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Tech Experts Look To Help Save the Postal Service
An anonymous reader writes "Some of the folks responsible for developing and promoting e-mail, e-commerce and social media are banding together in an attempt to save the US Postal Service, the institution arguably most threatened by the technological developments of the past few years. As mail volume continues to plummet and more Americans use the Internet to pay bills and keep in touch, Google executives, social media experts and some of the most passionate tech evangelists are planning to meet in Crystal City in mid-June to sort out how to save and remake the nation's mail delivery service. The conference, PostalVision 2020, is designed to bring together the people who understand what this technology has done, is doing and will do to digital commerce and communication in America. USPS anticipates losing about $7 billion during the fiscal year that ends in September and is in the process of eliminating 7,500 postmaster and administrative positions to save money."
Government is shrinking. Please don't interrupt the process.
Life in Orange County
Every time I've been to the post office, there's been 15+ people in line. I have a hard time believing the mail system is on the way out any time soon. Telegraphs didn't kill it, telephones didn't kill it, why would email kill it?
In other news, an alliance of the nation's best and brightest thinkers have come together in an attempt to save the buggy-whip industry.
- Alaska Jack
Because it performs a valuable service that there still isn't any combination of complete substittues for. (Anyone who thinks UPS or FedEx could just step in on the mail or stuff-delivery end doesn't know shit about the shipping industry and should be treated as such.)
For example: Do you like Amazon or Netflix? They wouldn't exist without the USPS.
Even in countries where first class mail costs twice as much as in the US, postal systems have a hard time staying profitable only from mail. In Finland, where I live, post offices have to sell candy, kitsch gifts, and office supplies just to stay in business. In many communities, the post office is just a corner rented in another store (a change I understand has begun in the US too) instead of a separate location.
Here they solved the issue in an elegant way: The Post office has been granted a banking license, and the banking activity is subsidizing the postal activity. Mind you, in the central post office where I live (Turin, pop. 1,000,000 more or less), there are about 20 booths, 15 for banking, two for receiving mail and two for outgoing mail, so the service is mediocre, but banking has effectively stemmed the flow of post office closures.
Mind you, I cannot but wonder....what would have happened if they auctioned off the post service altogether with the general delivery obligations? maybe large banks would have been interested? and think of the multiple conflicts of interest, since the Post is state owned.... no banking licences in the sticks where a post office is present? is there a ban on opening more post offices in rich neighborhoods? After all, banks are after assets, not post traffic...
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
As someone who shipped a lot of packages through USPS, the solution is very simple. Get a real time tracking system in par with UPS and FedEx (not bullshit overnight updates) and make the insurance for package claims less of a joke than UPS and FedEx.
As bills and correspondence mails have gone down, online buying and selling has taken it's place. But, most people are uncomfortable sending their packages through USPS. The tracking is only delivery confirmation and that costs extra at the post office. With cell phone technology, it should be trivial to implement real time updates.
If a package is lost, the insurance system is a joke. It takes forever and you can only correspond by mail. The insurance is ridiculously expensive and when you need it, it's a massive headache.
If they just fix those above issues, then lots of business would come swarming to them from online shippers.
Another thing, their rates are kinda screwed up. For heavy packages, the rates are much much higher than UPS and FedEx. It comes down to only making sense to send packages by USPS for under 4-5 lbs. They probably should also do the sweetheart deals with big companies that UPS and FedEx do - like shipping for pennies on the dollar for large volume shippers.
And, there are some sink holes like in Bell, CA that if packages get there, they come out weeks later (famous for losing Oscar votes). There are a few of them across the country.
I think USPS should move towards being more geared towards packages. But, that's just my end of the pond where I shipped packages through USPS. Maybe junk mail is the cash cow, or certified mail.
If they're losing $7 billion/year, it doesn't look like the USPS can handle the job either.
Google should just buy the USPS. Then they'd have everyone's name and address, could mount cameras on the carrier's heads for mapping and insert advertising into each batch of mail.
