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COMMENTARY
June 18, 2011
Supply & demand
Does Canada still need a postal service? The question is being asked aloud by many of Canada Post's erstwhile customers, now hastening to transfer their billings to electronic means, their parcel delivery to private couriers, and their "direct mail" (flyers) to direct arrangements.The old Post Office Department -itself the Dominion successor to Canadian mail delivery arrangements dating back to the 17th century -was effectively destroyed by strikes and related labour dysfunctions through the 1970s, long before the Internet began to deliver the coup de grace. The Crown corporation that resulted was the politicians' way of washing their hands not only of what voters perceived as a tar baby, but also of huge annual losses that were piling on the rest of the national debt, in the glory days of Trudeaumania. Canada is not special, in this regard, and post offices throughout the western world have taken a beating. In most European countries, judging by the stamps, or more precisely by the prices on the stamps, the mail is now a specialty service for the delivery of precious objects. And it would seem that the stamps themselves are designed to sell as much to philatelic speculators as to people who'd like to stick one on a letter. Perhaps I am naive; but in that case, surely not as naive as the president of the United States, who has been roundly mocked this week for his own musings on how things work. He made some remarks about ATMs and airport ticket kiosks killing jobs, that made a lot of people start wondering again where on Earth he was born. His Republican opponents have entertained with supplementary questions such as: "And how about those Slurpee machines?" Like most people who do not understand the first thing about economics, poor President Obama finds cause and effect, but reads them backwards. Machines are introduced into the economy because they will pay; they do not pay because they are introduced into the economy. And alas, it is the same with workers. Technology is easy to blame; yet the single most powerful force advancing technology, or mechanization, is workers pricing themselves out of the market. This has been true since the Industrial Revolution, and was its least-examined cause. The problem wasn't solved by the rise of Marxism. Certain jobs do not pay well, never did pay well, and are never going to pay well. Attempts to ratchet up the wages by some sort of "collective" bargaining may work for a while. But they will only work until someone invents a machine. Or finds a way to transfer operations to eager workers in the Third World. Or some combination of the same. One of the great myths, inculcated by the "progressive" types through public education, is that capitalism is an ideology. But so far as it consists of supply and demand, it is not an ideology, but a hard fact of nature. We'd rather sell stuff for more. We'd rather buy stuff for less. Differences can be resolved through bargaining. The myth is that when governments, cartels, unions, or other large agencies intervene in the bargaining, to force a result, the fact of supply and demand goes away. But no. It becomes progressively coiled and twisted under this artificial pressure, until the tension becomes insupportable. And then it is suddenly resolved. Nature bites back. The participants seldom see it coming. They've got away with pushing it so far, why not just a little farther? Because: Prang! Now, a Crown corporation is a funny thing. It is a political invention, designed to protect politicians, who sort of know that the prang is coming, from taking responsibility for it. We get a strange hybrid organization, halfway between a business enterprise and a government department, partially protected from those nasty market forces by compounding regulations. If the thing is done cleverly enough, the prang can be delayed until the next political generation. And here we are, in the next generation, 30 years after Canada Post became neither fish nor fowl, but a Crown corporation. A merciful government would not hasten to pass back-to-work legislation. It would instead let nature take its course. I am against euthanasia for human persons, but generally in favour when corporate persons have outlived their usefulness. The one argument remaining for the postal service is, delivery of mail at a standard rate to remote locations. In Canadian law, this is recognized as a "right." A right probably obviated by e-mail. Still, why don't we put Canada Post in a fire sale, rescind all the protective regulations, and recreate instead a sweet little boutique Post Office Department, for tradition's sake, with pretty stamps and all, and handsomely uniformed couriers, that delivers old-fashioned letters and parcels to places like Ellesmere Island, elegant things like wedding invitations, and packages from the CNIB? And leave taxpayers to subsidize just that? David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
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