Does distance pricing of mail make sense?

Berkeley CA

Description

No, it does NOT make sense to charge for mail by the mile. Consider this: If the price of a letter is 50 cents, then, since that is the average over the entire country, a stamp should cost 1 cent if it goes the shortest distance, $1.00 if it goes the farthest. So the difference between the average and what you would pay under distance pricing is never more than 50 cents. Therefore, it's not worth the administrative cost to switch to distance pricing. What are you going to do, issue stamps worth a whole bunch of different prices? Are you going to program postage meters for a whole bunch of different zones? That's what I mean when I say the administrative costs are prohibitive. The idea is a nonstarter for letters. It's different for packages because there you're talking about differences of dollars, not cents. So let's confine distance pricing to package shipping, where it belongs, and refrain from altering the way letter mail is priced.