Actually, that's what the USPS should do to raise some cash: sell us out to advertisers. It's not like I don't just throw away 95% of whats in the box anyway. Sifting past a few more dead trees wouldn't really be hard.
>> arguably most threatened by the technological developments of the past few years
I disagree! They are most threatened by gas prices! US Postal was originally transported on trains and hand sorted while the train was going to its' destination. Hand sorting on a train meant that everything was ready to be delivered on arrival rather than sorting at the destination postal facility. Airlines under bid railroads to get mail service but now they are having trouble competing. I see no reason why we shouldn't support our railroads and go back to delivering mail from the rails.
Unlike, say, UPS, the US Postal Service is not and has never been a for-profit corporation. It's an agency of the US Government, required by law to exist, serve all citizens, and is granted a special monopoly status. If it's in the public interest, it can run at a deficit, take up unprofitable jobs like serving the people that live in the middle of nowhere (which many private competitors refuse to ship to), or keep prices lower than they would be in a pure market-driven system.
At worst, if the mail volume drops dramatically, they could move to having fewer delivery days in areas that don't get a lot of mail. And they may well be able to use technology to improve their sorting and delivery system, but as it stands they have processes that put FedEx to shame.
I am officially gone from
Ha, this is a laugh. Google and the other Ph.Ds are going to sit down and dream up some (what seems to them to be) good ideas. Then those ideas will die in a hail of lawsuits when they encounter hard, cold reality. The Ph.Ds write a paper about how people like us are too smart to have our ideas understood, and move on to the next conference, hopefully in Aspen this time (Crystal City, ugh if it were in the midwest it'd be flyover territory).
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Perhaps they could climate Saturday delivery for letter mail. Do I really need junk mail and bills six days a week?
be more like UPS and Fexed they are doing good and that is with UPS union drivers.
Here's my suggestion to make the post office more useful. Let everyone register a postal address that is dissociated from a physical address. Then when I move, instead of filing a change of address form and hoping that everyone who wants to send mail to me ever again sends it in the next year, I can just tell the post office "Yeah, that postal address should now be delivered to this *new* physical address"
The biggest problem is the fundamental issue that individual residents make the flawed assumption that they are the post office's customers, when in fact they are the post office's product. They are a product being sold, and if you want to know who's buying you, just look at the ton of spam in your mailbox. Any demands for better service aren't heard as dissatisfied customers, but as disgruntled products.
Pound! Bang! Bin! Bash! is this a shell script or a Batman comic?
A postal service that serves all Americans equally, even if they live at the end of a dirt road a few hundred miles from civilization, is a founding value of our republic. The founding fathers knew that the free market could do mail, but they didn't trust it and thus they gave the fledgling nation a public (now quasi-public) postal system. Private companies, concerned with profits, cannot guarantee that rural residents will receive mail with the same prices and service as people in the heart of downtown. The USPS can.
I have news for you, USPS has been subcontracting out mail delivery to private companies in many areas. I think it's called (been 3 years since I was a carrier) Highway contracts. USPS is a disaster. It will take an act of Congress to completely revamp USPS regulations and policies into something that can make money for the long term. That will never happen as there are too many different unions involved that would allow such a thing to happen and impact their union payments.
Wish I had a spam box for all the junk mail I receive.
sysadmins and parents of newborns get the same amount of sleep.
Government bureaucracy + unionized workers. I highly doubt it can be "fixed".
Do you have ESP?
For Real. These days, I bet, anyone who is willing to pay $0.45 to mail something, would also be willing to pay $1 or two.. The only people that would be hurt by a dramatic increase in postage prices would be the bulk-junk mailers. And they can go to hell. Disclaimer: I worked for a junk mail company once.
I always choose UPS or FedEx for Amazon, and stream Netflix.
I only ever use the USPS when I don't have a choice, and I loath it every time. Their idea of package tracking is "we'll let you know around the time it may or may not have arrived".
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
Anything you don't care about, can probably be sent electronically just as easily.
