<Li> Third, there is no reason why the government monopoly is necessary to ensure service to sparsely populated areas . The government could easily award competitive contracts to private firms for that service . </Li> <Li> Fourth, early concerns that rural residents of the United States would somehow become isolated without federally subsidized mail delivery today are simply unfounded...Once both sender and receiver have access to a computer, the marginal cost of sending an electronic message is close to zero . </Li> <P> Furthermore, some economists have argued that because public enterprises may pursue objectives different than profit maximization, they might have more of an incentive than profit - maximizing firms to behave anticompetitively through policies such as predatory pricing, misstating costs, and creating barriers to entry . To resolve those issues, one economist proposes a cost - allocation model that would determine the optimal allocation of USPS's common costs by finding the share of costs that would maximize USPS profits from its competitive products . Postal regulators could use such a cost model to ensure that the Postal Service is not abusing its statutory monopoly by subsidizing price cuts in competitive product markets with revenue obtained from the monopolized market . </P> <P> The United States Postal Inspection Service (USPIS) is one of the oldest law enforcement agencies in the U.S. Founded by Benjamin Franklin, its mission is to protect the Postal Service, its employees, and its customers from crime and protect the nation's mail system from criminal misuse . </P>

Does the us post office make a profit