Hudgins Holds Conference on Postal Privatization

Among his many other accomplishments, TOC's Washington director, Edward Hudgins, has produced the books The Last Monopoly: Privatizing the Postal Service for the Information Age and Mail [at] the Millennium: Will the Postal Service Go Private? Thus, when a presidential commission on the postal system issued its report late last summer, Hudgins put on a half-day conference at the Cato Institute: "The Future of the Postal Service." Dennis Shea, the commission's executive director, kicked off the event by discussing the commission's findings. Next, Rutgers professor Michael Crew, PostalWatch president Rick Merrit, and Progressive Policy Institute scholar Shane Ham critiqued the report. Crew thought reforms should go further, and Merritt pointed out that the institutional problems of this government monopoly make it difficult to be certain it is serving customer needs. Murray Martin, executive vice president of Pitney Bowes, provided a business perspective, while international postal expert James Campbell, Shelley Dreifuss of the Postal Rate Commission, and Phillip Tabbita of the American Postal Workers Union offered their views as well. Roger Kodat, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for government financial policy discussed the administration's plans to follow up on the presidential commission's report.

Hudgins observed that the Postal Service not only continues to lose money and often uses its regulatory powers against its competitors but does not even meet the needs of many customers. Consequently, it has had to contract with Federal Express to carry its overnight mail. Although Hudgins applauds the Postal Service's for producing a stamp to honor Ayn Rand, he notes that Rand opposed all government-supported monopolies. True economic and political wisdom, he believes, would mean a private Postal Service that competes without monopoly protection with other private companies.

On Other Fronts

Autumn was a time of conferences for The Objectivist Center. On October 6, David Kelley delivered a lecture on the role of art in human life at the inaugural conference of Michael Newberry's Foundation for the Advancement of Art. (A complete report appeared in the November Logbook.) On November 1, TOC held a conference of its own, "A Meeting of Minds," which is described above. And on November 13, the center put on a policy forum in Washington, D.C., where the topic under debate was: Islam in America and American Values: Are They Compatible?" A report on that event will appear in the next issue of Logbook.
In addition, TOC's Washington office director, Ed Hudgins, wrote a Report from the Front entitled "Racist Cookies, Colleges, and Quarterbacks," which described the howls of execration provoked when some conservatives held a bake sale—with affirmative-action prices. TOC executive director David Kelley also wrote a Report from the Front: "The Witless Battle over General Boykin." In it, he observed how the debate divided liberals who deplored the evangelical general's lack of "tolerance" for his enemies' beliefs and conservatives who defended his Christian worldview. What neither side was willing to defend, Kelley noted, was objective truth and rational certainty—epistemological hallmarks of our country's founding culture.