Anything you DO care about should never ever be sent by USPS.
I've had nothing but bad experiences with sending stuff via USPS. nothing. Tracking numbers that still read "waiting for pickup" at the origin point days after they've been delivered (i.e. tracking is useless). packages that mysteriously disappear for months at time with nothing but a shrug from the postal service. packages that take days to show up even though they're coming from about 50 miles away. mail that shows up shredded in a plastic bag with a note saying "oops, our bad, enjoy the 8% of this letter you actually received!"
Every single time I try to give them the benefit of the doubt and say "maybe the previous couple experiences have all been flukes, let me give them one more try", they do their best to disappoint me and prove my previous experiences were not flukes.
May they crash and burn like any other business. propping up a business just because we're used to it being there is WRONG. if there is business that USPS handles that UPS, Fedex, DHL, etc don't... well when USPS shuts down those services can and will step in to fill a need, and I trust each one of those WAY more than USPS.
And hey, maybe if the 0.079 cent taxpayer subsidized mailings are no longer available to large mailing houses through the USPS, perhaps I'll be able to stop digging out the hard copy spam that constitutes roughly 50% of the mail that shows up in my mailbox.
Chug along in the black, year over year, without any government $$$.
Not surprising, when you consider what a miserable experience it is to go to the post office. Lines, attitudes, incomprehensible forms, and shlockly-looking people.
It's like the DMV meets Walmart.
Parent's notion is so flat out wrong that it should probably be flagged as "troll".
to virtually every address in the neighborhood. Every day. The UPS guy might stop at one or two houses within eye-shot every day, dropping off large boxes of stuff, for which the sender has paid many, many times what the sender of all those USPS first class letters paid. The USPS could be profitable without losing business to the private carriers. They are tooled up to handle first class and bulk (junk) mail like no one else. They just need to charge a realistic amount for what they do. The problem is that everyone, including Congress, remembers "when it only cost a dime to send a letter to grandma...", so there are extraordinary barriers to them raising rates to a realistic level; barriers that clearly don't exist for FedEx et al.
The question of interest, I think, is whether the postal service is in the red because they suck, or in the red because their mandate has(with the decline of the letter as a medium) largely shrunk to cover the unprofitable shit work of shipping(Picking up a letter, at your post box, in fucking nowhere, and delivering it to somebody else's postbox in a different fucking nowhere on the other side of the country, for the price of a stamp, is not exactly a lucrative niche...) while FedEx and UPS are free to ignore the low value segments and focus on carrying packages, with an emphasis on larger shippers and aggregated pickups.
In a sense, the real question facing us about the postal service is approximately similar to the real questions behind rural electrification, or telcom access: There are places in the country where providing infrastructure is, per capita, cheap. There are others where providing it is really, really, really expensive. There are areas where the infrastructure customers are relatively wealthy, and ones where they definitely aren't.
We can definitely trust the private sector(as long as they don't gain monopolies or oligopolies) to serve areas where customer willingness to pay is sufficiently high and cost per capita sufficiently low. We then come to the question of what to do about the ones where that isn't the case.
Obviously, this doesn't imply that the postal system is well managed, or that it couldn't do better(and, if improvement is available, it should definitely be undertaken); but, like rural telco and electrification, the fundamental question is not one of wringing out small operational efficiencies; but of whether or not we, as a society, wish to provide a baseline infrastructure to areas where it is not strictly economically justified. Depending on exactly how efficient you are, these areas may be somewhat smaller or somewhat larger; but it will almost always be the case that you could improve financial performance by just writing off your lossy service areas and letting them suck it up.The question is, is that what we want?
Honestly I don't care what they do except for eliminating junk mail. I'm lucky if I get ONE piece of valid mail a month, yet my mabox is full every day.... and yes iv opted out at every opportunity I can find. I loath the uspo because all they seem to do is deliver trash to my door and in it hide my water bill n occasional government notices.
