Elon Musk suggests the U.S. should privatize the Postal Service and Amtrak
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/elon-musk-suggests-us-privatize-postal-service-amtrak-rcna194960Open linkView original on lemmy.world475
Comments113https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/doge/elon-musk-suggests-us-privatize-postal-service-amtrak-rcna194960Open linkView original on lemmy.world
fuck no, nationalize spacex and starlink
Makes a whole lot more sense, honestly.
Not sure if I want Musk to have the amount of liquid cash that would be required to buy him out.
Don't buy, just seize.
he can be paid in a new crypto we made on the spot for this purpose
oh yeah, he loves crypto, I'm sure that would be a great form of payment.
The billionaires would also drop every dollar they could into opponents, misinformation, and smear campaigns
Waluigis
Exactly, we have UPS, FedEx, DHL and bunch of others.
Leave USPS the fuck alone.
They’re all shit too. Fat lot of good privatization would do. USPS was Cool and Good until DeJoy was dropped in to throw wrenches into the cogs.
UPS is actually fairly reliable. FedEx is hit and miss depending on the driver coverage area you're in, DHL and others just don't even exist.
USPS has always been great, but primarily for handling "last mile" where a lot of customers need reliable delivery of low monetary value packages like letters that UPS isn't set to handle, but carry some of the most important lifelines of information to rural and poor Americans.
UPS has always been hit or miss at best in my experience, but of the three, I’ll concede that it’s the least garbage. The other two have delivered packages to the wrong house—not as in like, “next door” wrong house, but as in “some house miles away” wrong house—or they sometimes just flat out don’t deliver a package and return it to the sender. If they do deliver a package, it’s rarely on time.
As for USPS, nowadays, my wife has tracked packages to see that they are brought to our local mail sorting facility, but then for some bizarre, inexplicable reason, they’re sent off elsewhere, even to another state, before being delivered here days later than the estimated delivery date. I have no idea what the hell is happening, but it’s insane and insanely stupid. And I know who is to blame, at least with this service anyway.
DeJoy got rid of around 1/3 of the mail sorting machines, so now they have to fake it or something. They cannot keep up with the volume of mail, is my guess.
that's their goal, crush the public service competition
This. Alternatives mean that they can hold monopoly and jackup prices on a whim.
I'd bet he wants to take over Amtrak so he can replace it with that stupid Las Vegas car tunnel.
Or replace it with nothing, because "railways and mass transit are obsolete" (translation: "they're hurting my car sales").
Everything that has been privatized, has ended up costing us more for shittier service. This will not be different.
I dare say everything should be nationalized as a civil service.
The usps is a government SERVICE. These parasites look at that and say “but nobody profits from that” and somehow they just can’t let that happen.
The thing is they did generate a profit until they were fucked with by Republicans to make them look unprofitable.
There isn't a functioning part of our government that the regressives wont destroy for private profit.
I still can't get over the idea of for profit prisons. incentivized incarceration is beyond stupid.
Except the taxpayers benefit from it, who are the ones paying for it anyway!
What Chancellor Musk means is that no oligarch is getting rich from it, so he is unable to understand its purpose.
I remember seeing an interview with Margaret Thatcher where she said that rail could never be successfully privatized. Just as a reminder of how extreme Musk’s ideas are.
Thatcher's successor, John Major, oversaw the privatisation of British railways between 1994 and 1997.
It only took 30 years for them all to completely collapse in 2024.
British Rail Service is so bloody expensive as well. Seems like you guys have these, essentially, per-track monopolies.
They more or less did that here in the Netherlands. Once the government let go, things slowly started getting worse and we're now at the point where I'd say things are expensive, occasionally sporty and suboptimal...
Japan seems to have done it, no idea what the people over there think about its service and affordability though.
Amtrak technically is privatized. That’s why it sucks so hard.
Yeah, I had no idea it wasn't private. What's the deal with that?
It was setup by the Nixon administration and that’s all you need to know
fair
More or less it was set up to be a failure from the start
I knew it was kinda of poorly designed, I remember the rails aren't smooth enough for commuter traffic but we did it anyway.
It’s fine at slower speeds but the track is so old that the trains can’t go very fast. Also, most of the track in America is owned by private freight rail companies which means AmTrack has to wait for the freight trains to go by and that increases the amount of time a train trip takes.
It also means the tracks owner has no incentive to keep things up enough to make the ride smooth or to allow fast trains. Cargo can be slow and bumpy
Passenger rail was faillling across the country. Pretty much every private rail company was going out of business.
Amtrak was the rescue plan. Sounds good right? Amtrak took ownership of a bunch of money losing routes across the US and were required to keep the nationwide service. No track (except northeast), no reliable government funding. Can’t decrease service. Can’t raise fares much. No way back to profitability.
