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clickety_clacktoday at 3:53 AM1 replyview on HN

I think the question is whether a competitor can become established. Can you run a mail delivery service if you only have local coverage? I don’t know. In the past, maybe you could use the national postal service to fill in the gaps as you scale up a delivery network, but I can’t see the established monopoly giving bulk discounts to a potential competitor. Trucks, vans, sorting facilities and workforces are very expensive to set up, and once they’re set up you can basically optimize them month by month etc. A new competitor has to speculatively spend an awful lot of money before they can deploy anything in any optimal way.


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toast0today at 5:40 AM

Parcel delivery is clearly not a natural monopoly; there are several carriers, including some that only have a limited footprint. I don't see why you couldn't expand from parcels to letters; although economics would probably be tough.

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