The solution is to close the brick-and-mortar post offices -- which the government has no clue how to run effectively -- and offer cheap franchising packages. We'll see new "Mailbox Etc." outlets open on every corner. Then the USPS can focus on what they do brilliantly -- door to door delivery.
FedEx and UPS could EASILY pick up this traffic. Yes, they'd have to hire a bunch of people. Good thing there will be lots of postal workers becoming unemployed! I'd be perfectly OK with my mail carrier only showing up once a week for regular mail and dropping it off in a big bundle in order to save money, and only make a special trip for packages if the sender pays normal FedUps rates to get it there within X days. They only pick up my trash twice a week, and I'm OK with that.
Hell, for regular mail (non-packages), UPS/FedEx could charge a small monthly fee to deliver to people's houses at all - if you don't want to pay, pick your mail up at the office. These companies could also sell a mail-digitization service like Earth Class Mail - let them scan all my dead-tree-spam and send me PDF's via email.
I'm also perfectly OK with hiking the crap out of the cost to mail a letter. People are bitching that it's gone up to 40-some cents. Make it $3. Why? All the people who chop down forests to tell me I can save money on breast implants and Bright House cable will knock it off, and the people I actually do business with (credit card companies, the power company, etc.) will be incentivized to make it easier to get electronic billing.
The postal service was a great idea, and we should all thank Ben Franklin for it. Used to be that milk delivery was a good idea too, and it got outmoded. Society moves on. This service has long outlived its usefulness and consumers have been telling it to go away loud and clear for over a decade. Get the hint. Government and government-backed agencies (yes, I know USPS is self-funded now) should NOT be competing with private industry. Where private industry can do it, and do it better, we should let them.
I just went to report this incident since it occurred to me they probably have a form to do so...
Thanks for your email.
A US Postal Services® representative will reply to your email within 2 to 3 business days.
The case number for request is: Problem processing ticket service request
Stay classy, USPS. They don't even listen to their own automated systems, they're not going to listen to a bunch of eggheads.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Private companies, concerned with profits, cannot guarantee that rural residents will receive mail with the same prices and service as people in the heart of downtown. The USPS can.
This is exactly the problem with the USPS. To deliver to my house takes a heck of a lot less effort than to that guy living in the middle of nowhere above the Arctic circle. Why subsidize the rural population? What is it about living from civilization is so great and important that we must pay for it? This isn't 1800, the requirement for vast segments of our population to work the land for food is gone.
SSC
USPS actually did a poorer job than Lysander Spooner's company, the American Letter Mail Company. ALMC provided better service to more people, for cheaper prices than the USPS. Then the government shut him down, and gave the USPS a monopoly. Thus there have been rising prices for over a century for mail.
UPS and Fedex and others don't break the monopoly because they can't - they're forced to pay whatever shipping cost the USPS would have charged the customer to USPS, and then add their own overhead on top of that.
http://CryoLANparty.com/ A lan I'm staff on!
I have two suggestions for mail.
1. I have no need to have mail picked up and delivered to my house 6, or even 5 days a week. I would be willing to drive to the post office a couple of times a week. Perhaps most people would. I am sure there are people for whom that isn't practical: they should pay a premium for home pickup/delivery.
2. Stamps should be RFID tags. Businesses who create large volumes of mail would associate the address information with the tag ID at the time the mail is created. For people who hand address envelopes, the address would be keyed & associated at the post office, once. From that point on the mail could be handled - sorted & routed - automatically.
Of course, if you live in the middle of nowhere, "receive mail" is only an "archaic form of communication"; because newer ones are also subsidized for you. Rural telecommunications and electrification are also projects that weren't exactly undertaken because the ROI was enticing to Wall Street.
If the objective is efficiency, you might as well tell any rural areas that aren't totally loaded to shove off and learn to enjoy natural solitude, and let any impecunious urban areas enjoy the newfound feeling of community that comes with being cut off.
I'm not sure that that would be such a popular move; but it definitely would decrease the per-capital cost of infrastructure.
