Eleutherian

I was at the US Postal Service website (www.usps.com) the other day when I realized - the address is www.usps.com. Wouldn't it be more accurate if the address was www.usps.gov? After all, the US Postal Service is a government-run monopoly (and not a "natural" monopoly, either).

However, the US Postal Service also owns the .gov domain (www.usps.gov - opens in a new tab/window). Perhaps a more suitable domain would be www.usps.monopoly.gov.

The European Union has plans to privatize the postal services of its member countries in the next two years. When will America try to catch-up? I'll have more on privatizing the US postal service in a later post.

Beginning September 13, homeless residents of Utrecht, Netherlands (a beautiful city, in my humble, world-traveling opinion) will become official tour guides of the city. While the homeless residents are licensed by the city (and therefore, not completely a private market solution), I still love this innovative idea.

The nonprofit organization, Altrecht, developed the program with the city of Utrecht. Simone Lensink, a spokeswoman for the organization, described the program:

The idea is for people to rediscover the town and in particular those areas where their guides used to sleep or do drugs. This is a small part of the history of Utrecht.

These are people with a unique background. They had to learn to be social and to be able to tell their story in an interesting and coherent manner

Altrecht recognized that a market existed for "underground" tours of Utrecht. I am sure demand exists in other cities around the world, too. Customers can learn a new side of the cities they visit (or where they already live), and the city's homeless men and women can earn money for performing a real service - not a government handout or fake make-work job.

The AP reported today that the federal government will seize six state parks from California if they continue with the governor's plan to close 220 state parks. With several states threatening to close their parks, it makes me think: Why don't states just privatize their parks?

Here are excerpts from two blogs on state park privatization in Pennsylvania that I posted previously at the Commonwealth Foundation's PolicyBlog:

[PA] SB 850 will reduce funding for state parks by only 17 percent from 2008-09 and only 14 percent from the governor’s proposed budget. However, despite this relatively small reduction, John Quigley, acting secretary of the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (DCNR), continues to proclaim that up to 40 state parks will have to close due to lack of funding. That amounts to 34 percent of named state parks.

How does a 17 percent cut in funding close 34 percent of the state’s named parks?

And,

Pennsylvania should consider privatization of state parks. Similar proposals exist in Michigan and Washington State. Pennsylvania currently maintains and operates 117 parks across the state. Not only will privatization reduce taxpayer spending, but privatizing Pennsylvania’s state parks will provide a windfall profit from their lease or sale. The local communities will also benefit from property taxes on the newly privatized land.

Patrick Henderson, director of the Senate Environmental Resources and Energy Committee, has also proposed increasing the amount of state park land open for natural gas drilling. In 2008, Pennsylvania received $190 million in leasing fees on 74,000 acres of state land.