Snail mail is handled by one designated quasi-private firm, the USPS. Roads are often handled by contractors on a per-job basis. How would handling it like roads and USPS help?
Internet is more like water, and electric utilities than USPS. Should not have middlemen who incease fees every two years when there is no service improvement. The data these companies charge 50-100 dollars to pass on is way less than 1 cents per average customer. A utility company could easily handle the infrastructure logistics, hiring of workers totalling a bill of 10-30 dollars?
There's a significant difference, and that is that water and electricity can be meaningfully metered by volume, but Internet can't; that is to say, there is little to no meaningful marginal cost to your ISP for delivering 1GB of data vs 10GB. Bandwidth does have a marginal cost, but by and large data doesn't (yes, peering arrangements, it's more complicated, etc).
I prefer USPS now. I order a lot from California, and it's to me in Ohio in two business days generally. That's with Priority Mail, which is similar to UPS and FedEx Ground. Both of those are 4-5 business days.
I thought OnTrac was bad, but then Amazon somehow figured out how to provide even worse service.
It was easy to pick on the USPS when people could only compare them to UPS or FedEx. But these days complaints about the USPS fall flat as its more obvious how much value they provide. I'll happily keep shoveling junkmail into the recycle bin if that's the cost of Priority Mail.
I was referring to the fact that you might get arrested for taking photos of "critical infrastructure" like bridges and we have federal agents and laws to make sure the mail is safe and available to people in the most remote places. Internet? Mess it up all you want!