If you get a letter from the italian post office, is it a poste.it note?
*ducks incoming tomatoes*
like delivering junk mail
if i don't check my mail every day in a few days my mailbox is overflowing with catalogs that i usually dump straight into the recycling bin. the USPS makes a lot of money from these and won't stop delivering them and legally the postman can't just dump them in the trash at my request
Well, I am not willing to even pay $0.45, but that is the lowest cost alternative, so that is what I do. FedEx or UPS is not willing to deliver a letter for me for $0.45.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Because it performs a valuable service that there still isn't any combination of complete substittues for.
You mean a service that cannot legally be substituted for?
Armed USPS inspectors raided the company’s Atlanta headquarters to determine whether or not the letters the company had been sending via FedEx were indeed “extremely urgent” as required by the Private Express Statutes. The letters didn’t pass the test, and Equifax ended up having to pay a $30,000 fine.
Raise the damned rates! And I do mean by a substantial amount.
If your customer base has shrunken, you've lost out to a competitor. If it's essentially vanished, you offer nothing they don't. Despite what may be said, the Post Office isn't dead -- it's just broke. You want to mail a letter? You want to make sure it gets there?
Five bucks to mail a personal letter. You may hate it, but when it comes time to mail a letter to your girlfriend in California, five bucks won't seem like such a burden after all. And that's the key -- capturing that novelty market that uses it from time to time for the physical sentiment of having an object sent by one person in their hands.
We still need a postal system, because we still sometimes need to send physical documents, packages, etc. What we DON'T need is mail delivery six days a week. Mail delivery could be cut down to only four days a week. Carriers could have larger routes, but two or more days in which to run them. The changes which need to be made are not complicated, but the bottom line is that we need fewer postal employees, and that's where it's going to get tough.
Proverbs 21:19
So .. what is your point?? Where is it written that every American has the right to get daily mail?? And at what price??? I throw away almost every piece of mail I get, the USPS isn't delivering mail, it's delivering paper to be recycled in the form of ads. Every magazine I get I could get at the post office or electronically. In fact, I get so little mail I only check it once a week. So deliver it once a week.
.. the US government didn't create postal delivery. It was created long before the US became a country.....
Those that live on the end of dirt roads don't stay there, once a week they could go into town and get their mail. It's their choice to live out there, they can deal with the consequences. Why should I pay for their choice????
Eliminate junk mail and only deliver once a week. That should just about do it. Then charge accordingly.
Oh
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
Countries have a hard time holding on to large amounts of land if there's not some minimum level of habitation. Just look at what's happening to the Russian Far East: in 50 years time, that will probably all be lost to China, along with its water and mineral resources. Encouraging some level of rural habitation and land use is a longterm strategic interest.
The United States Postal Service, while operated by the United States government, is required to be self-sustaining. Yet, it is not allowed to be autonomous. It seems like every time they try to cut costs - closing redundant retail locations, eliminating Saturday delivery, etc. - they face extreme opposition from Congress (often saving because the waste benefits their districts). In addition, they are prevented by law from raising postage rates above the rate of inflation - no matter what their costs do. I'd hate to try to operate a business under those conditions.
That being said, there are some areas where efficiency could be improved. I recently started doing mass mailings for my business, and was appalled by some aspects of their processes - the user interface of their employee-facing software was terrible, for instance (and, perhaps more surprisingly, veteran employees seemed unaware of its quirks).
I think that we (as a country) need to realize that delivering small mailpieces to every household and business in the United States will never be a profitable venture, and be willing to ensure its financial viability through subsidies while also enabling and encouraging efforts to improve efficiency. UPS and Fedex are profitable because they skim off the lucrative parts of the business - large package and express delivery - leaving the rest for the USPS. The USPS serves a very valuable role in this regard, especially for certain less-advantaged populations. We can't expect it to operate like a for-profit business while simultaneously demanding that it fulfill these money-losing - yet necessary - responsibilities.
