azza1625/createdebate-arguments huggingface dataset:
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

The public sector is not better than anything. Government is inefficient. If economists could figure out a way to privatize the military, it would be done.The Post Office is more about inefficiency than effectiveness because given the right tools, the private sector can just be as effective and certainly more efficient.Since the 1970's, the Postal Service was no longer supported by tax money; instead, the Service is required to rely on itself to generate revenue.Even through $5 billion in cuts, the Postal Service will still fall $2 billion short of operating in the black in 2010. In order to make the cuts, the Postal Service has cut some 40,000 jobs.The biggest concern with the Postal Service is the public monopoly, which does not allow for competitive forces to eliminate inefficiencies. The postal service is a textbook example of a monopoly because of a lack of competitive pressures. It faces little incentive to minimize costs and thus continues to operate at inefficient levels. Government laws prevent benefits of competition that challenges the postal system's monopoly.Resources need to be reallocated more efficiently.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

The public sector is not better than anything. Government is inefficient. If economists could figure out a way to privatize the military, it would be done. Congratulations, you made an argument and proved it was wrong all in a single opening statement!Guess WHY people "can't figure out" how to privatize the military and actually make it work? And the post office doesn't operate in the black because it keeps prices very very low to give the US citizenry a cheap way to send mail because THAT'S IMPORTANT TO THE COUNTRY. Ever wonder why the founding fathers put it right in the Constitution? It wasn't just because they had some kind of personal fetish for postmen and thought it would be cool.If you privatize the system costs WILL rise. Let's say the population of the United states is 100,000 people.Now, let's also say those 100,000 people all, on average, send 1 letter per year. So the USPS hires enough people to cover the ENTIRE country and get letters between all those people to all the places they live and pays their salaries with the postage they charge on 100,000 letters. Now, let's privatize the system. We still have a population of 100,000, and they're still spread over the same geographic area, but now we have two competing companies that need to deliver mail. Let's say they compete really well and end up splitting the customer base evenly, so each ends up with 50,000 customers.Now, instead of delivering 100,000 letters each they both end up delivering 50,000 a year. Which means they're only getting paid for 50,000 a year. But do they get to cut their work force in half? NO. Because the size of the workforce you need isn't primarily a function of how MANY letters are being sent, it's largely a function of how many PLACES they're being sent. And that didn't change! Oh, you'll be able to cut your staff a little, fewer people at the central sorting facilities and such, but not in half. Not even freaking close. So how do you pay them?You RAISE PRICES. There's no other choice. And in the meantime the other company you're competing with is just doubling up on all your delivery resources so they can deliver to the same places you are where before a single delivery organization was handling everything. Which is wasting MASSIVE amounts of money.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

Comments:1) "Ever wonder why the founding fathers put it right in the Constitution?...If you privatize the system costs WILL rise."2) "in the meantime the other company you're competing with is just doubling up on all your delivery resources so they can deliver to the same places you are where before a single delivery organization was handling everything. Which is wasting MASSIVE amounts of money."Responses:1) The Articles of Confederation (which fed the concepts for the Constitution) stated "The United States in Congress assembled shall also have the sole and exclusive right and power of … establishing or regulating post offices from one State to another, throughout all the United States, and exacting such postage on the papers passing through the same as may be requisite to defray the expenses of the said office…". The Constitution says "Congress shall have the power...to establish post offices and post roads." Jefferson argued that the responsibility of establishing roads should be a State's responsibility and foresaw that a federal system would become a waste of money. Another thing to think about is the fact that the original postal system was from post office to post office, not house to house like it is now. It wasn't until 1863 that the post was delivered to homes as part of "Free City Delivery". Then, it wasn't until 1890 that "Rural Free Delivery" became an option.2) I'd have to disagree with your premise. Even now, location and size determine the shipping cost of your UPS or FedEx packages. I don't think that would change. Some people would continue to pay lower costs for locations close to sorting centers. Some would pay more for locations furthest from sorting centers. Privatized companies operate on margins. Each industry has an acceptable margin of operation. If a company operates outside of those margins they tend to fail. Either they lose money because they are operating at too small of margins, or they lose money because they operate to far above the margin and competitors are operating within the margins. I would be more inclined to believe that if UPS and FedEx competed on standard mail, we would pay less for letters to certain recipients and more for others compared to current prices. I would also be more inclined to believe that either rural recipients would be required to travel to retrieve mail or the private companies would divide the destinations. Bottom line, USPS is not only wasting postage fees, but also taxpayer's money. What is worse, requiring that a few voluntarily pay more for postage or mandate that everyone pay a little (via taxes)? USPS costs the average resident $235 per year to operate. I definitely don't get that much service out of it, so I am helping to pay for the rural recipients, which sounds too much like Socialism for my liking.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

