A Blue-Sky Idea For the USPS — Postal Trucks As Sensors

An anonymous reader writes "The US Postal Service may face insolvency by 2011 (it lost $8.5 billion last year). An op-ed piece in yesterday's New York Times proposes an interesting business idea for the Postal Service: use postal trucks as a giant fleet of mobile sensor platforms. [Registration-required link; this no-reg summary encapsulates the idea, as does this paper by the same author.] (Think Google Streetview on steroids.) The trucks could be outfitted with a variety of sensors (security, environmental, RF ...) and paid for by businesses. The article's author addresses some of the obvious privacy concerns that arise."

Comments

Uhm...

[Nailer235]

So the solution to excess spending is to outfit every single vehicle with expensive sensors to take an excessive amount of unnecessary measurements?

Re:Uhm...

[sking]

I think the idea seeks to solve the problem of falling revenue. Selling data collected by sensors could be a potential revenue stream.

Re:Uhm...

[Red_Chaos1]

Nothing in the summary states this would be the case. Let the other govt agencies and entities pay for these sensors in return for the data. They'd pay the USPS for allowing the devices to be on the vehicles in the first place. The USPS pays nothing, and makes a little extra cash on the side.

Re:Uhm...

[thrillseeker]

Then some *private* company is welcome to build a fleet of sensors and sell the data.

Re:Uhm...

[Genda]

Don't you think this point of view is just a wee bit convoluted... I mean its all your tax dollars, whether or not its the USPS or some other government agency choosing to foot the bill.

Determine if this is indeed a viable side business (and I assert it is). The fleet of USPS vehicles is potentially a superb resource because they travel to virtually all roads and to every person who receives mail at a mailbox once a day. Collecting sensor and (broad spectrum) photographic information, could prove useful for anything from locating "Gang Bangers" to analyzing the effects of climate change on native vegetation. Such a bank of environmental information would certainly become an invaluable resource. Since the information is collected on the "People's Dime", the information should belong to the people and be made available to government agencies, businesses, schools, and private citizens. As well the privacy and security of "The People" must be secured whenever possible, so as to limit access to people, or their residences to extraordinary circumstances with extensive legal checks and balances. Having this much information collected about John Q. Public's day to day existence would necessitate some kind of extensive policy on the collection and utilization of third party public information (i.e. business video, phone and Wifi interception, urban microphones, aerial and satellite surveillance of public spaces, etc.) To date this collection has been heavily weighted to the benefit of business and government, and against common privacy. The nation needs to address this now before things spiral completely out of control (and the wholesale convincing of the American people to abdicate their civil rights by shaking the terrorist boogie-man at them "booga-booga" needs to come to a crashing halt!!!)

The goal should be to obtain the value and power of an accurate, timely, and comprehensive national data-set, without giving Big Brother the keys to the kingdom. In the end, the only issue is what value does this information provide, what with it cost us in time, money and most of all personal privacy. As a distant incentive, it might make the USPS a viable business venture, but it hardly seems significant considering the titanic social issues concerned.

Re:Uhm...

[sking]

They certainly are. Or they can rent space on an existing infrastructure.

Re:Uhm...

[toadlife]

Then some *private* company...

Like the USPS?

Re:Uhm...

[Grishnakh]

A couple of things: First, it's not your tax dollars, the USPS is not a full government agency, it's quasi-government. It's basically a private company that's wholly owned by the government, but receives no funding whatsoever and has to be self-sustaining.

Second, the USPS is already a viable business venture, except that stupid Congress keeps getting in the way. For instance, one of the reasons they're having problems now is because they need to adjust to the new market realities: the internet is taking over, and people aren't sending letters any more, so with less mail going around, it's not economical to send drivers around to every single address every day without a large enough volume of mail to deliver. This problem could be easily solved: simply cut out one or two days of deliveries (except for Express mail). However, they're not allowed to do that, because stupid Congress has mandated that they deliver mail 6 days out of the week.

The USPS needs to concentrate on the things it does well: it's a reliable way of getting things around for low cost, as long as you're not in too big a hurry. No one's going to miss receiving junk mail on Saturdays or Wednesdays (two days that could be cut). It's good for bulk mail, and also for small packages, now that people are ordering more and more stuff online. You're also more likely to receive your goods intact, as a recent Popular Mechanics article found that, in an experiment, the USPS treated packages far better than Fedex or UPS, who both subjected packages to much larger shocks, and also intentionally beat up packages marked "Fragile". The USPS just needs to concentrate on providing good, cheap, but not necessarily fast service, which is what most people want these days, and they'll be fine.

Re:Uhm...

[Ritchie70]

Amen.

I would cut normal mail delivery to three days a week - Monday, Wednesday, Friday. If a holiday falls on one of those days, that week is Tuesday - Thursday - Saturday.

I said this to my mom - who is in her late 60's - and she was aghast. She just couldn't imagine not getting mail every day.

My wife and I get almost nothing worth having via mail - all the bills come in via email, and I pay them electronically, either by push from my bank or pull from the vendor. A lot of the mail goes directly into the recycle bin before I even hit the house.

When I ship a package it's a mix of price and convenience. UPS is actually the most convenient for me - going past their local facility is barely out of my way home from work - but USPS is cheaper. But I almost never care about what day it gets there.

Re:Uhm...

[Grishnakh]

Exactly. I only disagree about UPS; every time I check their prices, they're much higher than Fedex. I do have a shipping account with Fedex though which makes it even cheaper, but for anything under 5 pounds, USPS is always the cheapest. And Fedex places (usually Kinko's) are always convenient for me, but my post office is only 1/2 mile away.

I get some deliveries by the mail (online orders), so that, and Netflix DVDs, are all I really care about receiving the mail for. If they cut out days, I wouldn't notice, except occassionally I might not have a Netflix DVD that day, but then I'll just watch one of the instant movies (if they had all their movies available online, I wouldn't even bother with the DVDs).

Re:Uhm...

[halowolf]

Perhaps they could talk to Australia Post about how they achieved a profit in these challenging times.

Re:Uhm...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're referring to this "study", which had a total of twelve data points (four for each of the three carriers). Also, the article says all three carriers were rougher-than-average with "Fragile" packages; it didn't single out UPS and FedEx.

The USPS also had nearly twice as many flips per package and more variance in temperature, both of which can be meangful depending on what you're shipping.

Re:Uhm...

[stdarg]

Yeah a private company like the USPS with "sovereign immunity, eminent domain powers, powers to negotiate postal treaties with foreign nations, and an exclusive legal right to deliver first-class and third-class mail." (Wikipedia).

Sound like many private companies you know?

Re:Uhm...

[stdarg]

A couple of things: First, it's not your tax dollars, the USPS is not a full government agency, it's quasi-government. It's basically a private company that's wholly owned by the government, but receives no funding whatsoever and has to be self-sustaining.

Serious question: What's this? A lot of people say the USPS is totally self-funded but then why do they request funding from Congress every year? Is that considered a separate organization within the USPS or something?

It's good for bulk mail, and also for small packages, now that people are ordering more and more stuff online.

I think they should start accepting larger packages, if anything. They're becoming increasingly irrelevant, and they can't seem to compete on price for anything but letters (which I never send).

Re:Uhm...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mail is a pain in the buttocks for me. With mail, you're supposed to go outside and CHECK it, even if you don't expect there to be anything since someone MIGHT send you something, and you don't want it to get wet. The postal carriers never close the door, so whatever is inside WILL get soaked by the rain.

And then I need to decorate my mailbox with Christmas lights and keep them lit ALL winter or the plow obliterates it without fail. Reflectors don't do it. It has to be lit Christmas lights.

Getting a PO box ( I had one for a while ) means you CAN'T conveniently check your mail, and it's smaller than your mailbox so you'd better check regularly.

And you're legally responsible for checking your mail. If they send you a notice about your drivers license then you'd better be checking your mail.

And it's a REAL pain to buy stamps. I rarely have to send anything by mail, but when I do, I usually have to buy a book of stamps. Unless I remember to get Forever stamps which I THINK don't expire, If I have any in my wallet, they are probably out of date. I end up using two . Sometimes I use two because I DON'T KNOW how much a stamp costs.

The post office in my town is open from just after I need to be at work to just before I get home from work. Convenient! And they won't get a stamp vending machine to put in the unlocked lobby with the PO boxen because in the words of the person behind the counter last time I had to purchase stamps, 'It's not as efficient'.

How about we just abolish mail except for packages? How about we all boycot DVDs too to let DVD makers know they have to make their stuff available online or nobody will part with a dime to watch it.

Re:Uhm...

[DavidTC]

Serious question: What's this? [usps.com] A lot of people say the USPS is totally self-funded but then why do they request funding from Congress every year? Is that considered a separate organization within the USPS or something?

The blind and oversea voting and Revenue Forgone Reform Act (Which is lower postal rates for charities) are stuff that, for whatever reason, Congress has decided the post office should do for free or cheap, and Congress pays them each year for that. The Post Office is only self-supporting for normal stuff, Congress had it do charity work that Congress pays for.

The 'reconciliation' stuff is them getting their money back from money they had left over at the end of previous years and 'loaned' to the government. Presumably because there's a recession and it needs the money because profits are down. And, as the article points out, it doesn't have a lot money left 'in the bank'.

Re:Uhm...

[Grishnakh]

Mail is a pain in the buttocks for me. With mail, you're supposed to go outside and CHECK it, even if you don't expect there to be anything since someone MIGHT send you something, and you don't want it to get wet. The postal carriers never close the door, so whatever is inside WILL get soaked by the rain.

Try one of these, recommended by another poster here. That should solve your water problems.

And then I need to decorate my mailbox with Christmas lights and keep them lit ALL winter or the plow obliterates it without fail. Reflectors don't do it. It has to be lit Christmas lights.

Where the hell do you live? Someplace with 20-foot snow drifts?

And it's a REAL pain to buy stamps. I rarely have to send anything by mail, but when I do, I usually have to buy a book of stamps. Unless I remember to get Forever stamps which I THINK don't expire, If I have any in my wallet, they are probably out of date. I end up using two . Sometimes I use two because I DON'T KNOW how much a stamp costs.

Now you're just being ridiculous. Yes, Forever stamps don't expire. That's why they're called "forever". Just buy those, and use ONE, unless your letter weighs more than one ounce. Seriously, it's not that hard. They even have automated machines in POs now that will weigh your letter and print exact postage for you.

The post office in my town is open from just after I need to be at work to just before I get home from work. Convenient!

Every small business is like that. Only megastores like Wal-Mart have extended hours, especially in rural areas.

And they won't get a stamp vending machine to put in the unlocked lobby with the PO boxen because in the words of the person behind the counter last time I had to purchase stamps, 'It's not as efficient'.

All the POs around here have removed their vending machines, and replaced them with (I can't recall their name for them at the moment) automated machines that let you weigh packages or letters and print exact postage, and pay using a debit or credit card. They're really handy, they're available at all hours (only the counter part of the PO is locked up at night), and if more people would use them, the lines wouldn't be as long.

If your PO doesn't have those, you should complain.

Insilvent? So what?

[migla]

What are they gonna do? Dismantle the postal service? Just consider it infrastructure and pay for any loss from taxes. Surely the people of the US don't want to be without a postal service?

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Surely the people of the US don't want to be without a postal service?

False Dilemma

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[clarkkent09]

Privatize it. UPS didn't lose $8.5 billion, it made $2.15 billion in profit.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[GodfatherofSoul]

USPS already adopted the "run government like a business" philosophy.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[jrobot]

Postal Employee: "May I help you?"
Kramer: "Yeah, I'd like to cancel my mail."
Postal Employee: "Certainly. How long would you like us to hold it?"
Kramer: "Oh, no, no. I don't think you get me. I want out, permanently."
Newman: "I'll handle this, Violet. Why don't you take your three hour break?
Oh, calm down, everyone. No one's cancelling any mail."
Kramer: "Oh, yes, I am."
Newman: "What about your bills?"
Kramer: "The bank can pay 'em."
Newman: "The bank. What about your cards and letters?"
Kramer: "E-mail, telephones, fax machines. Fedex, telex, telegrams,
holograms."
Newman: "All right, it's true! Of course nobody needs mail. What do you
think, you're so clever for figuring that out? But you don't know the half of
what goes on here. So just walk away, Kramer. I beg of you."
Supervisor: "Is everything all right here, Postal Employee Newman?"
Newman: "Yes, sir, I believe everything is all squared away. Isn't it, Mr.
Kramer?"
Kramer: "Oh, yeah. As long as I stop getting mail!"

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[wizardforce]

The postal service is going to be insolvent because the service they provide isn't worth the cost. If it was, people would pay a higher price for it. At the time that the constitution was written, it was pretty much the state of the art communication channel and it made some sense for it to be singled out as necessary along with post roads etc. Today, things are different. Most people don't use snail mail to communicate so it doesn't make sense to keep it the way it is. The modern day equivalent of the postal service's role in the late 1700's is broadband last mile infrastructure.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

UPS won't send a postcard from Alaska to Florida for 28 cents, either.

Not saying good or bad - it's just a different kind of service.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[clarkkent09]

That doesn't work because it's not their money. People run things far more efficiently when it's their money or their bosses money on the line, rather than "everybody's" (i.e nobody's) money.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Korin43]

But how will I heat my house without all of the junk mail they bring me?

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[clarkkent09]

UPS won't send a postcard from Alaska to Florida for 28 cents, either.
 
You don't know that because right now they are forbidden by law to do so.

What is the real cost of sending that postcard? Of course if you carried just that one postcard by a special flight it would be thousands of dollars, but that's not how it works. A better question is what is the cost of delivering all the postcards in the US divided by the number of postcards? In any case, the real cost of something is the real cost, it can't be avoided. If it costs 48c to send that postcard you can't magically make it 28c by regulation. The cost is just shifted somewhere else, it still has to be paid by someone.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[rolfwind]

Hell no. America has an amazingly secure post system. You rarely have mail stolen (an enforced Federal Crime, USPS have Postal Inspectors that are very good at their job and I say this with personal experience). I know privatized systems in other countries -- THEY SUCK. Stolen packages, no accounting (everyone passes the buck, etc) while Postal workers are people THAT will most likely work there next year, with a good benefits, and do care if they lose their job or pension.

Cut some service, close down some unnecessary offices (I know a few miles from each other) and do some other tweaks. But the PO is Constitutionally mandated service, and it's ridiculous to get rid of it when all it needs are tweaks.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Korin43]

Surely the people of the US don't want to be without a postal service?

Is it really that big of a deal?

• Junk mail - Finally we can get rid of this.
• Post cards - Sad to lose, but not really the government's problem.
• Letters - Important letters could still be sent by UPS/Fedex. It would be more expensive, but I suspect without the USPS, they would offer something comparable to normal mail (no doubt it would be more expensive). All of those businesses that send you pointless letters all the time (TV/internet service, banks, etc) would suddenly have a huge incentive to convince people to accept them in email form (less waste).
• Packages - Fedex and UPS already do this. They're more expensive, but pouring money into the USPS via taxes just hides the real price.

