WALTER RUSSELL MEAD ON THE POSTAL SERVICE’S ENDGAME: Snail Mail Spam Subsidies Stuttering Towards A Stop. “The USPS is one of the great surviving examples of the blue social model and, not surprisingly, it is going down the tubes. Technological change has made its original mission of delivering vital information and private correspondence obsolete. Judging by what comes in through the mail slot at the stately Mead manor these days, the primary job of the postal service appears to be the delivery of the snail mail equivalent of spam. . . . In any case, to look at the USPS is to see why enterprises built in the blue model heyday are falling apart. The special relationship with the government used to be a strength; now it is mostly a weakness: irrational congressional mandates and regulations tie it down in red tape. The large, unionized workforce used to provide job security to workers and a stable team of well trained and reliable workers for managers. These days, the workers don’t get security, and union rules accelerate the rate at which the whole enterprise is falling apart.”