"The USPS's first incarnation was established by Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia in 1775, by decree of the Second Continental Congress. The Post Office Department was created from Franklin's operation in 1792, as part of the United States Cabinet, then was transformed into its current form in 1971, under the Postal Reorganization Act."
It was so important, that the Postmaster General used to be in line for succession to the President. Even in 1775, it was acknowledged that information was one of the most critical functions of a nation. It affects security, commerce, and national unity.
Why does this matter now? Because while paper mail may not seem important, the United States government must ensure information flow. That's why we regulate telephone, radio, television, and the Internet. Rain, sleet, snow or hail, information is arguably the make or break of a nation.
I8-D
I would much rather go to the DMV than walmart. Less yelling children, cleaner floors and probably faster service.
Yeah, government can guarantee any and every single thing it wants - it doesn't have to make money. All this is good until it crashes the economy with its weight and then the guarantees will mean nothing. Who cares that you'll get your check and your paper money if they buy nothing?
Let's see how the government 'guarantee' is working out for the housing market and price stability and SS and minimum wage and Medicare/Medicaid and safety and the value of the dollar itself.
What did Ben say when asked by Ron Paul about the definition of the dollar? Oooh, yeah, he said:
My definition of the dollar is what it can buy. Consumers donâ(TM)t want to buy gold; they want to buy food, and gasoline, and clothes and all the other things that are in the consumer basket. It is the buying power of the dollar in terms of those goods and services that is what is important, and thatâ(TM)s what I call price stability.
Right. So the dollar "is what it buys".
However there is an action definition of the dollar, as it was stated by the Coinage Act of 1792, and it's not some hand waiving.
The dollar is supposed to be a unit of weight of gold or silver defined like this:
371 4/16 grain (24.1 g) pure or 416 grain (27.0 g) standard silver.
$10 is 247 4/8 grain (16.0 g) pure or 270 grain (17.5 g) standard gold.
--
So excuse me if I do not believe in any government guarantees.
If you take your dollar to the Federal reserve bank you are NOT going to get 27g of pure silver, and for your 10 dollars you will not get 17.5g standard gold.
Government that prints money and guarantees stuff ends up destroying its economy and society.
You can't handle the truth.
In Victorian London, where postage was the only way to communicate, there were 3 mail deliveries per day. You could toss a letter in the box in the morning, and good odds your recipient would have it in-hand by the evening.
Now, in the age of email and massive abilities to communicate with each other, mail is only useful where the actual physical delivery of something is needed - we have better ways to communicate information.
I'd say that we could easily now drop to 3 or even 2 mail deliveries per week and be completely ok. (Personally, I could go to 1/week or even lower, but I'd imagine most people need it more than me.)
-Styopa
Mail is down to a trickle. Every time I see the mail lady drive down my street of about 20 houses, she stops at oh, 5 of them, unless it's a day we all get some junkmail.
So, lets back it down to 3 days a week. Mon, Wed Fri? Mon, Wed, Sat?
And for rural areas, lets limit pickup. I used to live down a 1/2 mile dirt road. We rarely got any mail, however, every day the mail lady drove to the end of the road to see if our flag was up. What a waste. How about we make some community drop boxes that can be checked without getting out, going behind it, and dumping a bag.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I would gladly -- nay, eagerly -- pay a small monthly fee to the USPS in exchange for the mail carrier performing one simple service: spam filtering.
Take all the flyers, coupons, and other advertisements, along with all the mail not addressed to me (I very frequently get mail not only for the previous residents who sold us the home 2+ years ago, but for the residents prior to them, and the residents prior to those residents going back at least a decade), and deliver those items straight to the trash.
If fate makes you a motorcycle, you become a motorcycle.
Correct. I've found recently that FedEx and UPS are taking packages from shippers, bringing them to my part of Outback, Nowhere, then handing the packages off to the USPS. This seems odd, and maybe wrong. They are apparently undercutting the USPS on sales at the point of origin, then tasking USPS with final delivery. No, I haven't really checked into this, it may be a good money making arrangement for the USPS, but I doubt it.