We wouldn't be without postal service, we'd just be without government postal service.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The brokerage fees UPS charges are insane. And don't even try to file the customs paperwork yourself. UPS deliberately makes it as hard as they possibly can for you to do so.

When I buy on ebay, it's USPS or nothing.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[tyen]

You rarely have mail stolen...

This should be emphasized. I visited a gold mine in the US once. Was astounded when they told us they mail their raw ingots (that contain gold, silver and platinum all mixed together) to their refiner by USPS. They matter-of-factly told us that only USPS had the kind of government-force-backed security and guarantees that made transporting around >$100K bars every day feasible.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[clarkkent09]

Citation needed. From personal experience just in the last year, I've had my mail stolen once, I received other people's mail several times and I failed to receive some mail that I know was sent - probably delivered wrongly to god knows whom. Meanwhile, going to the post office is one of the most dreaded things for me because it ALWAYS means waiting in line for at least an hour and dealing with employees there who are understaffed, overwhelmed by the number of angry customers, demoralized and rude. I can't think of a private business that has the same problems.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[demonlapin]

The jewelry industry uses registered mail for the same purpose.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

People run things far more efficiently when it's their money or their bosses money on the line, rather than "everybody's" (i.e nobody's) money.

[citation needed]
I'd believe without evidence that people tend to be more careful with their money, that makes sense as it affects their lives directly, but I don't see how someone would care if the company's profits goes to their boss, shareholders, or government.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the reason for all this loss is the time they drove the empty bottles to Michigan.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bottle_Deposit_%28Seinfeld%29

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[transami]

The only reason they are loosing money is b/c Congress won't let them raise prices to what they need to be. Look at the USPS 2009 annual report, the first page brags about being the cheapest postal service in the world. So is it any wonder they are loosing money? If they raised the price of a stamp just 5 cents they'd be in the black again.

No doubt, lobbyists from Fedex and UPS are paying off our politicians to sabotage the USPS. First they will get rid of Saturday delivery, which, contrary to the stated reasons for it, will actually further erode their bottom line. That will ultimately lead to full privatization. Shortly after that happens expect the cost of mailing a letter to quickly approach 10 times of what it costs today in order to pay massive executive bonuses and shareholder dividends.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[zach_the_lizard]

You screw up the company, it dies, and you no longer get paid. You do poorly, you get fires, you don't get paid. There's all the motivation there.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[eugene ts wong]

Regarding those pointless letters, hopefully some businesses will take and interest in news feeds. I won't hold my breath, though.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[segedunum]

I see a lot of people roll out the usual Milton Friedman 'Privatise it!' option to everything, but I'm afraid that a lot of private delivery firms just do not see it as cost effective to deliver to a lot of, mainly rural, areas. It's the same thing here in the UK with the Royal Mail. No matter how much anyone talks about privatisation you can always bet that there will be government subsidies needed to fill the gap needed, because you can't have a functioning economy and communities without some kind of postal service unless you tell everyone to move to areas that delivery firms find cost effective. I can't see that being an option.

When you subsidise private firms to provide a service they don't really want to provide then you get something far worse than anything the government could run itself. It simply doesn't work.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[S1ngularity]

Article I, Section 8, clause 7: "to establish post offices and post roads" It is specifically listed as a power that the congress is allowed to exercise. However is says nothing about it being mandated to. Nor who runs and provides services in those offices or on those roads.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[MokuMokuRyoushi]

I've had the opposite experience. The local USPS workers are pretty friendly, prompt on the job, and the only time they've misplaced my mail was a special scenario(to my business address; the new postal guy didn't know that my mailbox was no longer in use, long story). That said, I work from a small town where they wouldn't be overwhelmed easily. I'm guessing you're in a more metro area, and so I think it's understandable(though still a problem) that the workers would be demoralized or quicker to anger if they themselves were surrounded by angry people.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[clarkkent09]

Psychologists should be writing books about this kind of thinking, it really is something and it is so common as well. Let me rephrase what you just said so it's more clear: Government causes trouble, in this case by not allowing USPS to raise rates to a realistic level. Why is that so? Presumably out of some misguided altruistic motives, so that poor people can afford to send mail etc or at least because that way it appears that they care more about the poor and all that crap, but lets assume for a moment that you are correct and it is because they are bribed by the businesses. Where is the real problem? With the fact that the government officials accept bribes or with the businessmen who bribe them? Lets say the government has the power to affect business in a dramatic way through regulation (as it does), it is corrupt (it is) and it is willing to accept bribes to help one company or another. If you are an honest businessman who refuses to pay bribes (like Rearden in Atlas Shrugged) you will pretty soon be buried by your competitors who reap all the advantages of having powerful politicians on their side. Pretty soon there will be no more businessmen who are honest because the environment created by the government power makes that impossible.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[morgan_greywolf]

Never worked for the government, eh? Getting fired from a civil service job is almost impossible. You pretty much have to do something like set the place on fire or shoot up your co-workers before they'll fire you.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[crunchygranola]

You rarely have mail stolen...

This should be emphasized....

And the government sends secret documents by the U.S. Postal Service.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[zellfaze]

The courts also use the postal service. It is indeed the best way to move things. You can get in a lot of trouble for trying to screw with other people's mail.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[morgan_greywolf]

You don't know that because right now they are forbidden by law to do so.

No they aren't. You're thinking of the laws relating stamps or postage. Not all postcards are postage paid. There is nothing stopping UPS or FedEx or [your-favorite-carrier-here] from delivering postcards to your door (they can't, by law, put things in your mailbox). They simply don't do it because they don't see any profit in it.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[morgan_greywolf]

BTW--if you stick the postcard -- or anything else -- in one of their "express letter"-type envelopes, they'll ship it for one price. Anything that fits in that envelope costs the same.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Guppy]

In any case, the real cost of something is the real cost, it can't be avoided. If it costs 48c to send that postcard you can't magically make it 28c by regulation. The cost is just shifted somewhere else, it still has to be paid by someone.

True, but it's much like the situation with "Unlimited" ISPs. You've got folks that pull down multiple gigabytes per month, and some that use a fraction of that. The single flat price makes it convenient enough to be worth it.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[tibit]

Perhaps that's part of the problem with USPS: a vastly over-the-top type of service -- it can hardly be cheap. I do understand that such service is good to have, but it should come at a hefty price. I presume that plenty of private companies would be glad to ship $100K bars around for 1% of their value. USPS can't profitably offer that service for anything less, yet they do precisely that. All that government-backed-security costs lots of money. It's not free just because it's law, enforcement costs real dollars.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

ever been to best buy?

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[tibit]

+1 informative. The document linked by the parent is very interesting.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Idarubicin]

All of those businesses that send you pointless letters all the time (TV/internet service, banks, etc) would suddenly have a huge incentive to convince people to accept them in email form (less waste).

It's a good thing that everyone has email access in their home.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[chapstercni]

Sorry. The PO is NOT Constitutionally MANDATED.
Congress is constutionally authorized to exercise an OPTION to establish Post Offices and Post Roads.

"Article 1 - Section 8

The Congress shall have Power To...;

To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;"

This would be different if the statement were something like: "Congress SHALL establish Post Offices and Post Roads."

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[AnonGCB]

Lysander Spooner would like a few words with you.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[calmofthestorm]

You screw up the country, it dies and you no longer get paid. You do poorly, you get fires [sic], you don't get paid.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

>rural areas. You pay less for property and goods in those areas

In fact, goods cost more out here in Hooterville. Transportation to get the goods here costs more and lower sales volume means more overhead per item sold. That said, cut me back to once a mail week delivery, cut out Saturdays, whatever. Anything of substance I order comes via UPS or Fedex anyway. I can live without any government sponsored mail delivery at all if I have to.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[jrumney]

Where's my interest in saving you some money?

Food prices.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[greenbird]

Surely the people of the US don't want to be without a postal service?

I could live without it. Nothing but crap in my mail box. Stuff gets lost or stolen all the time. It's a prime source of identity theft. It gives those with a nefarious purpose (lawyers) a way to claim they sent you something. I'm sure I lose stuff all the time in trying to find anything actually useful buried amongst the garbage. About the only things I every send through the mail are to services living in the internet dark ages of yesteryear (primarily government services).

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Lumbre]

You rarely have mail stolen

A few times throughout the year, I find that I either receive a neighbor's mail by accident or someone else receives one of my bills, addressed correctly. I know this is a bit of a tangent, but what if one of your neighbors keeps it or operates ID theft?

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

It kinda already is; the USPS is ran separately from any Federal Agency. Other than the 20% share owned by the Federal Government, they have no real oversight...

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[edumacator]

Right. And then they would say, I'm not going to spend my money delivering to those people out in the country. The postal service has the responsibility to deliver to every region of the country. A private company doesn't have the same responsibility. We could make it a prerequisite for whoever wins the contract, but then they would raise the prices significantly.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[DavidTC]

No, not five cents, damnit.

They should raise postage rates to the next highest five cents, and then raise them again by five cents when those get too low.

The idiotic 'raise them random amounts' is part of what's reducing the amount of stuff people mail. First class letters should always be a multiple of 5 cents, so you just throw another 5 cents on there if they raised the rate.

Which means the next rate raise should be to 50 cents, because it's 44 cents right now.

In fact, all rates should be a multiple of five cents. Mailing a DVD? Pre-stamped envelope should cost 85 cents or whatever. Postcard? 30 cents. Even the weight tables for stuff should be rounded up.

The only time it should be anything else is stuff like bulk rates, which are not done via stamps.

And at some point, they should entirely get rid of any stamps lower than 5 cents. They should have 5 cent stamps, 1 dollar stamps, and whatever-amount-the-first-class-rate-is stamp. Maybe a 25 also, I dunno. Maybe a 90 cent stamp for the large envelope base rate.

I'm not trying to say what they can and can't do, but at some point the entire thing got out of control...do we really need 1 cent stamps? 2 cent stamps? 8 cent stamps? Just operate the entire postal system in increments of 5 cents, and stop wasting everyone's time. (It's worth mentioning the retail universe operates in increments of 10 at the minimum. All items at a store will either end in 5 cents or 9 cents, depending on the store, and most items over five dollars end in either 95 or 99.)

Otherwise, yes, I entirely agree with your post. The USPS is the cheapest postal service, and incredibly efficient, and I'm sure FedEx and UPS would really like them to stop.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[scamper_22]

And why should rural areas get 'good mail service'.
This is the same problem we face with telecommunications. Some people expect rural areas to have the same telecom ability as dense urban cores.

I'm not saying urban life is better than rural life... but there are costs to each.
Live in the city and you get good mail service, good telecom, good restaurants... but you have to deal with traffic, high home prices, crime...
Live in rural areas and you get cheap housing, clean air, peace, nature... but you have to deal with poor telecom, poor mail service...

Maybe it is only reasonable to expect rural mail service once in every 2 weeks and it costs a bit more.
So be it.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've had the opposite experience. The local USPS workers are pretty friendly, prompt on the job, ...

Ditto here, located in a suburb of Buffalo NY, I'm at my local USPS office once or twice a week. The only things that seem to get lost are small packages (data DVDs) sent international air mail (cheapest way). Since the same small packages always arrive at the USA destinations, I blame the postal service in the other countries. Certain days are good to avoid -- schedule around: the day before taxes are due, now (the holiday rush), etc.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Tridus]

The postal service is going insolvent because they're forced by law to deliver to remote, unprofitable locations at highly subsidized (ie: below cost) prices. Not a new story, really.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Korin43]

I didn't say they'd go away, I said businesses would have more incentive to get people with email access to use it.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[suprcvic]

You rarely have mail stolen

Tell that to my customers who have sent packages that arrive at the other end in a different box and with things missing, or who were told by their local post office that the package they sent never left said local post office but "we're sorry, there's nothing we can do about it." Tell that to my customers who rent private mailboxes at my store because they've had mail stolen right out of their home mailbox. I'm sorry, the idea that mail is rarely stolen is a myth. It happens more than you think, most people just don't do anything about it because they don't think they can, probably because the post office told them to go f**k themselves when they did try and do something about it.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[zach_the_lizard]

Except in government, your revenue stream does not depend on pleasing the customer, so you can fail as long as you like, and still maintain the same level of income (or greater).

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

No doubt, lobbyists from Fedex and UPS are paying off our politicians to sabotage the USPS.

Since Fedex express's day-side sort is predominately USPS express mail bags, and the night sort carries a fair number of priority mail bags, I doubt we're (full disclosure I'm with Fedex) trying to get rid of them.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

UPS, Fedex, etc, have made only the decision not to carry 'non-urgent' letters because Congress has decreed the USPS to have a monopoly on this service. In response to the argument that these private institutions cannot perform the job, why do UPS and FedEx exist at all? There is virtually no service they offer which the USPS does not have a comparable service to, yet millions of businesses (most, in fact) choose to use a competitor to the USPS. And as pointed out by other posters, those competitors make money while providing superior service, which also happens to deliver to the most rural parts of the country - they just charge extra.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

What are you talking about, they can just insure everyone and print money if they go bankrupt, durr hurr

I hate it that slashdot is so economically illiterate. There aint no such thing as a free lunch, guys... sorry to break that down to you all.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[rtb61]

Wake up. Do you want you post delivered as cheaply as possible or do you want you postal service to be a profitable as possible, you can not have both, profit you fool comes from gouging the consumers pocket.

Government services attempt to provide as much service as possible whilst charging as little as possible, sometimes resulting losses. Corporations attempt to provide as little service as possible whilst charging as much as possible for it, often resulting in multimillion dollar bonuses for corporate executives. Competition is what corporation strive to cripple by forming cartel, buy buying out the opposition and then ramping up prices to pay for it, by lying to consumers, by lobbying for reduced worker rights, by not paying tax, by seeking corporate welfare from the local, state and federal government.

So more efficient letter carriage, drop Saturday deliveries, drop pick up of mail from letter box have localised post boxes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_box, just those simply changes will substantively reduce cost. Of course it you really want to do what a for profit corporation would do, simply drop all postal services to rural areas unless they are willing to pay substantially more for the service.

As for corporations as far as they are concerned your money is their money and they will and do lie, cheat and steal to 'er' recover it.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're "losing", not "loosing":

http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/looselose.html

I know I'm being a spelling Nazi, but there it is.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[hairyfeet]

Yeah, why should they have running water and electricity, those filthy hillbillies! Let them shit in buckets and use candles! Oh wait a tick, could it be that increasingly the US government, as well as the states, are moving everything online because it is cheaper than printing and mailing crap, not to mention dealing with the sorting and filing of said crap?

If you wanted to cut a day or two out of mailing letters fine, but I just had to help a nephew fill out all the paperwork for him to start college. We are talking tons of electronic forms and PDF and tons of other eCrap that with dialup would have been frankly impossible to accomplish. That of course doesn't count the fact that having an infrastructure that isn't from the fricking stone age opens up all kinds of new opportunities, like using Netflix instead of blowing through gas going to the nearest Redbox, eLearning and other ways to better yourself like virtual classrooms, and the ability top start new businesses and save on greenhouse gases by the way of eCommerce and Telecommuting.