Bottom line, USPS is not only wasting postage fees...  What a fascinating claim. Let's see if you have any clue what it means shall we.I just checked the rates on sending a 5lb package to New Jersey from my place.Fedex is going to charge me $42 to get it there the day after tomorrow.UPS is going to charge me $41.USPS is going to charge me $15Now, how about you tell me what part of that $15 they're wasting, how they're wasting it, and how privatizing the system and letting Fed-ex and UPS (those guys charging me three times more to deliver the same damn package to the same damn place) take everything over is going to eliminate that waste? Please, feel free to be detailed. ...but also taxpayer's money... ...USPS costs the average resident $235 per year to operate... First, want to explain where you got that figure from?Second, how much do you PERSONALLY use, say, the military in a given year? I'll just let you think through what my point is and see if you can get it, with one parting hint. We establish national services because they have benefits to the nation.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

Why another meaningless insult trying to dumb others down by rising you up? WOW, pathetic!!What don't you understand about what a public or coercive monopoly means?It means that the government makes laws and regulations in favor of the USPS so that FEDEX or UPS can't compete, so they have to charge higher prices because of the unfair practices. Why can't you admit that USPS has a competitive advantage?
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

Why don't you ever respond to the actual substantive content of my posts?If you feel like responding to my post, aswer the damn question in it. HOW is Fed-Ex or UPS going to improve on that freaking $15 charge for that package? With details. Don't just declare "they just will because private is better than public!" because that is not true for all circumstances.Starting with, how are they going to establish a less expensive distribution network on a per customer basis when they're only able to rely on a fraction of the population for service fees to support it but the fixed costs of maintaining such a network are a huge percentage of their total operating costs? Tell me HOW. Stop just ranting on about "Oh, woe is us... monololy... wasteful government!!!" and make your argument.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

Where are your details on why public is better than private? Instead of pseudo example dealing with the customer base with the meaningless math, which didn't prove anything. Every industry has to deal with customer base. Giving 100% to one company doesn't prove anything, except a monopoly.In terms of fixed costs, what company or government agency are costs not a huge percentage of their operating costs contributed to salaries? 70-80% of operating costs are salary related. That is irrelevant. Variable Costs are the determining factor of the efficiency of a company or government agency.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

That is not a "pseudo example". That is a description of reality. Every industry has to deal with customer base. Giving 100% to one company doesn't prove anything, except a monopoly. For cripes sake... yes, every industry has to deal with customer base. NOT every industry has such a massive percentage of their operating costs as fixed infrastructure requirements for providing their service that cannot be scaled to the number of customers they have. In terms of fixed costs, what company or government agency are costs not a huge percentage of their operating costs contributed to salaries? 70-80% of operating costs are salary related.  Yes, salaries are a big factor in operating costs... but I said FIXED costs. In most other industries the number of people you need to be employing is far more directly correlated with the number of freaking customers you have instead of the amount of ground you have to cover. They're not a FIXED cost.If you are, let's say, selling clothing and you lose half your customers you can probably lay off pretty close to half your people and close stores so your operating costs scale appropriately and you can stay afloat. It won't be fully half your people, but it'll be some reasonably scalable percentage.If you are delivering mail across the nation and you lose half your cusomers... what? What do you do?You can scale some, sure. Your sorting centers will need less people so you can lose a few people there. But you still need the sorting centers. You can't just go closing the things willy nilly because business fell off, they're not there because of how much mail goes through them, they're there because you need a local distribution point.And you have to pay for it.Only you just lost half your revenue. So can you still charge your remaining customers the same amount you were charging them before and still keep everything running? Can you? If so... explain HOW.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

