Conversely, I wonder how many churches will be able to send out weekly fliers, how many small businesses will be able to send out advertisements, or how many federal services will be able to send out notices to everyone in America?
Like I said. Junk mail.
Look, Gas... prices don't drop over night and no private business is going to be able to match the infrastructure the USPS already has in place for many, many years. The USPS DOES have some serious financial issues but it's still the best option we have unless a competitor has several hundred billion dollars to dump into putting post offices around the world like the USPS already has.
Oh, you're correct in that the infrastructure isn't there currently and would take years to ramp up, but consider this story -
In houston, there was (for a brief amount of time) a man who supported himself by setting up a messenger service between the major hospitals of the area and other buildings in the Texas Medical Center. It was one man and his car, ferrying envelopes and boxes between the hospitals with several stops at each building each day. He charged a flat fee per building which worked out to be less per parcel than the post office, and most often you'd get same-day delivery of whatever you had him sent. It was a massively convenient and economical arrangement for the hospitals and the man was able to support himself doing it. He provided a service which earned him a sustainable profit.
Until one day, when one of the hospitals decided that he should give them free service. When the man refused, they reported him to federal authorities, who shut him down because they ruled him to be operating in competition with the post office.
This happened in the late 1980s.
Imagine if the federally enforced monopoly on letter and package delivery had not been in effect for the last 30 years. Would the postal service be any worse off, really? Would entrepreneurs like the gentleman described, over the course of decades, been able to put their profits toward expanding and growing their businesses and perhaps starting to create their own infrastructure?
Saying that only the USPS has the infrastructure for nationwide delivery NOW is a justification for their continued monopoly, or as proof that private business could never compete, is completely fallacious. Given the same (or even lesser but still reasonable) ramp-up period, private industry could indeed come to surpass and replace the USPS. But we're chained to our bloated, bureaucratic inefficient nightmare because that's what government does - it gets control of something, preferably something that controls some aspect of your life, and then it never lets go. It gets bigger and more invasive until the whole thing eventually just collapses.
So. Don't you look forward to the day when your health care is on par with the level of service you receive from the post office, a public school, the department of motor vehicles, the Transportation Safety Administration?