So lets please step off the "corporation yay!" bandwagon for a minute, shall we? We have been kissing the telecoms booties here in the USA for damned near 30 years now, and even our largest cities have broadband speeds that are honestly shameful compared to the rest of the planet, and much of our rural areas have land lines laid down when fricking Ike was president. If we wait for the "free market" in the case of nationwide broadband we will ALL end up on the short bus to crappytown, left behind while the world advances, while all we will have to show for it is some crappy quality Youtube videos of Telecom CEOs snorting coke off of $1000 hooker asses while having their balls tickled with $100 bills. It is time we treat broadband no different that electricity or water, take the last mile AWAY from the telecoms by laying OUR OWN LINES, and then if they want to compete they can get off their asses and offer better service for less money. That is what the free market is supposed to be about, competition, right?

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[suss]

The Royal Mail is for sale, actually, and the Queen is disappearing from their stamps...

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[gnapster]

I think that the GP was talking about theft in transit. That is, malicious action by postal workers. The problems you are experiencing sound more like carelessness than willful flaunting of your privacy. I think that opportunistic tampering with another person's mail as you describe is probably a felony, but since it is performed by a neighbor, not a USPS employee, it has little to do with whether the mail system is privatized.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying that Milton Friedman would have been for privatizing a government service by default means you don't understand the work of Milton Friedman. He wasn't an anarchist and distanced himself between his free enterprise work and Randian types who advocated privatizing basic government services.

Try actually reading "Free to Choose" or just watch the original 1980 series online (video.google.com).

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[GiveBenADollar]

While this may be true, I've had checks and netflix DVDs stolen from the mail. Most of the post offices security is through obscurity, if what you're sending is obvious then it can and might get stolen.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sjames]

UPS isn't under the same universal service obligations as the USPS.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sjames]

You do well, your department gets outsourced to India or China anyway. Your boss collects a fat bonus check and fails up.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[HungWeiLo]

I can't think of a private business that has the same problems.

Sounds like Fry's to me.

Just last week, I did not receive a DVD that I had ordered. Tracking info states that package has already been delivered. I called the post office at 4:45pm. By 6:00pm, they had sent someone personally to deliver my package. UPS or Fedex would have (and have in the past) just told me to haul my ass down to the distribution center 15 miles away to line up and pick it up.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Grishnakh]

It's the same thing here in the UK with the Royal Mail. No matter how much anyone talks about privatisation you can always bet that there will be government subsidies needed to fill the gap needed, because you can't have a functioning economy and communities without some kind of postal service

What makes you think the USA will have a functioning economy and communities here in the next 10 years or so? We're already on the brink of civilization collapsing and widespread rioting and looting.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Grishnakh]

Superior service? How so? Popular Mechanics recently conducted an experiment where they sent a package across the country a couple dozen times, by all three carriers, and found that the package was abused the least by the USPS. Fedex and UPS, however, happily kicked the package around even more if it was marked "Fragile".

UPS and Fedex are indeed cheaper for medium-speed large parcels, but that's it. For small parcels (under 5 pounds), they're more expensive than USPS, and slower too. The only reason they exist is probably because they have better prices for large corporations that contract with them, but for regular people, they're mostly a rip-off.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sjames]

I have never had USPS gore my package with a forklift and then try to tell me it was "inadequately packed" so they won't be paying the insurance claim. I can't say the same for other carriers.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Grishnakh]

I have to agree with the other posters; the USPS workers I've dealt with (and I've dealt with many, as I send a lot of international packages) are usually quite friendly, despite the angry and sometimes even insane customers they have to deal with. Yes, the lines can be long if you go during peak hours (usually lunch hour and after 5PM), but if you go during other hours it's not so bad. It also depends on the location. It's not the PO's fault the lines are long, the problem is that the general populace is their customers, and typical Americans are unbelievably stupid (which is why they vote for Sarah Palin). Seriously, next time you sit in line at the PO, listen to all the stupid, inane questions people ask, like they've never been to a post office before in their lives. Half the stuff people do there can be done on the automated machines they now have, instead of wasting time in line.

Also, the experience changes depending on your local PO. I moved recently, only 6 miles, from one part of the Phoenix metro area to another part not far away, but it's a totally different crowd at the local PO. Not nearly so many stupid people with stupid questions at this new PO. I guess the people in Chandler are stupider than the people in Tempe.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Never tried shooting, but when I worked for the government I learned setting the place on fire doesn't work to get out.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[retchdog]

On PBS? Sounds communist to me. I don't trust this elitist liberal Friedman.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You've clearly never worked for municipal government.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Grishnakh]

Exactly how much do you think the post office can do about someone walking up to your mail box and grabbing stuff out of it? It's not like they're going to post police there all night for surveillance to catch the teenagers who took it.

The OP was talking about theft of mail by the postal employees themselves, not by random hooligans. Unlike many 3rd-world countries and Italy, where you can expect your mail to be rifled through by the postal employees, that rarely happens here (as it is, after all, a Federal offense). But one problem with the mail in this country is that in many places, mailboxes have zero security, and anyone can walk up to them and take your mail. Apartment-dwellers and some subdivision dwellers don't have that problem, as they have locked boxes linked to their unit, but more rural areas don't have that. So one the carrier puts it in your box, there's nothing the PO can do to make sure you get it. If theft is a problem for you locally, you have two options as I see it: 1) set up surveillance cameras of your own, and catch the perpetrators. The police will probably be happy to bust the teenage punks stealing your mail. 2) Get a PO Box.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Grishnakh]

The problem isn't government, the problem is the lack of policing, and the lack of penalties for bribery and corruption. Bribery is a way of life in the US government, except they call them "campaign contributions".

In China, corruption is definitely a problem with their growth, but when they find it, the punishment is severe: a bullet in the brain. If we had punishments like that here for corruption or corporate malfeasance, there wouldn't be as much of it.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

AT & T, Walmart, Bank of America, Best Buys, airline companies, etc...

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Kjella]

Aw, not more Ayn Rand nonsense. Those who have power manipulate those who don't, it can be like in China where the government manipulates corporations or in the US where corporations manipulate the government. Same with the branches of government where Congress is trying to tell the President what to do, the President is trying to tell Congress what to do and they both have their run-ins with the Judicial branch too. And they pretty much all try to manipulate the public, because the people are powerful but unorganized and uninformed so easily swayed by media campaigns. Do you know what they all have in common? When one side wins and gains too much power, the people loses and you can't solve it by putting the power somewhere "better". You have to try to set up a system of checks and balances, knowing full well that each part will try to break out of them and it won't be a perfect balance but hopefully there will be a balance. Yeah ok if the government and business break all checks and balances and go facist on us that'd be bad. It'd also be bad if Obama breaks all checks and balances and declares himself absolute rules of the United American Empire under Emperor Obama I. Granted, the former might be slightly more probable than the latter but they're not very revolutionary ideas, you can find most variations in the history books.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

You can take your food prices threat and ... eat it.

GO AHEAD and raise your prices for farm goods, but please, stop beating your chest trying to convince us that we need to subsidize the farmer or we'll all starve. If you can't handle the workload, someone else will come along and buy up your foreclosed land and take over where you left off.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Kjella]

Right. And then they would say, I'm not going to spend my money delivering to those people out in the country. The postal service has the responsibility to deliver to every region of the country. A private company doesn't have the same responsibility. We could make it a prerequisite for whoever wins the contract, but then they would raise the prices significantly.

Which would then prove that the USPS is an effective organization, that has just been given an expensive mission then? Sure you can get a system that costs half what the USPS does but only does half too, seriously if private companies can't compete in an apples-to-apples bid to take over what's the point? What is wrong with the government negotiating a SLA on behalf of the people of what is to be delivered? These are our requirements. These are our penalties for failing to meet those requirements. Seriously, I've never understood the US on this, giving it all to one company then letting them have free reign is just to ask people to lube up and bend over. Most every such regulated industry here in Norway has strings attached, which is considered fair as long as all bidders compete under the same conditions.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[beh]

Exactly, it will be a handful of big farmers - and the cost of food will rise, as in any good monopoly / oligopoly...

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[tftp]

If theft is a problem for you locally, you have two options as I see it: 1) set up surveillance cameras of your own, and catch the perpetrators. The police will probably be happy to bust the teenage punks stealing your mail. 2) Get a PO Box.

3) A good mailbox

With regard to your (1), the camera is not an evidence that you can take to the court, and the sheriff won't bother arresting someone - even teenage punks - just because someone may have seen them somewhere. (If that would be the case, graffiti couldn't exist.) It takes some good evidence to arrest; you wouldn't want to be arrested yourself just because something resembling your face was seen on a security camera, in darkness.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[junglee_iitk]

No. Food will be imported from places like India where farmers are committing suicide because the food is too cheap. The cost of food will take a drop and a lot of third world people will survive this year.

But of course that will be 'outsourcing' and hence bad. Better to subsidize the farmers from our own 'nation'.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Kashgarinn]

in regards to the prices of the USPS, you meant to say real cents.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Kashgarinn]

Pretty soon there will be no more businessmen who are honest because the environment created by the government power makes that impossible.

You don't have to have every single businessman be rotten to the core to destroy good ideas like the USPS, or every single politician, you only need a few in every sector, the rest will stay silent while a good thing is destroyed because it's not in their personal interest to see a common good thing succeed.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

UPS and FedEx also know that if they step on the toes of USPS, they may face the wrath of Congress. They are not allowed to compete with the USPS. Over the years there have actually been companies shut down for competing with them. Perhaps ginger fingers is not what customers are desiring for their packages. The only thing I've ever had damaged was a 17" CRT monitor being sent in on warranty repair, and the insurance I purchased covered it. Yet another reason USPS is more expensive.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[cyber-vandal]

Airlines and broadband providers spring immediately to mind.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[cyber-vandal]

I live in the UK too. Which goods do people pay less for in rural areas? And are property prices lower than in cities? Citation needed I think.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't care much about the blame game.
Hang the businessman who bribes right next to the government official that took the bribe. Right next to each other, on the same tree. If whistleblowing is a bad enough offense to talk about killing the offender, so should bribery.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[peragrin]

Packages over 5 pounds USPS and fedex are not only cheaper but they can guarantee delivery. Have you ever tried the USPSP tracking system? your package arrives at it's destination 2-3 days before they have updated their website.

Fedex and UPS update their tracking information every 30 minutes or so. So the moment the package is scanned and signed you can be sure to know about it.

That is why UPS and Fedex are around. they deliver the box not onyl as fast as they say they will, but you track the package across the country just as fast.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you vote the fuckers out of power, and voila. But wait, the US aren't really democracy ;-).

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, and my local postal carriers keep bending my packages to stuff them in my mailbox--I've had several paperback books ruined this way. When I complained, they said it was basically policy that anything that will bend gets bent, even if the envelope says "Do Not Bend" all over it.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[danbert8]

Profit, you fool, comes from voluntary transactions. No one forces you to use UPS, but you are forced to use USPS if you want to send a 1st class letter.

As far as the government is concerned your money is their money, and they will lie, cheat, and steal to recover it. They will even make tax cuts and credits sound like they are giving you free money.

And PS, the easiest way to end corporate welfare from the government is to stop giving money to the government.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[PlusFiveTroll]

Call your postal inspector. Our local post office had an issue like this around a decade ago, stuff of value, but not high value was disappearing from the mail. It evidently had been occurring to a number of people for some time is what was discovered after the fact. Issue was, nobody reported it for the longest time. Once a number of reports came it, it was investigated and the person was caught pretty quick.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[PlusFiveTroll]

Have it sent to you in a box, or get a bigger mailbox (if you have your own).

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[danbert8]

I agree, make things rounded for convenience. And then instead of printing stupid 5c stamps, just let them tape a frickin nickel on the letter. Or if you're concerned about the extra weight, make it a 10c rounding and let them tape dimes. They'd only have to stay on until the post office anyway.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I presume that plenty of private companies would be glad to ship $100K bars around for 1% of their value. USPS can't profitably offer that service for anything less, yet they do precisely that.

How do you figure? 10lbs of gold, 10lbs of iron, 10lbs of rock all weigh 10lbs. They also use the same amount of energy to ship. The only bearing in price should be the size of the container, not the value of the item. The USPS charges their rates based on size and weight of the parcel. Why should they, or any business for that matter, care what is in the package? As far as they are concerned, it's a box that has L x H x D dimensions with W weight. I think the USPS does this very well. The reason people ship $100K bars of gold is NOT because it's cheaper (sometimes it's more expensive to send USPS than UPS or FedEX), but because it's more SECURE.

One change I wouldn't have a problem with is a removal of the flat rate shipping costs. For example, it costs the same amount of money to send a regular first class envelope across the street as it does to send it from Maine to Hawaii or Florida to Alaska. I think initially this was the case to increase expansion, but now that we've expanded from sea to sea, and beyond, I don't see too much of a problem changing this policy.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[tibit]

To put it bluntly: next time you have to ship 10lb of gold somewhere I'll gladly do it for you for the price of shipping 10lb of rock to the same destination. Good luck finding me afterwards!

The price has to factor in insurance costs. An insurer will insure such shipments for absurd fees (1% will seem minor) unless they can audit (and re-audit periodically) your security measures. The latter have to be implemented, and that costs real money. Such shipments are high risk even if you pretend they are not.

Of course you can get the reimbursement from your corporate umbrella insurance -- without depending on the carrier's insurance. Your insurer will promptly raise the rates by a factor of magnitude as soon as they learn what a sloppy job you pulled of in choosing your carrier.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree. The USPS does a fantastic job compared to other countries.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[rolfwind]

It is not over the top. For the volume of mail, the costs are quite low, and also, for secure mail, you pay for it like "Registered Mail" etcetera. Postal Inspectors keep people honest, and the USPS enables commerce vital to this country.

There was an excellent post in this thread that detailed that the USPS is not losing money, that in reality, the Government has extracted $$$ from it for paying of general Government pensions (just as the Government vacuumed up all of Social Security's extras) and also the Congress holds the keys to any money-saving changes like going to a 5 day delivery week.

The USPS does way more good than harm to our economy. It just needs more autonomy in certain areas.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Abcd1234]

If you are an honest businessman who refuses to pay bribes (like Rearden in Atlas Shrugged) you will pretty soon be buried by your competitors who reap all the advantages of having powerful politicians on their side. Pretty soon there will be no more businessmen who are honest because the environment created by the government power makes that impossible.

And if you're an honest businessman who refuses to burn down the stores of his competitors, pretty soon your competitors willjust burn your store down and you'll be screwed.

"But wait!", you say, "That's illegal!"

Yeah. Exactly.

The US government is corrupt because people accept that it's corrupt. They accept that legalized bribary (aka, "lobbying") is considered a-okay. They accept the utterly idiotic premise that "money" == "speech".

Of course, as a Randroid, the only obvious solution is to tear down government. Fortunately, reality is far less ridiculous, as many governments the world over seem to function without US-style cronyism, as they've passed laws and instituted structures to help battle the forces of corruption (see Elections Canada for a good example).

