Defending the USPS

Amanda has a good post in defense of the Post Office, in response to some typically banal lukewarm libertarian cant spewed up by Myglesias. Nothing gets my goat like USPS-bashing, which so often amounts to "nobody goes to the post office anymore, it's too crowded."

I'd only add that not only does the USPS make urban areas more walkable, it makes rural areas practical places to live at all: without the postal service as competition, it's doubtful private carriers would pick up from or deliver to remote parts of the country at any kind of affordable rate.