You obviously have no idea what fixed costs are. fixed costs are business expenses that are not dependent on the activities of the business. They are time-related, such as salaries or rents being paid per month or electricity bill.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

You obviously have no idea what fixed costs are. Fixed costs are business expenses that are not dependent on the activities of the business No kidding. REALLY? Like... oh... delivery system infrastructure that must be maintained regardless of how many people are currently using you to send their mail for example?Like that?What the hell do you think I was just talking about?
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

A government monopoly is a form of coercive monopoly in which a government agency or government corporation is the sole provider of a particular good or service and competition is prohibited by law.Laws prevent competition.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

If the single privatization contract (not multiple) was written to mandate universal delivery, no one would lose service, and I think you'll find that he winner of the contract will use all available means of complying with "universal delivery", even if means subcontracting back to someone else. That's part of the beauty of private enterprise, there no rules prohibiting HOW "universal service" must be performed. I believe that the USPS should be reformed into a Contracting and Oversight business, where their only function is to write ,award, and oversee/evaluate completion of that service.Also, the USPS business model is outdated, like the contested closing of the Berkley, CA post office. Better to sell those beautiful bldgs for cash and move-into supermarkets, and other places where people naturally congregate in the course of their daily lives.Cost for private service will not go up, as rates of FedEx and UPS are both cheaper than USPS.So, there are NOT two companies involved in officially delivering mail, unless someone finds another party cheaper than the winning bidder.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

To the contrary, it was a statement about the potential efficacy of a privatized military since government military is inefficient. The only reason it is not privatized because of the financing situation. It is hard to quantify the correct amount to charge for defense.Not only does the postal service public monopoly create inefficiencies, but it actually reinforces them. The postal system is pressured to preserve jobs, for example, and so it has an incentive not to take advantage of faster, more efficient technologies to transport mail.Many believe that postal service experiences a profit loss from rural routes because carriers deliver smaller volumes of mail to a more dispersed population. However, the postal service reduces delivery costs for rural communities by delivering mail to a central pick-up location instead of providing door-to-door service. The result is that rural routes are no more costly than any other route. [1]This type of regional mail and central pick up location would work just the same for private companies.So, the number of places is as important as expected.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

To the contrary, it was a statement about the potential efficacy of a privatized military since government military is inefficient. The only reason it is not privatized because of the financing situation. It is hard to quantify the correct amount to charge for defense. Hey look, you did it again! You made an argument, then proved it wrong all by yourself in the very next sentence. You're getting good at that. It's almost like I don't even have to show up.And "faster, more efficient technologies to transport mail"??? Beyond the automobiles and aircraft they already use you mean? Like what? Hyperspace travel? What the heck are you even talking about? And if you think the only problem with the illustration I just laid out for you of what happens when you try to privatize mail delivery as clearly as I could manage was the existence of "rural routes" you're never going to understand this. It's the division of customer base while still having to replicate entire delivery systems redundantly to service the same areas a single system was capable of servicing before you started your brilliant "let's let competition magically make things better" project. There are some things competition does NOT make better. This is one of them.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

You made an argument, then proved it wrong all by yourself in the very next sentence.Your tactics of trying to dumb me down isn't going to make you any smarter. I didn't prove myself wrong.You are just mad that I would like to see the military privatized. The sentence doesn't contradict. There already privatized military sectors in the United States such as Blackwater.Where is your evidence that the real evidence of privatizing the postal service is the division of customer base while still having to replicate entire delivery systems redundantly to service the same areas a single system was capable of servicing instead of pulling it out of your ass.So, if the Postal Service is so efficient and effective, why has the rates of gone up since the 1970's? Well, only when they need money. They raise the price of stamps. Since 1975, there has been 18 hikes in the price of a stamp. 1975-10 cents to 2009-44 cents. [1]
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