But, you just go back and re-read Atlas Smug... err... Shrugged, while the rest of us get on in the real world.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[stdarg]

As a practical matter, how many addresses are not serviced by UPS? What percent of the population is affected?

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

UPS is not under the obligation to deliver to every residence in the entire US and its territories.

That alone adds a significant overhead that UPS/FedEx/DHL and their competitors do not need to pay.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[k6mfw]

Hell no. America has an amazingly secure post system. You rarely have mail stolen (an enforced Federal Crime

Yes! You mess with USPS goods (letters, packages), you got The Feds after you. Private deliveries... probably the local cops unless there are regulatory that make it a federal offense. However, that probably will be FBI jurisdiction (but they may not have resources for small stuff).

Another thing to consider is USPS delivers everywhere for basically same price (letters). For those saying it should be privatized like many other govt functions, however, all these contractors saying how they are "private enterprise, etc." but they have only one customer: Govt that gets it's money from taxes. yes, going offtopic, ranting, etc.

But the PO is Constitutionally mandated service, and it's ridiculous to get rid of it when all it needs are tweaks.

Interesting point, maybe whole discussion of major changes to USPS may be a moot point unless changes to the Constitution. That is, nothing new here, move along to next topic.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sjames]

The most expensive ones, of course.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[tibit]

By "over the top" I mean that it should cost way more than it does for the level of service they provide. Shipping a $25k gold bar via registered priority mail from west coast to east coast costs less than $60, or 0.2% of the value. That's ridiculously cheap.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[DavidTC]

Half the stuff people do there can be done on the automated machines they now have, instead of wasting time in line.

Assuming the damn automated machines work. Or even exist

At my local post office, the stamp vending machines have disappeared. Or, rather, we had perfectly functional stamp vending machines, and they were removed for some reason, and another vending machine was added, then it broke, then it was removed.

Now the only way to buy stamps is to stand in line.

And I could have sworn, at some point, we had a scale too. You could weigh your package, buy stamps, and mail it. Now you have to get in line. it's just idiotic.

Seriously, next time you sit in line at the PO, listen to all the stupid, inane questions people ask, like they've never been to a post office before in their lives.

I end up having to mail stuff out of my company sometimes, and, like I said, pretty much everyone who doesn't have a stamp has to get in line, so I end up behind them. (It's not their fucking fault, half the time the damn post office changed the rates on them so they just need 3 more damn cents on their envelope. If I was them I'd just use two stamps.)

And, yeah, a lot of the questions do seem very inane. There are all sorts of things you could read in line about different options, but people apparently are unable to do that.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty soon there will be no more businessmen who are honest because the environment created by the government power makes that impossible.

Business is orthogonal to honesty. You can have both, but you certainly don't need to.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[itsownreward]

About fifteen years ago our mail kept being misdelivered, and we kept getting other peoples' mail. We took it up with all sorts of folks, and finally the regional postmaster said that if the mail is put by a carrier in a box, it has been delivered. If it's not in our box, it's our problem (!).

Personally, I'd rather have some competition than put up with that level of asshattery.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in government, your revenue stream does not depend on pleasing the customer, so you can fail as long as you like, and still maintain the same level of income (or greater).

Wrong in the case of the postal service- it DOES depend on pleasing its customers, since that's where it gets its money. It doesn't use taxpayer funds, so if people stop using its services, it has no revenue. Granted, it has a monopoly on first class mail, but that monopoly is less and less relevant as time goes by. Its future is in things like package delivery and advertising mail, areas where it faces competition.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Grishnakh]

Just don't put anything fragile in there, because they also guarantee their chimpanzee employees will break it.

And yes, I use the USPS tracking system extensively. No, it doesn't update quickly, but not as slow as you say either. One day lag at the very most. It's gotten better over the last year or two.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Grishnakh]

Assuming the damn automated machines work. Or even exist

At my local post office, the stamp vending machines have disappeared. Or, rather, we had perfectly functional stamp vending machines, and they were removed for some reason, and another vending machine was added, then it broke, then it was removed.

Now the only way to buy stamps is to stand in line.

And I could have sworn, at some point, we had a scale too. You could weigh your package, buy stamps, and mail it. Now you have to get in line. it's just idiotic.

Yes, at my local POs, they removed the obsolete stamp vending machines, and the scales too, and replaced them with automated machines that do it all, and let you pay using a debit/credit card instead of cash like the old vending machines. Unlike the old machines, the new ones print exact postage, so I actually save money (the cost to send a 2-ounce letter is not double the cost of a one-ounce letter, but with stamps you pretty much have to use two stamps).

And, they're still there, and they all seem to work just fine. I don't know what the problem is where you live, but where I live, the automated machines are everywhere, and there's no problems. The only problem is dummies who don't want to use the machines and would rather stand in line.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in government, your revenue stream does not depend on pleasing the customer, so you can fail as long as you like, and still maintain the same level of income (or greater).

Wrong- the USPS doesn't get taxpayer dollars- all their revenue comes from sales of their services- if they don't please their customers they're in the same boat as any other business. They do have a monopoly on first class mail, but that advantage is worth less and less every day as more people use alternative methods of communication.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sac13]

I see a lot of people roll out the usual Milton Friedman 'Privatise it!' option to everything, but I'm afraid that a lot of private delivery firms just do not see it as cost effective to deliver to a lot of, mainly rural, areas. It's the same thing here in the UK with the Royal Mail. No matter how much anyone talks about privatisation you can always bet that there will be government subsidies needed to fill the gap needed, because you can't have a functioning economy and communities without some kind of postal service unless you tell everyone to move to areas that delivery firms find cost effective. I can't see that being an option. When you subsidise private firms to provide a service they don't really want to provide then you get something far worse than anything the government could run itself. It simply doesn't work.

But how much mail do you get that is just junk? And, how much of that would get sent if it were "privatized" and prices went up?

The reason the postal service is in trouble is because it prices a mostly unneeded service at a price so low that it creates useless demand. The bulk of what they handle is just physical spam.

They're not really needed anymore. And, if they were a private company, they probably wouldn't be around... certainly not in their current form. There are more environmentally responsible ways to communicate what they enable to be communicated. Electronic billing and payments would be much better for the environment and economy. And, junk mail should disappear. But, government subsidies prevent the natural market forces from pressuring change that the USPS's bottom line clearly reflects should be happening.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sac13]

So lets please step off the "corporation yay!" bandwagon for a minute, shall we? We have been kissing the telecoms booties here in the USA for damned near 30 years now, and even our largest cities have broadband speeds that are honestly shameful compared to the rest of the planet, and much of our rural areas have land lines laid down when fricking Ike was president. If we wait for the "free market" in the case of nationwide broadband we will ALL end up on the short bus to crappytown, left behind while the world advances, while all we will have to show for it is some crappy quality Youtube videos of Telecom CEOs snorting coke off of $1000 hooker asses while having their balls tickled with $100 bills. It is time we treat broadband no different that electricity or water, take the last mile AWAY from the telecoms by laying OUR OWN LINES, and then if they want to compete they can get off their asses and offer better service for less money. That is what the free market is supposed to be about, competition, right?

I'm not sure how one can blame the free market for the state of an industry that has never operated under the free market...

Of course, that doesn't stop people from doing it...

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sac13]

Right. And then they would say, I'm not going to spend my money delivering to those people out in the country. The postal service has the responsibility to deliver to every region of the country. A private company doesn't have the same responsibility. We could make it a prerequisite for whoever wins the contract, but then they would raise the prices significantly.

But, there's no laws saying where UPS and Fedex have to deliver to... and, they still deliver to "those people out in the country."

Why is that? Why would they do something that the government hasn't mandated they do? And, why aren't they charging a huge amount more for those services? Did they miss that day in capitalist pig class?

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sac13]

Wake up. Do you want you post delivered as cheaply as possible or do you want you postal service to be a profitable as possible, you can not have both, profit you fool comes from gouging the consumers pocket.

Why do I even need post delivered? I can get and pay my bills online. Everyone I correspond with I do electronically. Pretty much everything of value I get in the mail, could have been communicated more efficiently online. The rest of what I get in the mail is environmentally destructive junk.

Government services attempt to provide as much service as possible whilst charging as little as possible, sometimes resulting losses. Corporations attempt to provide as little service as possible whilst charging as much as possible for it, often resulting in multimillion dollar bonuses for corporate executives. Competition is what corporation strive to cripple by forming cartel, buy buying out the opposition and then ramping up prices to pay for it, by lying to consumers, by lobbying for reduced worker rights, by not paying tax, by seeking corporate welfare from the local, state and federal government.

But, why does a poor taxpayer that might send a couple of letters a month have to subsidize a big corporation doing mega mailings of marketing junk (which they get a lower rate for than the poor guy)? Sure, the cost for the user of the service is low, but you're not counting the subsidies. The major users are commercial businesses. But, everyone has to pay for the subsidies. It costs much more than the price of the stamp...

So more efficient letter carriage, drop Saturday deliveries, drop pick up of mail from letter box have localised post boxes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_box, just those simply changes will substantively reduce cost. Of course it you really want to do what a for profit corporation would do, simply drop all postal services to rural areas unless they are willing to pay substantially more for the service.

Yeah... because that's what UPS and Fedex have done. Oh, wait. Actually, they do deliver to those rural areas... and for pretty much the same price. Strange considering there is pretty much no government regulation of their business...

As for corporations as far as they are concerned your money is their money and they will and do lie, cheat and steal to 'er' recover it.

And that is different from government how?

Oh... I forgot... the government can imprison or kill you to get your money.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[jaypifer]

Government services attempt to provide as much service as possible whilst charging as little as possible, sometimes resulting losses. Corporations attempt to provide as little service as possible whilst charging as much as possible for it, often resulting in multimillion dollar bonuses for corporate executives.

This is really the most naive worldview I've read in a while. Thanks for the laugh.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[clarkkent09]

So, blaming human nature for not fitting in with the system rather than other way around. Good luck in the real world.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[tftp]

About the only things I every send through the mail are to services living in the internet dark ages of yesteryear (primarily government services).

Definitely not just them. A couple of weeks ago my insurance company sent me another bill, and somewhere there they made a wonderful offer of paying electronically - 12 payments per year, with each payment costing me just one dollar extra! I sent them a check for the whole sum, of course, at the cost of 44 cents. They are not alone in that. Electronic payments are not free, and someone has to pay for it. Checks are free, however irrational that may sound.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[hairyfeet]

Because when local municipalities dare to try to run their OWN lines they get told "Unfair advantage!" and then get to spend a decade before the courts. So the telecos basically have figured out how to have their cake and eat it too, by refusing to upgrade their shitty infrastructure but when some place decides to get their own better infrastructure, oh no! That wouldn't be fair. And to me this is why we will just have to have the fed either run lines like with electricity in the 30s, or just take the existing lines away from the telecos, because as it is now they have so much money small towns and the free market simply can't operate. True story:

A friend of mine operated a little shop just outside town. Even though this is a heavy populated area, neither the cableco or teleco would serve them, it was strictly 33k dialup. So he talked his boss into going in half with him to have a T-1 line ran from town. We are talking nearly 25k to have it run, and then they sat up their own little ISP to serve the neighborhood. Capitalism in action, right? Well when the teleco noticed what was happening and their shitty $80 a month dialup started losing customers they jacked the rates on the T-1 by 4000%. Apparently they had also made a few calls so that nobody else would sell to them either. They were told by the teleco "Don't like it? Just try to sue us!" and their lawyer told them "Oh yeah you'll win, but it'll take a decade and about a million five in court fees". So they filed bankruptcy and just moved away. The people there are STILL stuck on 33k dialup, and the T-1 lies rotting in a field.

The moral of the story? There is NO way for the free market to function when the ones that serve an area also own the rights to the backbone. And we will NEVER have nationwide broadband without the government forcing the teleco/cableco monopoly to compete. Otherwise you get what you have now in my area, where the cableco and teleco have not moved a single inch in nearly 30 years! My mom was a block and a half from the cable and now the DSL junction when she built her house 27 years ago, guess how far away it is now? If you guessed a block and a half you'd be correct sir!

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Threni]

http://www.expatforum.com/articles/cost-of-living/cost-of-living-in-the-united-kingdom.html

Living in this major city will definitely be pricey and cost of goods and services can be twice as much compared to smaller towns in the United Kingdom. This was captured in Britain Expat Forum last January 6,2009:

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[sac13]

Because when local municipalities dare to try to run their OWN lines they get told "Unfair advantage!" and then get to spend a decade before the courts. So the telecos basically have figured out how to have their cake and eat it too, by refusing to upgrade their shitty infrastructure but when some place decides to get their own better infrastructure, oh no! That wouldn't be fair. And to me this is why we will just have to have the fed either run lines like with electricity in the 30s, or just take the existing lines away from the telecos, because as it is now they have so much money small towns and the free market simply can't operate. True story:

A friend of mine operated a little shop just outside town. Even though this is a heavy populated area, neither the cableco or teleco would serve them, it was strictly 33k dialup. So he talked his boss into going in half with him to have a T-1 line ran from town. We are talking nearly 25k to have it run, and then they sat up their own little ISP to serve the neighborhood. Capitalism in action, right? Well when the teleco noticed what was happening and their shitty $80 a month dialup started losing customers they jacked the rates on the T-1 by 4000%. Apparently they had also made a few calls so that nobody else would sell to them either. They were told by the teleco "Don't like it? Just try to sue us!" and their lawyer told them "Oh yeah you'll win, but it'll take a decade and about a million five in court fees". So they filed bankruptcy and just moved away. The people there are STILL stuck on 33k dialup, and the T-1 lies rotting in a field.

The moral of the story? There is NO way for the free market to function when the ones that serve an area also own the rights to the backbone. And we will NEVER have nationwide broadband without the government forcing the teleco/cableco monopoly to compete. Otherwise you get what you have now in my area, where the cableco and teleco have not moved a single inch in nearly 30 years! My mom was a block and a half from the cable and now the DSL junction when she built her house 27 years ago, guess how far away it is now? If you guessed a block and a half you'd be correct sir!

But, everything you're complaining about is happening in a regulated environment, not the free market. I'm just saying you can't blame the problems on the free market when the industry you're talking about has never operated in a free market. You can certainly blame it on the typical big government/big business conspiracy to keep control over the masses. But, you can't blame it on the free market since there never has been one in this industry.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to point out some great things about postal service:

- Without government postal service the private companies could choose not to deliver packages to certain addresses (Wikileaks headquarters?) whereas the USPS is governed at least in theory is required to by the first amendment.

- The fourth amendment equally applies to things being mailed whereas private companies are under no such obligation.

- The USPS has federal law behind it for fraud through its system. UPS and FedEx DO NOT.

To be honest I wish the Internet in the US was governed by the US since theoretically the 1st and 4th amendments would be a given whereas right now a corporation could decide that you don't have to have free speech and that all traffic is up to be monitored. I understand that the Feds haven't been doing a great job when it comes to reading those amendments but at least they have the requirement which the private companies do not.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[rtb61]

Profit comes from charging more for something than it cost you to gain. Profit is generally increased by lying about the cost of the product, lying about the serviceability of the product, lying about the desirability of the product, eliminating alternate sources of supply to inflate price and using corrupt political tactics to enforce purchase and eliminate alternate sources of supply.

