years-on/
  
  Yeah that went great.
  One crazy outcome was that the Royal Mail's enforcement division (mall cops) were still legally real police even though their job was now to protect the company's revenue. This ended up enabling them to convict thousands of employees of theft and then railroading them through the court system after botching accounting software screwed up their books:
  https://www.bbc.com/news/business-56718036
  
  And over the 10 years since privatisation, there’s been a negative total return of 18.9%. But hey, let’s not complain too loudly: over five years, there was a negative total return of just over 51.5%.
  Yikes, that seems bad.
- Australia Post runs as a commercial business and is self funded... But it's wholly owned by the government. So it runs as a business without government assistance.
  
  From what I understand that's how USPS operates too. It generates enough revenue to be self sufficient and is not receiving any funding from the government.

28 comments