The additional funding signed by Biden was the way back. Currently Amtrak is profitable on the Northeast Corridor only, and that funds the rest of the system. Even that has several choke points that are over 100 years old. They desperately need upgraded infrastructure in order to function. That funding also included increased service in a few places, to try to make it useful to someone. All too much of Amtrak is useless stuff like one train per day. Of course they’re not selling any tickets
There's also the very real issue of rail priority: https://www.marketplace.org/2024/09/10/amtrak-spars-with-freight-train-industry-over-rules-of-the-railroad/
They already tried this in LA with privatizing the public transportation system back in the 50’s. The big car companies bought it all and dismantled it in favor of selling their cars.
Most of Amtrak loses money except for the NE corridor. So if you privatize Amtrak it means even worse service and eventually no trains where it is not profitable.
Same with privatization of the USPS, it just means less services for a higher price until they decide to close it altogether because email will replace letters altogether. Say good by to any privacy since all email is monitored and capitalized for marketing.
Fuck fElon Muskrat.
You know who wants to replace the postal service? Amazon. They have delivery vehicles, lockers, and so on. They have been building towards it for years. I'm sure an attack on the postal service would leave Amazon on top, and I bet it's a plan in the works.
As for Amtrak, maybe musk wants to swallow it up with his boring company.
Actually they don't, they want to replace fedex and UPS.
No one wants the business of daily letter service.
What people who want to gut the postal service don’t understand is that it’s a fucking service.
The USPS does last mile delivery for all courier agencies. FedEx and UPS won’t pay a driver to deliver your dildo out to your cabin in bumfuck Nebraska, but the USPS will, along with your tax documents, bank statements, and anything else you need.
If you get rid of USPS, you’re cutting anyone who isn’t in a major city off from not only packages, but critical documents.
It is insane to me when people complain about the failure of a public service to turn a profit as if that's some kind of bad or unexpected outcome.
Services cost money to operate for the benefit of those using them. That is literally the point.
Yes, the Republican con has been to compare government to a household budget and/or corporations, and it's just so very stupid.
nah, they'd then require someone else who takes on the private company to do it, give them 10 billion dollars to ensure the infrastructure remains and the service is provided, and then they would still refuse to do it but somehow use all the money anyway.
I had to ups a document recently certified delivery but the company i was doing business with refuses to receive usps mail. It cost me $50 to send a fucking letter. I was so pissed.
I suggest we deport this Nazi immigrant.
I don't think any other country wants him either, except maybe Russia.
However, he IS a big space enthusiast. Maybe there should be not one, but two Teslas floating in space?
To Atlantis.
In my country since the government privatized a part of postal service, the quality of service heavily declined to the point that now is almost guaranteed that they will "lose" your letter if you send it in a place that will cost too much to deliver
Same.
this is almost what has been happening in my country.
What a surprise given the fuckery he pulled with Hyperloop and California high speed rail
Someone punch him in the face, please
I think a much smaller object with much much greater velocity it's referable.
rip rural service
Definitely, I live in a very rural area of the country I think it might be one of the most rural places in the lower 48 states. And we heavily depend on the postal service to get things that we simply don’t have here. This will totally cripple my town and 99% of the people here will blame it on woke.
They privatized the postal service in the UK.
It did not go well
And the railways.
That did not go well either.
Although I'll wager it's still more useful than the US rail system.
They want to eliminate or control the Postal Service so that they can eliminate mail-in voting. Their added bonus is padding the pockets of fellow millionaires and billionaires.
This has been a fever dream of Republicans for my entire life. Looks like they just may get it this time.
Ffs. Not everything fits cleanly into a for-profit model. Health care, postal service, and public transportation are great examples.
This is how we know that billionaires are grifters far more than they are economists.
Yeah but healthcare, mail, and transportation are things people need to survive. That's means you can jack that price up all you want and the customer can't do anything about it. Infinite money baby!
Privatize deez nutz, bitch
At this point. How could anyone care or take seriously anything Musk or Trump spits. It's all lies and bullshit.
Lies and bullshit, but with a 50% chance of happening
I mean you have to take their words seriously because they tell you what they're going to do. Or at the very least what they want to do.
As long as they pay out the full pension to all the employee's. After every postal employee's pension is fully funded.
Lol, you know they wouldn't
Of course not. Its been the dream of these scumbags for decades to get their hooks in to all that pension money and screw over the postal workers. They forget the term going postal exist for a reason.
The post office would take an act of congress.
Nah, not anymore, just an XO and the little fascists will make it happen.
Whole lotta shit happening right now that should take an act of congress. Seems to make no difference.
Both would, actually. They are independent quasi governmental corpirations.
And a constitutional amendment.
It wouldn't need a constitutional amendment. The constitution says they can, not they must, run a postal service
Step 1: Privatize and sell it for peanuts to fellow billionaires Step 2: Watch it crumble Step 3: Buy it back for a fortune from the very same people you sold it
E:English
I'm not sure they've thought past step 1 honestly.
They probably really think they can run it better.