A government of the people, by the people and for the people. Perhaps you maybe just might of heard of it, the government is the people, the people are the government (how can you steal what you in part already own, the theft comes when certain individuals try to substantively increase the size of their part). This of course ceases to be true when private for profit interests corrupt the government to suit their own psychopathic greed, this same group will also tell the rest of the public the government is bad and they are better off having nothing to do with it and ignoring it, the simplifies control of the government by those individuals.

PS the easiest way to end corporate welfare is to limit the size of corporations and reduce the risks associated with their limited liability, no corporate welfare is required as the loss of any particular corporation is of no great significance.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[danbert8]

I agree with you that profit comes from charging more than your cost. But it doesn't have to come through lying or cheating. Let's look at tips at a restaurant. I am not a fan of the way tipping is an obligation, but the point is, it is not required, but people pay it. If you truly appreciate the service a company is giving you, then is it so unreasonable to expect them to get a profit? If the service is not worth the cost+profit, then don't use the service... It's really that simple.

Our government is supposed to be of, by, and for the people. However, you may have noticed the government recently ignoring the constitution. The existence of the TSA is not something that I instituted, it is not something I would support, and it is certainly not making my life better. The government cannot possibly make decisions that everyone will approve of. Nor can it make decisions that will improve everyone's life. The only thing the government can do is take and give by force. Now I'm not saying the government should go away, but they should limit their use of force to enforce agreed upon laws, like property rights, civil rights, and even defending our country against outside invaders. These are all constitutional mandates.

What is not in the constitution is any sort of welfare, corporate or individual. In a constitution bound government, no one has any incentive to bribe politicians, because politicians do not have any power to transfer money from the people to special interests.

Your suggestion that somehow it would be far easier to limit the size of corporations and to "reduce risks associated with their limited liability" (WTF does that even mean?) than to just stop having the government being involved is crazy. The government has no ability to judge what is "too big to fail" in a company, nor do they have any ability to judge anything about a business at all. Let business be business, and government be government.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[clonan]

Umm, a "1st Class letter" is a service type of offered by the USPS. That is like saying you are FORCED to use FedEx to send "FedEx Overnight Express Packages"

Well... DUHHHHH!

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[danbert8]

No, the point is, you can't deliver a letter except through the USPS unless it is overnight as an "urgent message". Also, only USPS can deliver to mailboxes.

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[clonan]

Not true on either account...

Put your letter in a UPS ground envelope and it will get delivered. If you don't like UPS's policy of requiering small documents to be placed in standardized envelopes than you should complain...but it is the UPS policy NOT any sort of legal requierment.

My mailbox is routinly used to deliver lots of things besides mail... Like FedEx, DHS, UPS, the local paper, community advertisments etc. The only regulation around mailboxes is that no one can obstruct thier use. This means that no one can fill them to the brim AND you have to empty it before it gets too full to use.

Now it IS true that you can't deliver a letter for $0.44 (unless they changed it recently) anywhere BUT the USPS. But the USPS does not receive any direct federal support and only receives indirect support that is also available to FedEx and the rest. It is just the the USPS is EXTREMLY good at delivering small letters cheaply.

Are you complaining about good service?

Re:Insilvent? So what?

[danbert8]

http://www.usps.com/postallaw/_pdf/USPSUSOReport.pdf#search='pes%20mailbox%20access%20rule%20comprise'

Page 2, Executive Summary:

"To ensure funding of the SO, Congress and the President established the Private Express Statutes (PES) and the mailbox access rule, which together comprise the postal monopoly"

The PES defines requirements 3rd party carriers must abide by to deliver a letter. The mailbox access rule is further defined on:

http://www.usps.com/receive/mailboxstandards.htm

"Our regulations cover what can and can’t be placed in a curbside mailbox or mailbox outside of your house, which generally includes only mail that has been sent through the USPS. However, our regulations don’t govern what can be placed in a mail slot on your door."

Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The easiest thing to do would be to greatly increase the rate for "Junk Mail" (4th class mail or whatever they call it). That "bulk rate pre-metered" stuff that costs next to nothing for a business to send, but still must be routed and delivered just like the payments I mail. I just throw it all away, and I imagine most people do the same. If it is really worth it to send, companies can pay closer to what the normal public pays. This would reduce the annoyance for folks at home while lowering the volume of mail (and raising the per item profit).

Re:Simple Solution

[Red_Chaos1]

I think that's a great idea, at least on the surface. Of course the companies would lobby the govt and instead of spending that money on the spam, it'd go into a few politicians pockets and keep it cheap and leave the USPS no better.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

They've got to be very careful; most of their revenue comes from bulk mail right now. If they destroy that market, they'll be insolvent much faster. A small increase in the cost of bulk mail might be survivable; a large increase will make bulk mail unaffordable for the local pizza place, which will quit using it, leaving the postal service much further in the hole. They'd do much better by being in grocery or prescription delivery service in a large way, like cheap next day delivery of refills from your local pharmacies.

Re:Simple Solution

[Fluffeh]

That "bulk rate pre-metered" stuff that costs next to nothing for a business to send, but still must be routed and delivered just like the payments I mail.

That might not actually be the right approach. If the postal service has to make the trip anyway, this bulk stuff can be delivered pretty much when they please. It might actually be making the most profit for them. The standard mail needs to be delivered on time, so the truck is already making the trip around - why not just pump some trash mail into your mailbox at the same time?

It might not be profitable to do those runs as a trip on its own, but I can't imagine that there is a lot of extra cost when pushing three envelopes into a mailbox rather than just one - meaning that carrying all those extra envelopes is almost pure profit.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you're a cock. Yes, a cock. You have no clue at all. Are you RETARDED? I think so. Good grief.

Re:Simple Solution

[Korin43]

I was under the impression that junk mail was how the USPS made all of its money already. I suspect they've carefully considered the rates for it.

Re:Simple Solution

[MorePower]

Ah but why does the postal service "need to make this trip anyway"? If you cut out all the bulk stuff, they would probably only need to send a truck once a week. It would be way more convenient for me to only have to go out to my mail box once a week, and nobody is going to send anything urgent via regular mail (they always suggest it could take about 2 weeks anyway, and they don't guaranty even that).

The only reason we need daily USPS service is because our box would be overflowing with all the crap mail we don't want anyway, which is only sent because it is so preposterously cheep. Raise the rates, all the stupid crap mail everyone hates goes away, you can slash your operating expenses to almost 1/6 of what they currently are, and I only have to walk over to the mailbox once a week. Its pretty much win all around, except for postal workers.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

They can't destroy it.

Most businesses don't have any real metrics or ways to tell exactly if the junk mail is worth it - kind of the same with the Yellow Pages and copies. "50% of all marketing money is a waste it's just telling which 50% is the waste is the problem." is the old marketing adage.

Nutshell: the postal service can charge a lot more and not harm revenues.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet, by weight, I probably receive at least 50x more junk than wanted post (including the occasional hard drive or video card from newegg, but those usually go UPS anyway).

I'd be perfectly happy to completely opt out of ALL postal mail, if it wasn't for the fact that some organizations (mostly government) aren't set up to notify me via e-mail.

Where's my FCC do-not-mail list? I don't need any more catalogs from DELL, no more menus from the local food establishments, no more bogus credit card offers.
I'm getting tired of having to read my mail next to a shredder.

Re:Simple Solution

[Fluffeh]

Ah but why does the postal service "need to make this trip anyway"? If you cut out all the bulk stuff, they would probably only need to send a truck once a week.

They need to make the trip every day as they have a volume of deliveries that have been sent first class. They might only have one first class delivery per street, but as that is the service they are promising when accepting a first class mail to be sent, they therefore have to "make the trip anyway" - so at that point they may as well fill the rest of the truck with crap and try to make a few bucks off it.

The point is, unless you change "first class" mail to be deliverable once per week rather than on a daily basis, you will end up driving around empty trucks each day of the week. Yes, your per item profit will be higher, but your overall net profit will be lower.

If they can indeed negotiate a "once per week" trip down a street for any mail item, I totally agree that increasing the price significantly on the junk mail will be a sound business decision, but until they do that, they are indeed likely making money by filling your mailbox with all the crap that they can shove into a truck.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it a Junior and Senior High School Prerequisite and pay the students for the 2 semester courses ~Not to screw up.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

That junk mail is the beard and butter of the postal service. You mailing your regular mail( bills) does not make up the bulk of the postal budget.

As for privatizing the postal service, It will never happen because the postal service is a giant subsidy to all businesses. They provide the service all Americans. Most private companies (UPS and Fedex )do not provide delivery to all. Every day they back their trucks up to the postal service and only deliver to the most profitable places. Postal service picks up the rest.

The problem is post is a dying business. No amount of technology will revive this zombie.

Re:Simple Solution

[MorePower]

Um, but I was already talking about first class mail. The post office generally tells you that first class mail will get delivered in "about 2 weeks, probably". In reality it usually only takes a day or two, but they won't commit to that so nobody sending anything urgent is going to use first class mail anyway. And thus, nobody would care if the first class mail only came once a week. And many (like me) would actually prefer it only delivered once a week.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

The easiest thing to do would be to greatly increase the rate for "Junk Mail" (4th class mail or whatever they call it). That "bulk rate pre-metered" stuff that costs next to nothing for a business to send, but still must be routed and delivered just like the payments I mail. I just throw it all away, and I imagine most people do the same. If it is really worth it to send, companies can pay closer to what the normal public pays. This would reduce the annoyance for folks at home while lowering the volume of mail (and raising the per item profit).

Part of the reason that junk mail gets such cheap rates is because the USPS doesn't have to sort or route it - printers ship skids of already sorted mail as close to the final destination as possible. Most of the logistical costs have been taken out of the equation by the mailer. Some of it is so well sorted that the bundles of catalogs are already sorted into the exact route the mail carrier takes.

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

novel idea: offer a service wherein the addressee receives NO JUNK MAIL. Price this just higher than the money that they make from the companies mailing them in the first place, and voila, instant win.

seriously, who wouldn't pay a small monthly fee to keep their mailbox clean and save a few trees in the process?

Re:Simple Solution

[Idbar]

That assumes that the weight of carrying all that junk mail does not have an impact on fuel consumption of the car.

I think that they could get even grab more money from painting the delivery cars with advertisement. They are rolling around and you always see them, why not put a couple of advertisement boxes and charge for them?

Re:Simple Solution

[Anonymous Coward]

"I suspect they've carefully considered the rates for it."

This is the government we're talking about. They haven't carefully considered anything.

Stop daily service to save money

[rolfwind]

Deliver Route 1, deliver Mo-We-Fr on Week 1, and Tu-Th-Sa on Week 2. On Route 2, do the opposite.

One carrier then can take care of 2 routes, cutting the workforce, vehicles, gas, and vehicle maintenance needed quite significantly. Make exceptions only for Express Mail, which is rare to Residential Addresses anyway.

Re:Stop daily service to save money

[jk379]

Carriers only work 5 days a week but the route is currently covered 6 days a week. Drop a day a week and that would be quick way to save some $$'s.

Re:Stop daily service to save money

[sjpadbury]

And Express mail isn't really handled on the regular routes, but a separate truck anyway.
Days I get Express and the like delivered, I get an extra mailman in addition to the regular drop.

Re:Stop daily service to save money

[Anonymous Coward]

That only works if you have half a truckload (or less) of mail per day for each route. Otherwise you go from two 60% capacity trucks per day to... one 120% capacity truck per day. In other words you still need two trucks.

Probably in practice there are heavy days an light days, but you still need the same truck capacity either way.

Also, you'd want route 1 to be Mo-We-Fr EVERY week and route 2 to be Tu-Th-Sa EVERY week, because if you rotate them then the week transitions are rough. (Some weeks you get a three day gap, some weeks you get two days in a row).

Re:Stop daily service to save money

[Anonymous Coward]

Note rural carriers have to sort the mail per address before they can go out to deliver it - they would have to sort two days worth on mail, so this would take them longer & wouldn't save them anything.

Privacy concerns

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the article's author "mentions" privacy concerns, but in no meaningful way. I'm not exactly sure what privacy concerns one might have considering that, as far as I know, mail trucks only travel in public places, where things like photography are legal in the US (for instance, you can't be stopped by "security" for taking a picture or filming a building in public view, though you may be curtailed if you, say, zoom into a window and taking a picture of that). Since these trucks are supposed to be taking general data like temperature and pressure (and maybe some video), I'm unclear as to what the privacy concerns actually are (at least, from a legal perspective).

Re:Privacy concerns

[DavidTC]

Actually, no.

The post office can deliver onto private property.

In fact, believe it or not, it can't be kept out by property owners if a resident wants their mail delivered somewhere. If someone wants their mail delivered inside of a locked apartment building, or even a college dorm that doesn't allow non-residents, and the post office wants to deliver there, the owner of the building cannot keep them out.

In short, if they have a letter for you, and you want them to deliver it to you at a location, and they want to deliver it at that location, they technically can demand to be let through whatever locked doors they want to deliver it to that location, regardless of whose property that is.

This is all mostly moot because the post office doesn't want to deliver mail in such a manner, though, that would be insane. It will often demand that people put up mailboxes on the public right away if they want delivery, and would certainly look long and hard before deciding to deliver mail on private property against someone's wishes.

But it raises an interesting legal point if postal employees are used for anything else while delivering mail.

But we're talking about putting them on postal vehicles, which operate 99.99999% on public roads, and it would be a simple matter to leave them off any vehicles that leave them.

wouldn't be a problem if...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe the USPS wouldn't be in such financial trouble if they didn't have to fund military retirement benefits and things they generally don't have anything to do with. It would make a whole lot more sense if, oh, I dunno, the military covered those costs.

Re:wouldn't be a problem if...

[moortak]

Military pension rates haven't applied to the post office in years.

Letter volume? What letter volume?

[Nefarious Wheel]

The postal service is going to be insolvent because the service they provide isn't worth the cost. If it was, people would pay a higher price for it. At the time that the constitution was written, it was pretty much the state of the art communication channel and it made some sense for it to be singled out as necessary along with post roads etc. Today, things are different. Most people don't use snail mail to communicate so it doesn't make sense to keep it the way it is. The modern day equivalent of the postal service's role in the late 1700's is broadband last mile infrastructure.

A few years back in the employ of one of the big-5 consultancies, I proposed a virtual post office box system for Australia Post. Nice option for the user, a single PO box that just had a permanent re-direct to wherever the person lived at the moment. Proposal got all the way up to the exec.

"Great idea! But letter volume has gone down the toilet. Thank you for coming."

