Let s go back to the previous slide section 601 of current law. I want to give you a moment to read it again. Over the years, there have been work share developments in mail processing and in mail transportation. Mail delivery, an area where fixed costs are growing as a million or so new delivery points are added every year, has seen little innovation no sharing of work and related savings with mailers. But look again, the prohibition on you, the mailer, placing something in a mailbox is premised on the intent to avoid payment of lawful postage.
Lawful postage is, of course, any rate that is established pursuant to the existing law.
The Service could then request a lawful rate for delivery of letters by private carrier which covered say, for the sake of discussion, the institutional cost contribution the piece would have otherwise made and maybe a little bit more to cover the administrative cost of licensing alternative deliverers. I know that, given the resistance in many quarters to opening the mailbox, this idea may seem to bust through the edge of the envelope. It may even run counter to concepts associated with economies of scale. However, it is an idea whose time may come, if ever the Service is faced with the need to better control deliver costs in the face of declining volume. It is an idea that might have given a shot in the arm to the alternate magazine delivery effort of several years ago.