I don't think a national railroad company can really become profitable, that's why I suspect this is done in bad faith
There’s no way national rail can be a profitable service, and certainly not without huge investments in infrastructure. It’s only the northeast corridor that’s profitable, but quite a few other places can be but only after huge infrastructure investments. Those investments are coming from a wholly private company.
Technically Amtrak already is a private company, but owned by the Department of Transportation. Those owners need to pony up for rail infrastructure the same way they’ve always ponies up for highways infrastructure.
This is exactly the shit that will give permanent erections to the cons.
And people should not call this shit "Trumpism" - this is who the Republicans are and what the Republican project has always been. They HATE the idea of a functioning society for all. Next up, we're going to hear how education should be handed over to the Devos family. You know, for "choice".
At least this one will be tougher. The postal service is in the constitution.
Who will enforce the constitution?
It might have to be you.
It isn't going to be some cosplaytriot with a flag on their F150 rocking Amazon body armor that's for sure.
Elon Musk should privatize his face
No shit, I'm so tired of seeing it
I disagree. He should make it more accessible to the public. Physically accessible.
I can get on board with this theory. They're also insanely slow and nearly as expensive as air travel. I understand some of this is due to the rail network and who owns it, but it still seems like Amtrak hasn't improved one bit since the 1950s.
Acela is not at all bad. It’s not very fast, but it has service every hour or so traveling at least as fast as a car on equipment from the 1990s.
Lots of places would benefit from modern equipment from the 1990s and regular service
I used them once to get from Tampa to Miami. It was fine. We got there over an hour late. I wouldn't really want to take a longer trip.
You aren’t wrong, BUT Amtrak does a decent job maintaining their trains and service despite the odds.
Amtrak recently received a huge infusion of funding under biden so of course trump wants to kill it.
The conspiracy theory isn't that the automotive industry makes them look bad, it's the rail owners.
Real: Amtrak doesn't own any rails, they lease them and legally are supposed to have right of way on tracks unless the owner/operators of the rail currently have their own train that's too big for the bypasses.
Conspiracy: Rail owners make Amtrak experience so painful that it drives down usage so Amtrak runs fewer and fewer trains, so they can be less of a nuisance to them or outright get rid of the service line and they get to completely ignore Amtrak
How bout we increase funding to those things instead. No one should be competing with either of those services.
No one asked you, prickasaurus rex. Go back to your hovel and tweet angrily at the news like a good boy
It's time to strike some fear in Elon's heart. He's fucking around, he's going to find out.
He doesn't understand the second 'S' in USPS. Stable genius.
try it. no one will use it then.
AmTrak is a hill I am willing to die for on.
Nationalize Amazon.
Don't you DARE touch my trains.
"Did somebody touch my
boatstrains? WHO TOUCHED MYBOATSTRAINS?!"Vital US services shouldn't be privatized! You remember when firefighting companies extorted people to put out fires? If you didn't have their symbol out front or weren't current on your payments, they would just watch your home burn down...
Sounds like “somebody” is about to launch Xmail and AmtraX, coincidentally of course
He'll find those already government run in Russia. Perhaps he should consider relocating to that shithole and leave the United States the fuck alone.
tl;Dr fuck off and eat shit, idiot
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Amtrak is private, though. It's publicly subsidized, but it's not a government agency AFAIK. Same for the post office. Part of the problem with Amtrak, though, is that the state of passenger rail in the US is still down in the septic tank, largely due to almost 100 years of government subsidized car-centric development and heavily subsidized air transit development. You'd have a very hard time attracting private investors interested in a conventional passenger rail mass transit scheme, I think.
Also, everybody benefits, even this fucking douche, when public transit is high quality and affordable. Even if a private company did offer high quality, affordable mass transit, the insatiable drive for ever increasing profits will eventually cause them to enshittify one or both and put us right back here. This is really just another attempt to transfer public wealth into private portfolios, though it's a little more of a joke compared to privatization efforts in Europe because we basically haven't been investing at all in public transit for the last fifty years
USPS is not publicly subsidized. All of their operating costs come from the services they sell.
It's quasi-public, which is weird. It is subsidized, but just barely (they have like 95% farebox recovery), so i don't think it's even responsible to call it subsidized like road and air travel.
I bet if there was enforcement of train priority laws, they could even be a revenue generator. Philosophically, I dont think they should be, though.
Edit: lmao, at those rates, Amtrak is less publicly subsidized than a lot of fortune 500s
I'd be cool with Amtrak turning profit as long as the revenue was always re-invested into better train sets, better routes, more frequent service, cheaper tickets, employee pay and benefits, etc etc, and never just routed to rich fucking assholes who already have more than they know what to do with.
They really can’t. They inherited hundred year old falling apart infrastructure that is one of the things keeping them from providing good service. There’s no way to make enough profit to rebuild all that infrastructure enough to become profitable on most routes in the first place. They are literally slower in places than they were almost 100 years ago
If they are re-investing revenue, it's not profit. I would want them to be able to expand, pay employees better, etc. What I wouldn't want is for them to make money and just pay dividends to shareholders.
we already have FedEx for that.