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Matt Paxton
I think about the pull between short-term and long-term rewards fairly often, and I’ve written about the ill effects of the quest for short-term gain over long-term sustainability in our newspaper industry. I see this phenomenon playing out more often, it seems, and over a variety of issues.
One that regular readers know that I opine on frequently is the U.S. Postal Service. The current Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, believes that he has only two missions, in his own words – to deliver the mail to every home and business in America, and to make the USPS pay for itself. Both of these are important to the survival of the service. But, Mr. DeJoy’s plan, the Deliver For America plan, favors the Postal Service’s package delivery service over the legacy services, which are the ones over which the Postal Service has a monopoly. These are First Class mail, magazines, newspapers and marketing mail. Rates on these delivery services are going up now twice a year, and 2023 will surely see a double-digit annual percentage increase in delivery cost to mailers.
This may not be a perfect example of short versus long-term thinking, but I believe that drastically raising rates for the captive side of the USPS customer base in the short run will drive a lot of business to other delivery methods, particularly digital.
Ultimately, less traditional mail in the UPSP system makes the unit cost of delivering packages more expensive, because one factor in calculating cost is the concept of density. Density to the Postal Service is defined as the average number of mail pieces being delivered to each delivery point daily. As that goes down, the cost per piece goes up.
I freely admit, I wouldn’t want the Postmaster General’s job. Keeping mailers, postal employees and the public all satisfied is well-nigh impossible. But I think he’s off track with this plan.
Another area I’ve been thinking about is climate change and our response to it. I just don’t think there’s any question that the climate is changing. Repeated record years for heat and increasing extreme weather events validate the predictions of climate scientists made over the past decades. I’m no expert, but I believe what scientists say about the link to an increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a major cause of climate change. I’m convinced that the evidence shows that this is manmade and not simply a natural cyclical phenomenon.
What I don’t get is the short-term thinking that it’s too expensive and disruptive to do anything meaningful about it. Sure, addressing climate change is going to be both. I equate this debate with child rearing. Both are expensive and disruptive, but very necessary. Like so many areas of public policy, spending the time and money now, as much as it will be, will likely pale in comparison to what has to be paid in the future in terms of disaster relief, infrastructure in coastal areas, agricultural disruption and the possibility of conflict over migration from parts of the globe most affected by the increase in average temperature.
It’s like the man said, “you can pay me now, or pay me later.” Unfortunately, there are too many that are satisfied with kicking the can down the road for future leaders and generations.
I’m as guilty as the next person for not wanting to have to change my comfortable lifestyle, or pay more goods and services to help offset the impacts of carbon. But, I’m trying to look at it like I did when I set up college savings accounts for my kids. It came out of my budget for years, but when the time came for them to go to college, it made a huge difference.
It’s certainly easier and more politically expedient to tell people that dealing with climate change is too expensive, but ultimately, that’s just not responsible. Americans are a resilient and resourceful people. We will, and in fact, are figuring out how to cope with climate change. The question is will we be able to do enough, and in time to slow the rate of change and avoid more serious disruption to the planet.
That takes long-term thinking. I hope we have enough of that to make a difference.