Wrong

[93 Escort Wagon]

Ravnitzky suggests a variety of useful data that could be gathered by postal trucks outfitted with sensors:

detailed weather readings,

Once a day? Not useful at all. There are already tens of thousands of automated weather stations scattered across the country - I bet the author isn't aware of that.

road conditions during storms

I don't see a detailed record of how road conditions are, once a day, on mostly minor roads would help - and the state police already do this for major highways.

road quality (e.g. pothole)

This is not particularly transient - just ask the carriers to phone them in.

gaps in cellular network coverage, sources of radio frequency interference

Um... I don't see the market case, but maybe this one is at least plausible.

and in a homeland security context, detection of chemical or radiological agents.

Again - once a day?

Re:Wrong

[GPSguy]

You make some good points, but also miss a couple of key elements.
1. Rather than once/day, a once per minute weather update with geopositioning data would, in fact, be useful, especially if it incorporated the standard info but simply substituted precipitation detection and identification for measurement. Otherwise, T, Td, Pbaro,wind, and solar data could readily be obtained.
2. Rather than requiring a fixed location for each measurement, consider relating geolocation to a fixed grid square. This could be very useful for verification
3. There are thousands of volunteer observers in the US, and a lot are giving their data to NWS. It's valuable, but this would be too.
4. Some work is already going on with this at NCAR. Was in a seminar recently where they talked about mobile mesonets. In fact, a major bus line has agreed to have their bus flet instrumented and the data sent to NWS.
4. Consider Homeland security...Yes, a CBRNEevent would benefit from early detection and ongoing modeling of plume release

I've been looking at mobile weather data systems for almost a decade. Getting USPS to do this would be a good thing.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Detailed weather readings: mail trucks hit every point in between those scattered weather stations, plenty of places where there are no stations at all. I'm sorry, but every place I've lived at those things are actually pretty sparse, and this might be great for recording details about microclimates.

Road conditions during storms: mail trucks hit every major road and a huge proportion of minor roads. This information is useful.

Road quality: better coverage, faster maintenance.

Radio interference: yeah, dunno.

Homeland Security: Mail trucks are on the road somewhere all times of day or night. It might only be once a day on a particular road at a particular place, but the coverage is immense.

I think you are underestimating the usefulness of this.

Re:Wrong

[blincoln]

Once a day? Not useful at all.

Once a day may not make sense in the context of a sensor that captures data for a wide area, but it may in the context of sensors that capture data for very small, localized areas. Especially with regards to the security application that you dismiss out of hand - if postal trucks were driving around with radiological sensors while the Radioactive Boy Scout was building his breeder reactor, once a day would have been more than enough to detect what was going on before he gave himself cancer.

I had a similar idea awhile ago, but mine was an opt-in, privately-run system that would use members' cars (or even smartphones, if the sensor package was small enough and could be connected via Bluetooth) for similar purposes. In an ideal situation, that would allow a lot more frequent sampling, but even once per day - done over the course of many days - the organization running the system would be able to amass a *lot* of interesting data depending on the sensors - positions where police frequently set up speed traps, odd localized temperature/weather variations, average speed of traffic at that time of day, the aforementioned radiological/chemical oddities, etc. For a larger net/more frequent sensor polling, there are other things like building up a *very* accurate height-map of roads (to complement orbital radar surveys), real-world traffic conditions, and so on.

One of the theoretical problems I ran into was how to maintain the privacy of members while still ensuring that the data was accurate. If users are required to continuously reuse a unique identifier, then the data could be subpoenaed at some point to reveal where their vehicle was at any given time. I figured that would make people less likely to sign up, but on the other hand, if the source of a given set of data can't be identified, then it's very difficult to prevent abuse (people feeding in bogus data to throw off results). I had some thoughts along those lines*, but by putting them on postal service vehicles instead of privately-owned cars, that stops being a significant concern altogether.

Obviously the government could even do something like put a LIDAR scanner and camera array on them, then sell the collected data to companies like Google (since they're driving around anyway, it would be cheaper than Google's StreetView operation), but I imagine that might be a conflict of interest, at least some of the time, because the Postal Service has a reasonable expectation of access to places that Google doesn't.

* Basically, maintaining a "trust-level web" for each UID, where every sample was tied to a UID, and samples of the same area were regularly cross-checked. If a sample from a particular UID was outside the range of a bunch of other samples from the same area, the trust-level for all samples uploaded by that UID would be reduced. Users could reset their UID whenever they wanted (leaving no trace of the old one on their device, and no way to tie the old sample set back to them), but the base trust level for a given UID would be tied to how long it had been in use, to provide an incentive for not resetting it.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Most of these services are actually already done. Many of the bulk carriers and private fleets out there let their data providers resell some of the sensor data. They do that and they get a discount on their rate plans.

For example how do you think things like Google maps and tom tom get 'this road is congested' data...

They buy the sample data from companies like PeopleNet and Qualcomm thru other data companies. They then augment it with their own data. Between those two you cover 80-90% of the trucks out there moving around on the road. At least in the US.

Think 700k+ data samples every 5-20 mins.

This dude is looking to build a solution that already exists. There are *MANY* companies that supply these very services. The US postal service could buy an off the shelf one that does it very well. In fact they do. They do this because they 'plug in' to other long haul carriers who they contract out to. These dudes only usually use 1 of 4 systems out there. Also while the US postal service has a decent sized fleet (one of the bigger ones). They would not have enough to pull of what he wants as you have shown. A sample running past my house at varying times (anywhere from 11am-4pm) is not very useful.

I once kicked off a project to map all the potholes in the united states by using cameras and 3 axis sensors. Turns out no one really cares about it. OH the public cares. But the gov agencies dont really give a crap about it. They already 'know' (as someone usually calls it in) and will get around to fixing them when they have a budget for it, or weather permitting, or having a work crew avail to do it. So no one wanted to pay for it.

Also the cell carriers are *WELL* aware of how crappy or good their networks are. They built them. They test them. They have all the data of dropped calls and regularly analyze it. They *ALL* have internal maps that show exactly how good/bad the coverage is. They all do however keep it secret.

Also all of the 'hazard' materials moved around in the united states are actually fairly well tracked. For example if your box does not call in and you are hauling say a few tones of nuke waste they start dispatching local police and FBI. They take it *VERY* seriously.

Re:Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

The only useful thing I can think of right now would be a service like google streetview - it could be updated daily with cameras mounted on top of USPS vehicles. That would probably allow any movable object (people, parked cars) to be removed from the images.

Re:Wrong

[minkie]

The weather observing issue is tricky. Yes, it's true there are a lot of weather observing stations, but they're mostly (for very large values of most) at airports. There is also a network of about 10,000 cooperative observing stations (http://pafc.arh.noaa.gov/coop/weatherstation.php). I don't know how much overall value the coop stations add into the total weather observing system (I suspect very little, except in remote areas).

The problem with mobile sensors is that they're difficult to calibrate. A real weather observing station (AWOS, ASOS, etc) has the temperature, pressure, and dewpoint sensors in a carefully designed structure to ensure that it has free air circulation but is not in direct sunlight. The location is surveyed, so the exact elevation is known. The wind and sky sensors are likewise put in carefully controlled locations to ensure they're not blocked by buildings, trees, etc.

It's not as easy as just bolting an instrument package to the roof of a truck and driving it around. The truck itself is a significant heat source. Getting useful temperature and dewpoint readings would be virtually impossible. It also moves, so wind readings would be equally pointless. When it's at rest, it's likely to be near a building or under a tree, so even stationary wind readings would be worthless.

Homeland security?

[Sketchly]

"detection of chemical or radiological agents"??? like, someone could detonate a nuclear bomb in NYC and no-one would notice except the postman?

Re:Help prove global warming

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, that was a neat rant. Too bad it has fuck-all to do with the financial state of the USPS.

Better business plan?

[Moof123]

-Evening hours to make it easier to ship (i.e. easier to hand them MONEY!)

-Drop Tuesday/Thursday mail delivery.

-Switch to Hybrid trucks, as their driving habits are about as ideal as it comes for a hybrid rig (low speed, lots of start/stop driving).

-Offer a "Spam" blocker service as a subscription to stop junk mail for a fee.

-Make their package tracking actually track packages, not just magically go from "In Transit" to "Delivered".

-Contract with Google to put cameras on top for nearly daily updates to Google Maps Streetview.

More distopian:

-Use lobbyists to subvert things so that email/online cannot be legally used to conduct business.

-Figure out how to be another "Too Big To Fail" organization.

Re:Better business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

-Evening hours to make it easier to ship (i.e. easier to hand them MONEY!)

...Not likely. Especially in rural areas. Staff costs money.

-Drop Tuesday/Thursday mail delivery.

Even more reason to drop traditional mail entirely.

-Switch to Hybrid trucks, as their driving habits are about as ideal as it comes for a hybrid rig (low speed, lots of start/stop driving).

Perhaps; but you must realize, most of the postalmobiles out there are already pretty damned green.

-Offer a "Spam" blocker service as a subscription to stop junk mail for a fee.

...And then lose the business of people sending you that 'spam' - aka, the Post Office's primary source of income these days.

-Make their package tracking actually track packages, not just magically go from "In Transit" to "Delivered".

Going to agree - though UPS and FedEx are hardly without problems in this department, either.

-Contract with Google to put cameras on top for nearly daily updates to Google Maps Streetview.

Why? Nobody needs this. Though the idea of partnering with Google is a good one for one reason - the fact that massive swaths of the country still have no street view.

Hell, I'd just like the Post Office to clarify media mail, so I'm not given a different answer on what's acceptable and what isn't every time I ask. :P

Re:Better business plan?

[sincewhen]

> Switch to Hybrid trucks

Here in Australia, deliveries in the suburbs are done on small, fuel effient motorcycles:
postie bikes

They also have the advantage that they can be ridden right up to the mailbox, then across the driveways/footpath to the next letterbox.

Re:Better business plan?

[moortak]

http://pe.usps.gov/text/qsg300/Q370.htm The standards are there if you look

Re:Better business plan?

[Ritchie70]

So far as the spam blocker... as much as I'd like to be rid of junk mail, the USPS isn't the organization to do it.

It is inappropriate, immoral, and no doubt illegal to accept money from party "A' to deliver something to "B", and also accept money from "B" to not deliver that same thing.

If someone pays the post office the correct rate to deliver something, they have entered into a contract. The post office has to deliver it. They can't just throw it away.

Re:Better business plan?

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a worse business plan ...

-Evening hours to make it easier to ship (i.e. easier to hand them MONEY!)

...costs more money

-Drop Tuesday/Thursday mail delivery.

Ok

-Switch to Hybrid trucks, as their driving habits are about as ideal as it comes for a hybrid rig (low speed, lots of start/stop driving).

...costs more money

-Offer a "Spam" blocker service as a subscription to stop junk mail for a fee.

..."kill the goose that laid the golden egg".

-Make their package tracking actually track packages, not just magically go from "In Transit" to "Delivered".

...costs more money

-Contract with Google to put cameras on top for nearly daily updates to Google Maps Streetview.

...conflict of interest. Now Google has an unfair business advantage, plus government authorized access to private areas. Now all the kooks have actual reason not to trust USPS.

More distopian:

-Use lobbyists to subvert things so that email/online cannot be legally used to conduct business.

...Do you seriously want to go with more gov't interference in private businesses, for your favorite cause? Are you going to accept when the Gov't interferes in your life for my favorite cause? How about Rush Limbaugh's favorite cause?

-Figure out how to be another "Too Big To Fail" organization.

...They are. It's wholly owned by the Gov't already, and I believe it's function is in the Constitution. How much bigger can you get?

NO MORE PAPER CRAP ADS!

[techhead79]

Why don't they charge 5x more for advertisements? I get these crap coupon wads of paper like three times a week and it all goes right into the trash. Not to mention the dumb ass Charter love letters begging me to come back. I don't want my inbox or mailbox stuffed full of advertisements. We can't stop spam so we should at least be able to stop the snail mail right?

Re:NO MORE PAPER CRAP ADS!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup. If they didn't need to stop at every house with that shit, their routes would be done significantly quicker, saving both labor and fuel. We are opted out of every mailing list we can find, but the local crap still manages to come through every day, even if there is no real mail for us. Now let's scale that for the entire country. Not good!

Last mile problem

[pikine]

Certainly the cost of delivery should reflect on the postage.

Let's say there is a house 5 miles away from the post office in its own secluded neighborhood, and the road's speed limit is 20 mph. It takes 15 minutes to drive there, and 15 minutes to drive back, for a total of 30 minutes. At a pay rate of $50k/yr, that's about $24 an hour. The total cost of that delivery, assuming there is only one first class mail in the truck for that house, is $12. The postage you pay right now for a first class mail is 44 cents.

To be profitable, USPS would have to save enough letters and packages for this house and deliver a large batch. Someone in this household can choose to pick up mail from the postoffice sooner, or will have to wait for a few days for more mail to come. At the rate I receive mail, it would probably take a month to accumulate that much mail.

The telecom industry knows this as the last mile problem. I see no exemption for USPS.

Delivery companies know how to charge

[Anonymous Coward]

I spoke to a startup that were making wireless sensor units and mapping software, and suggested they contact the Royal Mail (here in the UK) get their sensing units installed in the delivery trucks. Seems like a fair way to get lots of data quickly and to most of the populated areas of the UK.

However, the startup guys said they'd tried this, but the problem is that the Royal Mail know exactly how much it costs to transport an object of a given size/shape/weight. Because of this, their small boxes would have cost quite a lot to be installed in their fleet which ruled out the proposition.

Get Congress Out of The Mix

[the eric conspiracy]

The problem with the USPS is that it while it is not funded by the Federal Government, it is controlled by it. This quasi-enterprise status is completely impractical.

To illustrate the issue the USPS has massive overcapacity for the service level it provides. Any business faced with this would consolidate or downsize in order to save money. Unfortunately Congress won't let them do it. Any time the USPS wants to close a branch, the people living in the immediate area protest to their Congresscritter who then blocks it. The result is gross inefficiency.

If it were possible to slap the Congress upside the head on this issue the USPS would have a chance. Right now it doesn't.

Re:Get Congress Out of The Mix

[spire3661]

It doesnt matter how inefficient it is. Guaranteed postal service to everywhere is a VERY integral part of a modern society. I dont care if USPS loses 100 billion a year, its necessary. We dont do cost:benefit analysis on military budgets, why should we do so on one of the most integral pieces of infrastructure we have?

sigh slashdot

[jonpublic]

The post office is going to lose money because unlike UPS, they can't raise rates. They have to visit everyone's house 6 days a week.

It's actually a very very efficient organization. It's the constraints put upon it that make it so that it loses money. Congress won't allow this cost saving, Congress won't allow to cut service. Congress won't allow it to raise rates.

If you know anyone that's a postal carrier, you know it's a stressful job. Hence the term, going postal.

Re:sigh slashdot

[crunchygranola]

The post office is going to lose money because unlike UPS, they can't raise rates. They have to visit everyone's house 6 days a week.

It's actually a very very efficient organization. It's the constraints put upon it that make it so that it loses money. Congress won't allow this cost saving, Congress won't allow to cut service. Congress won't allow it to raise rates.

...

Actually it has made profits fairly consistently in the past, it posted a profit of $910 million in 2006. Since then it has taken it on the chin with the economy, and - as you note - the refusal of Congress to allow cost reductions or raising rates to allow it to adapt.

