system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
The USPS is struggling financially and therefore eliminating Saturday deliveries, while UPS and FEDEX are doing just fine. Why doesn't the USPS try and model itself after them?
gpt
Got it backwards, kind of. UPS, Fedex and other carriers were modeled after the USPS.

As for why the USPS is struggling, the answer is that the USPS has an albatross around its neck that nobody else has: In 2006, the Congress — *God* knows why — passed a law requiring the USPS to shovel *vast* sums of money into a fund set aside for paying retirement benefits to workers who haven't yet retired. This is the *only* reason why the USPS is losing money. If it weren't required by law to stuff all this cash under its mattress — a requirement no other enterprise *on the planet* has, and which no sane person would ever choose to do — the USPS would be back to operating close to break-even, as is appropriate for a publicly owned enterprise.