I didn't prove myself wrong.  You have now twice declared that the only reason something you say would work better isn't being done is because you (or anyone else) can't figure out how to make it work better. What do you think you're accomplishing?And your big argument that the postal service is inefficient is that it no longer costs 10 cents to send a letter like it did 35 years ago? It no longer costs $2 to go to the movies like it did 35 years ago either, does that mean the free market entertainment industry is also inefficient? Or does it maybe mean you either don't know how inflation works or are pretending you don't and hoping I somehow fail to notice?
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

By the way, I am quite aware of inflation. It is only created by your best friend, the government. How? Well, they print or ledger too much money into the economy.Next, where is your evidence that the real evidence of privatizing the postal service is the division of customer base while still having to replicate entire delivery systems redundantly to service the same areas a single system was capable of servicing.I am still waiting on this response by the way.How are the operational costs of a government postal service any different than a private postal service? FYI, you are aware that the Postal Service does not receive any more taxpayer monetary support from the Treasury since 1971; instead, the Service is required to rely on itself to generate revenue.There is no excuse to operate at a loss. So, it is run just like any other business except it has one huge and that is provided by Uncle Sam. The Federal Government has interpreted this clause as granting a de facto Congressional monopoly over the delivery of mail.The biggest difference between the government and private postal service when the Postal Service is low on cash, well, to be fair, private companies do get bailouts, yet they continue to borrow money from the Fed upwards of $10 billion, but when the borrowing gets high, well, they just raise rates.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

Next, where is your evidence that  "the real evidence of privatizing the postal service is the division of customer base while still having to replicate entire delivery systems redundantly to service the same areas a single system was capable of servicing." I am still waiting on this response by the way.Waiting on evidence of  what ? That delivery companies need delivery systems to deliver things? What are you talking about?And the excuse for operating at a loss is that the postal system ISN'T A BUSINESS. It's a SERVICE. The government is investing money in providing that service because it is worth it to the country to have it. Yes, it charges some user small fees to offset the cost so it doesn't have to be 100% tax supported, but it's not intended to turn a profit. That isn't the point. At BEST it should break even. It's intended to provide the large scale national infrastructure required to allow lots and lots of OTHER businesses to turn a profit because they all have access to this cheap system of mail delivery. If you run it like a business you're defeating the point of having a national postal service.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: YES, Stop the Monopoly

The division of customer base is not the sole reason to exclude private companies from entry into providing first class mail where a single entity is only capable of servicing. This is simply not true.Why? There is no justification for the Postal Service to run at a loss because it is a business and not exclusively a service such as the military or law enforcement because the definition of a business is to provide goods and services to consumers in which by generating their own revenue, and the Postal Service does it already by delivering mail. It is a independent agency or business that is state owned.The fees are a means of making a profit since they receive no tax money support as noted before; otherwise, if they didn't need to turn a profit, then it would be fair that they were subsidized by the taxpayers.Lastly, the only reason why the system is cheap for a government postal service is because of all the rules and regulations that restricts private companies and enables the Postal Service. It is already a business, and it is a public monopoly.
Debate: Should the Postal Service be opened to the privatization?
Side: NO, Great Public Service

I didn't say it was the only reason, stop setting up strawmen. It's just a BIG reason. It is impossible to set up a competitive system of private sector mail delivery that could match the performance and pricing of a single national public service. That's just a fact. They'd have to maintain similarly scaled delivery system infrastructures but they'd have to support it with only the revenues available from whatever fraction of the market they managed to secure as their customer base. That would absolutely require large scale price increases or they'd be bankrupted instantly.And you just deciding to call the postal service a business doesn't make it one. If they WERE a business there would be some rather obvious differences. First of all, you already know it enjoys a constitutionally mandated monopoly. Does ANY business that enjoys a constitutionally mandated monopoly on a highly useful service have any issues turning a profit if they want to? If the point of the postal service was to make money... which is what the point of a business is, then they would just double postage and people could pay it or not be able to send mail... just like that. They'd erase their operating losses overnight.They don't do that, because THAT'S NOT WHY THEY EXIST. They're not a business, they're a constitutionally mandated service. They don't exist to turn a profit, they exist to provide the nation with national mail delivery infrastructure.And yeah, the rules and regulations restricting competition with the postage service are indeed why it's so cheap. That's the POINT of the regulations. To allow the postal service to maintain its operations for minimal cost.