Any number of service cut backs that a private company would make in a heartbeat can restore it to profitability, as can appropriate rate increases.

It is a highly efficient operation - you cannot find another postal system in the world that does better.

Why do they have to be profitable?

[rubies]

If the service benefits most US taxpayers. Besides which, if I were going to spend a fortune on sensors, I'd put them on garbage trucks instead. You *know* the garbage is getting picked up, but the mail truck doesn't necessarily go everywhere, all the time

Re:Why do they have to be profitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is that you have to deal with a gazillion different garbage companies. With the USPS you could have one agreement.

Re:Why do they have to be profitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the service benefits most US taxpayers.

USPS is a marketing system; that vast bulk of mail is adds. That which isn't marketing could easily be handled with Internet transactions or Fedex/UPS service.

Don't ask why it costs so much; you'll end up learning about unions, pensions, benefits and lawsuits sucking the Federal Government dry.

This all ends when the world's credit markets begin to suspect the US is a debt sinkhole and demand rates the US can't afford. Enjoy.

Re:Why do they have to be profitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was under the impression that one of the main reasons the service was government-run was precisely because it can only be run as a profit-losing endeavour.
Specialized deliver options already exists for the high-end of the market (courier services), and they can be employed for day-to-day letter delivery if one chooses; the bottom end ensures things like bills reach their recipients, at minimal cost to the mailing and receiving parties. Plus, a government-funded system has a mandate to deliver whether or not it is profitable to do so (IE : they won't sit on a bag of mail for Poukeepsie until there's enough mail to warrant a run out there).
It is an integral link in the social chain.

Re:Why do they have to be profitable?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am with you.

I don't know why USPS should make money. Can anybody here tell me which part of the US government, except the Treasury and Customs (IRS doesn't count, by the way), made any money? The Congress? The Senate? POTUS? SCOTUS? US Army? Navy? Air Force? Marines? If we are going to cut down unprofitable units, at least, lets start with biggest losers.

Re:Why do they have to be profitable?

[garyebickford]

The funny thing is that, until approximately the Civil War the entire Federal budget was funded primarily by postal fees (sorry, couldn't find a citation with a quick search.) I'd like to see something like that again - heck, I'd pay $10 to mail a letter to reduce the Federal Budget by $1 trillion or so. And that included having a Navy, etc.

In 1863 the rate was 3c per 1/2 ounce, which with inflation was worth something like the following in 2009 dollars (consumer price data doesn't go back that far):

$4.25 using the unskilled wage
        $8.17 using the Production Worker Compensation
        $6.07 using the nominal GDP per capita
        $55.60 using the relative share of GDP

(IMHO the Production Worker Compensation figure is most useful - in other studies I've seen, a carpenter's wages are a remarkably useful measure across the last several hundred years, for the midrange (eventually middle class) family.)

A typical letter is likely to be more than 1/2 ounce, so that price should be doubled. So in today's prices, mailing a letter should cost over $10.

Also, with exceptions for wartime, that price remained the same through 1932!

That's Already How It Works!

[waldoj]

Congratulations, you've just described exactly how the USPS works.

Bajillions of people who live in rural areas (like me) pick up their mail at the post office, because the cost of delivery to their homes is prohibitive. Universal service is not, in fact, universal, and never has been. Even UPS won't deliver to my house—I've got to pick up their packages at the post office (!), too.

Also, your example is ludicrous. Have you ever heard of a house so isolated that it's in a "neighborhood" (?) five miles away and yet, mysteriously, this five-mile-long stretch of road, devoid of any homes or businesses, has a 20 MPH speed limit on its road? Because I can't summon any scenario in which that would be the case.

Re:That's Already How It Works!

[pikine]

You've apparently never lived in Vermont. But thanks for blaming your frustration on me, for the lack of universal postal service because you chose to live in a rural area.

Re:That's Already How It Works!

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously. At that stretch I bet the driver is pulling 65, maybe 70...

Re:That's Already How It Works!

[Anonymous Coward]

Even urban folks have to travel to get their mail. Communal blocks of boxes are common, even though an apartment complex has to be the easiest possible route to walk due to the extremely short distances between residences, unless there are just massive amounts of stairs to navigate. (For a high rise, OK, a block of boxes, everyone will walk past it every time they enter the building anyway.) My tiny little box is a block away from where I actually live. (I'm agoraphobic. That block to the box might as well be several miles, there's just no possible may I'm going to spend that long under open sky to walk there.) But UPS and FedEx come right to the door.

What Login Link?

[russlar]

Login link? Where?

"Live" street view

[ben_kelley]

I read an article a while back about a company developing a system that can pull together CCTV feeds from a number of sources to produce a time-stamped street view. They indicated that a potential source of data collection would be to put GPS correlated cameras on service vehicles, such as buses and garbage trucks. (I imagine USPS trucks would work here.)

The output of such a system was a map-like user interface. Think Google Earth/Street View, but where you can ask it "OK, but show me the same place this time yesterday," and the system works out the best way to show you what you want.

Homeland security / Seinfeld

[Yvan256]

The 'Wanted' posters at the post office...
You're there, you got your package, you're trying to mail something, this guy's wanted in 12 states.
Yeah, now what? Ok.
I check the guy standing in line behind me...
if it's not him, that's pretty much all I can do.

Shrink it already

[defaria]

I don't understand. We all know that people increasingly use email instead of letters and Facebook et. al. instead of sending pictures or post cards. People bank on the web and don't need to send paper checks anymore. Why not simply shrink the post office if the demand's not there. Surely we can find other more intelligent things for the former postal workers to do!

charge extra for junk mail

[FudRucker]

any magazine that offers the occupant something for sale then the USPS should be able to charge extra for the delivery of that advertising (junk mail) i have a grocery sack of junk-mail magazines waiting to be recycled and its all pulp spam to me, buy one item 5 years ago and they all share your address and spam your snail mail box for the rest of your life.

Anti-wikileaks measure

[gsgriffin]

I think we all know that the postal services is not going away. They will increase fees and get more from the tax payers. Hopefully, they will make good decisions, and perhaps someone should tell them that people are sending more emails than mail...in case they didn't get the memo. I would also suggest that some might be sending more written letters than emails since the wiki leaks. There has got to be more than one company or agency that is now sending a few more paper items because of that.

Sell advertising space on the side of their trucks

[kungfugleek]

Worked great on The Apprentice.

Just let it fail already

[jaypifer]

All the USPO is at this point is a junk mail distributor. Mail has been by and large replaced by email. They duplicate efforts of private companies that could easily fill any gap they would leave behind. The $8.5 billion loss is the tip of the iceberg if we consider unfunded pension liabilities.

Re:Just let it fail already

[toadlife]

Actually they are over-funding their pension liabilities.

Close excess branches

[Ed Peepers]

They should close some of their excess branches. In rural areas/small towns where people might raise more of a stink, make the USPS an in-store mini-office at the nearest grocery store. If banks manage to have secure in-store branches, I imagine the USPS can figure it out too.

Re:Close excess branches

[garyebickford]

When I was a kid, that's how the local post office was set up - a window in the grocery store. And we were only 8 miles out of downtown Portland Oregon. But mail delivery was run out of the central office.

They're not losing money

[perpetual pessimist]

From the postal service's own Inspector General report:

The following paper demonstrates that the current system of funding the Postal Service’s Civil Service Retirement System pension responsibility is inequitable and has resulted in the Postal Service overpaying $75 billion to the pension fund.

The postal service is having money extracted from it each year, channeled to other parts of the federal government pension systems (mostly military). This is to help disguise how bad the federal budget is overdrawn. If the post office were allowed to fund their peoples' pensions the way every other government agency is, they'd be showing a profit.

Re:They're not losing money

[PrimaryConsult]

+Informative!
If I am understanding it correctly this arrangement would actually hurt the military and other government pension systems if USPS were to reduce staffing...

Wrong: A Mailbox with a view.

[Anonymous Coward]

My solution to the "once a day" problem is to turn every mailbox into a sensor platform and pay US for the data.

Privatize it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Get with the times: the USPS receives $0 of your tax dollars and that's been the case since the 60s. While not truly private - if it were a private sector company, the U.S. Postal Service would rank 26th in the 2008 Fortune 500 - the USPS operates as a government regulated monopoly, which by statute is not permitted to make a profit. Thus sudden changes in the price of fuels, changes in First Class habits, rises in the price of paper often hit the USPS hard because there is no cash on which to fall back.

Cut deliverys in half

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather than lose money, they should cut residential deliveries by 50%. I certainly do not need the junk mail at my home 6 days a week. 3 days would be fine. In theory, that would mean 50% fewer carriers would be needed.

There would be issues - like where to store the mail for delivery later. Think about that - 2x as much mail stored overnight as before. That could be an issue during busy seasons.

Vermont?

[waldoj]

Both sides of my family are from Vermont—Rutland, on one side, and the White River Junction area, on the other. I've spent a lot of time there, and I think I'm about as familiar as somebody who doesn't live there could reasonably be. And I can say that with fair confidence that Vermont's rural areas are no more rural or isolated than the rural areas of Virginia, where I live. (Compare Vermont's population density and Virginia's population density. While you're at it, compare the Blue Ridge Mountains to the Green Mountains. If you were blindfolded and kidnapped, when the blindfold was taken off, you'd be hard pressed to know if you were in Vermont or Virginia.) Good luck finding any USPS address that has no other USPS address within five miles.

And I'm not at all frustrated about the lack of universal postal service—it's no problem for me at all, having been the case for me for much of my life.

Re:Vermont?

[pikine]

I'm only presenting this argument, take it or leave it:

Google Map indicates that in vast majority of the rural area (pick any state you want), post offices are 10 miles apart in Euclidean distance. However, roads are not straight. That means you easily have to drive for 5 miles from the post office to a postal address. And these roads are curvy and in the woods, so 20 mph is a reasonable speed limit. How fast do you expect trucks to drive anyway? You're not driving a Ferrari.

I'm not arguing literally that there shall be no other houses within 5 miles. It is your own nitpicking and/or misunderstanding of the example; that is not the point. The point is that mail delivery is a point to point problem. There is no guarantee that you and your closest neighbors down the same road will have mail the same day. Hence what I'm presenting here is the worst case analysis. I have no statistics regarding how the population density correlates to the volume of mail delivered. They may not even be correlated. I'm only trying to illustrate why universal service is not feasible; much thanks to your affirmation.

Now, would you please get off my lawn and get a life? I'm not interesting in your argument clinic since you fail to bring new insight.

Re:Insolvent? So what?

[KingAlanI]

The post office nearest my house (14610) is used to capacity, perhaps even a bit understaffed relative to the lines.

Raise the postal rates to allow a 1% profit

[lsatenstein]

The rates in Canada are around 60 cents per letter. Actually 57cents plus federal and provincial taxes. We let the post office make a profit so that far away places like the frozen north can have regular delivery.

Let me pay to NOT have my mail delivered

[joeaguy]

I have had this idea for a long time for the postal service to both make and save money. I would pay a small monthly fee for the post office to NOT deliver my mail.

Specifically, I want a virtual PO Box. All my mail would go to a processing center where the front and back of each item is scanned, OCRed, and placed on a web site where I can look at it all. I can then direct them to send or shred any individual item. Because the return address, etc, is OCRed, I can also set up filters for mail I want automatically delivered, like bills.

I don't have the deal with the hassle of sorting through and recycling junk mail, the post office makes some extra money, and they save money by having to deliver less mail. Direct marketers might not like it, but maybe they could be notified of send or shred decisions and can use it to help cull their mailing lists.

Re:Let me pay to NOT have my mail delivered

[tftp]

Specifically, I want a virtual PO Box. All my mail would go to a processing center where the front and back of each item is scanned, OCRed, and placed on a web site where I can look at it all. I can then direct them to send or shred any individual item. Because the return address, etc, is OCRed, I can also set up filters for mail I want automatically delivered, like bills.

I'm unsure how you can automate scanning of flyers and other assorted packing materials that they send you once or twice per week. And if you don't do that then filters won't work. USPS gets money for delivery of that junk, so it has to at least offer it to you - it can't dump it right away.

There is also a problem of magazines, catalogs, and whatnot that is large and has pages. It has to be manually handled, so that only top and bottom are scanned - and not some random pages. Each scan must be confirmed (by a human) to be legible. Then all that stuff has to be stored at the post office for some long time (before it is returned) even if you are checking that Web site every day or two. This calls for construction of new automated warehouses at high price - instead of just dumping the paper into your mailbox and letting God^Wyou sort it out.

Also in terms of time, it is much faster to sort the junk mail when you have it in your hands. You don't need to click and zoom on something; and if the nature of the mail is unclear, tear the envelope open and see if this is a bill for a service that you need, or an ad about replacement of your water heater. It's hard to misidentify things when you hold them; but it's much easier if they are just pictures on the screen. It is also essential that every item is correctly tagged and stored, so when you command the system to junk some postcard from some real estate agent the system doesn't junk the bill for your Internet service :-) This has to be automated, otherwise there isn't enough people on this planet to run it by hand.

If such a system is created then USPS will see considerable drop in revenue, even though they can lay some people off too. The broken glass will not be broken anymore. Your purchase of pizza will not be paying salary of your postman. This may be the right thing to do, but one can't claim that USPS profits will increase. Consider that after the USPS invests into those multi-million warehouses and robots - warehouses that are designed to hold the junk mail - the volume of that junk mail drops like a stone, and then those warehouses turn into a bad investment. USPS will go bankrupt because it *already* took a credit to build all that stuff, and now it has no money to repay the investors.

Re:Let me pay to NOT have my mail delivered

[joeaguy]

In my post I just said the front and back would be scanned, not the contents. The post office already scans and OCRs the addresses on each item, regardless of type. Taking a full front and back scan or photo would not be such a problem. If I want to see the full item and its contents, I just click to have it delivered.

Would the increased revenue minus the costs of the storage and processing work out to a profit? I don't know, but I think it could. Right now I can rent a PO box and it is manually filled by someone, so I don't see this as being so different, but it would be more automatic and centralized.

Mass marketers could be offered a new product, virtual mail. Instead of sending me the real thing, an image of what they want to send me appears in my virtual PO box. If I want it, only then does the marketer actually mail it, so they can save on printing and postage costs, and know they have a good potential customer, and the post office does not have scanning or storage costs for that item.

I do agree that intentionally ambiguous mail is a problem. Credit card companies love to do this, sending me cash advance checks I don't want disguised as something that might actually be important. That has to get dealt with other ways.

The post office has already been doing a lot to decrease its labor force and do odd things to manage part-time vs full-time, etc. If the variables are adjusted correctly, this could produce a smaller more stable post office that now also has a reason to focus on the needs of mail receivers as well as senders.

