Postmaster General Patrick Donahue, in an Associated Press article about the financial disaster facing the U.S. Postal Service, stated, “We have a business model that is failing.”

The business model that characterizes the USPS, and to which the postmaster general is hopefully referring, is socialism. It is no wonder that the USPS is failing, given its isolation from market forces through its coercive monopoly status.

What Donahue should be advocating is the dismantling of this organization that represents a gross misallocation of capital directed, not by the market, but by bureaucratic fiat.

The Postal Service’s change in first-class delivery procedure — allowing longer transmit times — would, in normal circumstances, provide a market opportunity for competing firms. However, the Postal Service, again, an abnormal relic of socialism in a free enterprise system, is protected from market forces by law.

This system has distorted the market, and forbids competitors from entering the market.

On another front, state Auditor General Jack Wagner’s recent comments regarding the “profits” earned by the state’s coercive liquor monopoly reveal a complete misunderstanding of the purpose of government.

Government does not exist to make profits; its purpose is the protection of individual rights.

The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board, by contrast, violates individual rights by its very existence by prohibiting competition in this industry.

Any “profits” earned in this endeavor are ill-gotten and the result of market distortions created by this socialist scheme.