Business Economics for Beginners

Yes. This means you.

Canada Post is hiking its postage prices today. What does that mean for its future?

If your gut reaction is “This can’t be good for anybody” you are correct. This can’t be good for people who like mailing letters; This can’t be good for people who like receiving mailed letters; This can’t be good for letter carriers, post office clerks; This can’t be good even for the little firms that print stamps in booklets for sale at your local post office when they are not on strike.

The key text is “Canada Post has long held a monopoly on letter mail, which the Crown corporation itself said has declined by 60 per cent in the last two decades.”, and to see how ridiculous that statement is, consider my true claim: “In 2024 I produced enough Jerusalem Artichokes to satisfy the entire Bonavista Peninsula – not just the town of Bonavista (population 3,100) but the entire peninsula”

Of course you can see my tongue-in-cheek bragging here; apart from me, no one within a two-hour Air Canada flight west from here has ever eaten a Jerusalem artichoke.

Trouble is, in the text quoted above, no-one is making a cheeky tongue-in-cheek point.

I can believe that “Canada Post has … a monopoly on letter mail” and also “which … has declined by 60 per cent”.

Snap Quiz: Of what value is a monopoly on a shrinking market?

Should I put up my price of Jerusalem Artichokes, or should I drop them? And Does it matter? How is YOUR buggy-whip business doing?

Search