Re:Let me pay to NOT have my mail delivered

[tftp]

I should comment only on this:

If I want it, only then does the marketer actually mail it

A lot of advertising is done against your will. The advertisers try to force their product into your field of view because they know how that works - you remember what you have seen or heard, even if you don't memorize it intentionally. Mattress Discounters, may you burn in hell! :-) I threw a pound of flyers out last time, but one was from Lowe's and another from Walgreens. Guess what, I need to buy something in both of them! But if a complicated protocol is standing between the ad and my eyes then most likely I'd never see it firsthand; I'd just ban Lowe's and Walgreens and Ace Hardware and OSH even though I buy things in all these stores now and then. So advertisers will not want this approach - it's race to the bottom because once you are banned by the reader you will never be unbanned.

Re:Let me pay to NOT have my mail delivered

[joeaguy]

I understand that. You would still see the item in the web interface, still see the big message on the outside to make you aware of the brand, but you would not get the physical item unless you say you want it. Brands can still get you the big message for cheaper, but not have the spend the extra money on sending out the details unless you actually care.

Why is opt-in and opt-out so sacrosanct when it comes to email and phone calls, but when it comes to regular mail there is so much resistance? We get so much junk, and its an environmental issue too, but opting out of junk mail is just too much effort, and we are opted in so easily with no action of our own much of the time.

Advertising is the insidious glue that greases and pays for so much culture and so many services, so its is a necessary evil of western capitalism. Advertising is something I wish was scaled back a little. Doing that does mean some realignment in what things cost and how some things work, but I do think its worth thinking about, instead of us all just resigning to a fate of constant marketing bombardment. While technology can and has made some things worse in this regard, it also can give us some creative ways to get a better balance back.

One minor detail...

[praecantator]

I keep seeing people talking about privatizing the USPS and comparing it to UPS/FedEx -- the problem with those comparisons is that UPS and FedEx don't deliver mail. I have a feeling that if you cut out all the 4th through 1st class non-package mail, the USPS would be pretty damned profitable; it's the sorting and delivery of thousands of irregular piles of paper that's a killer.

Well, that and the fact that the USPS is ludicrously cheap for what you get -- check out the comparison chart from earlier this year at Postal Sanity (http://postalsanity.com/2010/07/u-s-postal-rates-excel-in-international-comparison/).

Same thing goes for the private sector

[rsilvergun]

as long as you're an executive. Carly Fiorina ran HP into the ground. I don't see her collecting unemployment checks.

Wrong

[SuperKendall]

She ran HP into the ground in terms of dismantling momentum. But it doesn't mean that she can do that forever without repercussion the way an arm of the government can.

Neither can the USPS

[SuperKendall]

UPS won't send a postcard from Alaska to Florida for 28 cents, either.

After losing many billions of dollars, it would appear the USPS cannot do that either.

Just because it costs you 28 cents does not mean that's what it actually costs to transport.

Is it really fair that four other people paid to send your postcard? Why should you not pay the real costs?

USPS is a jewel

[bayankaran]

USPS is a world class organization. Nonsensical privatization or selling off, or unnecessary opening up will kill one of the best institutions of USA. I have used Postal Services in USA, Japan, Canada, India, UK and many other countries. The level of service and professionalism of USPS is world class.

An alternative to running your own "street view".

[Gavin Scott]

A few years ago it occurred to me that you could utilize an existing fleet of delivery vehicles suck as the USPS, UPS, or FEDX for applications like Google Street View.

You would negotiate with the controlling organization to mount your sensor/camera array on each vehicle, and remotely collect the data.

The cool thing was, if there's a particular street that hasn't gotten coverage, you can simply send an empty package to an address at the end of the street as a way of ensuring that one of the trucks visits that address.

G.

Get USPS away from Congress!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is putting the price of stamps and other services/goods made available by the USPS not an option?

Is Congress to blame for that?

Delivering mail only 5 times a week seems perfectly acceptable to me.

Oh wait, Congress stops that too.

Get Congress out of the fucking decision making loop for the USPS please!

broke? they cry wolf every two years

[Anonymous Coward]

How are they always broke?
Hell they have machines that sort everything now.
Maybe they shouldn't be making 25$ an hour and the bosses don't need to make 100,000 a year plus.
I would probably be even more mad if I knew what they actually made an hour...

Thanks

[gr8_phk]

I hadn't clearly noticed the contradiction before: Mail is not considered a priority and has no specified delivery time, yet the come by 6 days a week. I'm all for skipping Wednesday or Saturday or both. I'm also all about charging more for bulk - since that is the majority of what shows up.

Re:Thanks

[Grishnakh]

Yep, I wish they'd skip Wednesday to start out with, because then you'll never go more than one day without delivery (Wed and Sun). If you need it there on a Wednesday (or any particular day for that matter), you need to be using Express service anyway.

I'm sure they've thought about charging more for bulk, but unfortunately bulk mail is keeping them afloat right now I think, so there's a fine balance there: if they raise their bulk rates, there won't be as much bulk mail. More profit per item, but less revenue, probably meaning less profit overall. I don't know if it'd work, but it'd be nice if they could jack up their bulk mail rates, and lower their parcel rates, and try to concentrate more on being a low-cost (but not-so-quick) parcel shipping service to compete more with UPS and Fedex. With all the online sales going on these days, I think they might be able to do better there.

Excellent

[ThatsNotPudding]

With the USPS' help, we'll finallay locate Hogan's radio transmitter! The ball-bearing plant in Schwienfurt will finally be safe!

Not really a study...

[Anonymous Coward]

You keep trotting out this "study" but fail to note that there were a total of twelve trips between the three carriers, so you're only looking at the averages of FOUR points for each carrier. Not an excuse for poor treatment, but hardly enough to claim any clear winner. Also, the article doesn't pick out FedEx or UPS as being particularly rough with "fragile" packages -- it says that all three carriers were rougher-than-average on marked packages. Again, this is based on an average of four points, so not terribly compelling. Retest each carrier a couple hundred times and then maybe we'll have a meaningful discussion.

Here's an idea....

[dentar]

... how about raising postage just enough so it makes $0.01 a year. It'll still beat the living hell out of UPS and FedEx for mailing a letter.

Raise the damn fees!

[Anonymous Coward]

Why haven't they raised their damn postage fees so that they are breaking even?! Being Canadian I have always been quite jealous at some of the ridiculously low postage fees Americans pay to ship stuff up here. (eg: A big padded envelope with an item inside, shipped for $1.18 to Canada, while if I sent the same envelope from Canada to the US, it would cost me at least $5. Or a large box with heavy items: From US to Canada: $18. From Canada to US: over $30!!!!)

So the obvious solution to operating the USPS without losing money is to charge people a realistic amount to ship!!!!

"I am the Lord of the Wasteland"... apk

[Anonymous Coward]

"Whatever exists here is mine..." -> http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1916240&cid=34612834

APK

P.S.=> Including ITT Tech Man, Professor hairyfeet (who got owned by not only proof from myself, but also others here on /., with more by request no less (but, I think what's there does the job - my std. "Kung Fu" has been HUGELY administered, & it was, as-per-my-usual? Man - Just too, Too, TOO EASY... 2 EZ!))... RofFlMaO... apk

Telecoms are not Regulated nor Free Market

[clonan]

And neither has it been really regulated for the last 30 years.

Look at the FCC ruling yesterday. They barley passed weak Net Neutrality rules which are not likely to last more than 6 months when the new Republicans come into ofice.

Technically, the Teleco/Cableco system we have is NOT free market and it is NOT regulated. It is callen an Oligopy. There are about 6 large companies with very well established and stable geographic regions. These companies cooperate to maintain the status quo while marginally competing on the technical services offered at the perimeter.

Telecom companies are a power to themselves because the last 30 years moved to fast for government (and almost everyone else) to keep up and we also starved the regulators of the resources needed to actually regulate the giants.

Re:Telecoms are not Regulated nor Free Market

[sac13]

And neither has it been really regulated for the last 30 years.

Look at the FCC ruling yesterday. They barley passed weak Net Neutrality rules which are not likely to last more than 6 months when the new Republicans come into ofice.

Technically, the Teleco/Cableco system we have is NOT free market and it is NOT regulated. It is callen an Oligopy. There are about 6 large companies with very well established and stable geographic regions. These companies cooperate to maintain the status quo while marginally competing on the technical services offered at the perimeter.

Telecom companies are a power to themselves because the last 30 years moved to fast for government (and almost everyone else) to keep up and we also starved the regulators of the resources needed to actually regulate the giants.

Are there government rules that they must comply with? Can they get into trouble if they don't comply with the rules? If so, it's regulated... period.

Whether or not the regulation has been good is completely separate from whether it's market or government driven. You are complaining about poor regulation and blaming the market for the results of poor regulation. That assertion is completely without factual basis since it is and has been most certainly regulated.

And, honestly, where has government demonstrated good regulation? I hear lots of crying about how we need more regulation to solve problems. I'm just not aware of an instance where regulation itself hasn't created even more problems.

Having a neutral referee to make sure things are done properly is a tremendously attractive concept. But, I'm not aware of it ever working in practice. With regulation, we still got the BP oil spill. We still have food recalls due to tainted food being distributed despite passing USDA inspections. We see bridges collapse despite regulations being in place.

You can make the argument that the regulators are just under funded. But, looking at the federal budget, we're already spending trillions every year. How much is too much? Can we really do everything? And, if not, where's the non-arbitrary line defining what we do and what we don't do?

And, the even bigger question is, why is one large organization of people less prone to corruption than another? We dislike the big corporations, but celebrate government? Many make the claim that the government is more accountable to the people, and that's why it can be trusted. I'm just not aware of any evidence that would make that a true statement. We had an election a couple of years ago talking about "change." What we got was 3 times the troops in Afghanistan, continuation of patriot act type government activities and an extension and expansion of the Bush tax cuts.

How can anyone claim the government is accountable to the people? Reality shows it is most certainly not, no matter what theoretical ideas we may wish to be true.

Re:Telecoms are not Regulated nor Free Market

[clonan]

The natural refferee is The Free Market

However if you actually read "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, the book that essentially defined modern capitalism, you will find that the free market ONLY works with small organisations. This is actually true regardless of the economic system you use.

Socialism works, facisim works, capitalism works, feudalism works, true democracy works and anarchy even works... they all work, so long as the number of people is less than about 1000. Above 1000 each and every system breaks down very quickly and requieres outside influences, like government, to keep things working smoothly. Take away government and capitalism will break within 48 hours. Within a year we will all be effective slaves to our CEO Lords.

There is actual a real and measuable psycological reason for this which I won't go into.

There is one reason why in general a US style federal government is "more trustworthy" than a mega corp. Elections. Every 2-6 years people can be replaced. They know this and while they may not listen to me, I can often get a conversation with my Rep or Senator. Plus my single vote is worth the same as the single vote of anyone else, regardless of how much money they have.

Yes I know that corporations have board elections. However there is typically no way for to select an indvidual board member (no primaries) and it is usually a single vote for the boards recomendations. Plus, votes are based off of shares, not individuals. Therefore my vote does NOT count as much as someone else. Plus I may be a customer but own no shares and I have no vote. All this means that it is almost impossible to contact the C-level executives or even the director level at any large company.

Fundamentally it comes down to "wWho do you feel Screws you the Most?"

For me personally, I have never really felt screwed by the government. Other than a single local cop I have never run into a capricious government worker. I know a great many and the general rule is that government works work very hard for not much money.

However I feel screwed by large companies Every Single Day.

I have had a large dental company lie to my insuance company and when the insuance called them on it they decided to try to extract it from me. I have had banks (plural) try to change the credit rules in a way that would eliminate my ability to decline...and did so in a very under handed way.

My profession is in Pharma, I write drug applications so I know the regs. I get Gout and the primary treatment is a drug called Colchicine. It has been on the market for 60+ years as a generic. Since it is so old there wasn't any formal safety studies done. The FDA solicited volunter companies, paid them to do the studies and then gave them 3 years market exclusivity. URL Pharma took the money to do the studies, which were very simple, then bumped the price from $0.09 per pill to $4.85 per pill and had all generics banned from the market...

Don't get me started on telecom, FedEx, UPS, Agra Business etc.

When possible I move to small companies or co-ops. Like I now bank through a credit union not a bank. These organizations are typically MUCH smaller. But often, like with food, it is impossible to do so. The mega corps, in one name or another, have taken over.

Government is the ONLY weapon we have against the Mega Corps, and in the US the government is actually extremly responsive and virtually coruption free.

Re:Telecoms are not Regulated nor Free Market

[sac13]

The natural refferee is The Free Market

However if you actually read "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith, the book that essentially defined modern capitalism, you will find that the free market ONLY works with small organisations. This is actually true regardless of the economic system you use.

EXACTLY!!! Small organizations are the only way to guarantee minimal corruption and minimal influence for what corruption there is. And, Adam Smith, like many true free market thinkers, was against the idea of corporations... which, are a creation of the government.

Socialism works, facisim works, capitalism works, feudalism works, true democracy works and anarchy even works... they all work, so long as the number of people is less than about 1000. Above 1000 each and every system breaks down very quickly and requieres outside influences, like government, to keep things working smoothly. Take away government and capitalism will break within 48 hours. Within a year we will all be effective slaves to our CEO Lords.

Well... we certainly just can't cut the cord, but an orderly exit wouldn't likely cause that much of an impact. And, we wouldn't be slaves to our CEO lords, because they only have their power due to government. Without government in the market, there's no such thing as a corporation. It's only individuals dealing with individuals. There's no laws to empower the existence of large organizations... no patents or copyrights to enforce... no concentration of wealth in the corporate, non-person entities because they don't exist... and, they can't exert influence if they don't exist or have resources.

I don't claim it would be utopia. There's no such thing possible. But, there's certainly a lot less power concentrated in government and its corporate proxies that it has created. And, that's always going to be better for the average Joe that doesn't have access in our current government/corporate system.

There is actual a real and measuable psycological reason for this which I won't go into.

It's called humanity. When you stop dealing with non-human entities, processes, procedures and regulations, all that you're left with is people. And, even the biggest assholes have a more difficult time dehumanizing someone face-to-face. And, once you recognize someone's humanity, you tend to be more fair. We can all rant about the rich, the deadbeats, the politicians and whatever else. But, how many of us actually know someone personally that fits in one of those groups that doesn't fit the standard profile.

Corporations and government don't have humanity. That's why they always create problems.

There is one reason why in general a US style federal government is "more trustworthy" than a mega corp. Elections. Every 2-6 years people can be replaced. They know this and while they may not listen to me, I can often get a conversation with my Rep or Senator. Plus my single vote is worth the same as the single vote of anyone else, regardless of how much money they have.

And, yet, over 90% of incumbents get re-elected. And, yet, the problems still exist despite government ever-growing to deal with more and more issues.

Sure, there's a mechanism in the system that could be used, but is it ever really used? And, if so, is it ever that effective? Are you thrilled with the November election results? Is that an example of the system working well?

Yes I know that corporations have board elections. However there is typically no way for to select an indvidual board member (no primaries) and it is usually a single vote for the boards recomendations. Plus, votes are based off of shares, not individuals. Therefore my vote does NOT count as much as someone else. Plus I may be a customer but own no shares and I have no vote. All this means that it is almost impossible to contact the C-level executives or even the direct