What I think is, the USPS needs to be rethought, at all levels, and restructured. But, that's what TFA suggests might be happening . . .
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
It's implied in Article 1 Section 8, the USPS enumerated among the very few legitimate powers that Congress actually has. That's sort of the problem: USPS isn't just a "good idea" ; it's written into the highest law. Now it doesn't really spell it out as a right, so you can fight over what the limits of its service should be, but the founders clearly meant it to serve everyone.
No reason; this isn't about "should." It's about Congress being empowered/required to do it. And that's how it's probably going to be, unless we pass an amendment.
Basically what you're describing is called zone skipping, and the USPS / FedEx / UPS have collaborated and thrown a fair amount of money to make it possible, so I assume it has to work out in the USPS's favor in some way.
Amazon free shipping tends to use FedEx's version of this scheme.
guess i'm not sure why it should be saved. just because it's been around awhile?
Because it is a service mandated by our Constitution?
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
I questioned the USPS on that recently. Tracking tells me that my package has been accepted, then processed, then it leaves point of origin - then it's in limbo for 1 - 6 days. Suddenly, the package has arrived in destination city, and it's out for delivery.
The story is, the package is processed, then it goes into a bin. That bin goes into a truck, and the truck travels without ever having that bin scanned again, until it is offloaded in the destination sorting facility. At that point, it MIGHT be scanned, letting me know that it has arrived in Texarkana. Most often, it's not scanned at that sorting facility, but simply sorted and shipped to my post office. My post office actually scans everything, at which point I learn that it has arrived at my local post office, usually around 6:50 AM, and that I can expect it to arrive at my house around 2:00 PM.
Seems a crummy system. Why have tracking, if the tracking only works at origin and destination?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If losing 7 billion out of a revenue stream of 7 billion (or less), then yes, you are correct.
OTH, if you are losing 7 billion out of say 250 billion, then it is minor, and can be corrected.
The problem is that this is 7 billion out of about 100-250 b.
That amount of money was caused by piss-poor planning from about 5-10 years ago.
What is needed is for them to drop their costs (such as move to 100% electric vehicles) and get more for their labor costs such as collecting utility data on all of their routes, offering up AUTHENTICATED IDs on-line, etc.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I always choose UPS or FedEx for Amazon, and stream Netflix.
Sure; but neither of those options would exist without free-delivery Amazon and snail-mail Netflix.
There probably will come a day when that isn't true. Today isn't that day.
The short answer is that they have two senators and their vote actually does count. The 25 least populous states combine to only about 17% of the US population. That means that 17% of the country controls half of the senate. In the history of the US, the disparity in population has never been so high. Thus, we have senators from my home state (population 19 million) begging senators from Wyoming (pop. ~560,000) and Vermont (pop. ~625,000) for an equal share of federal attention.
Yup, so they are shedding employees, like any other business that faces reduced demand for their product/service.
well when USPS shuts down those services can and will step in to fill a need, and I trust each one of those WAY more than USPS.
Fortunately I already addressed this angle in the very post you're responding to. :)
Article 1, Section 8 says the US Gov has the power to establish Post Offices and Post Roads. It doesn't say anything about requiring it to do so.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Quoting myself:
Article 1, Section 8 says the US Gov has the power to establish Post Offices and Post Roads. It doesn't say anything about requiring it to do so.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Great, we can screw the workers what a wonderful plan.
Here is another idea:
1. deal with the contracts you signed. I call that one personal responsibility, not popular with your kind I know
2. remove regulations forbidding rate increases
3. go to plugin-hybrid vehicles since most postal driving is stop and go.
4. combine offices
5. combine mail boxes into large sets of boxes, 1 per mile or so.
Hey, someone's gotta live out here to do unimportant things like GROW YOUR GODDAMN FOOD.
Nice to hear we're appreciated.
Seriously. With the exception of certain legal documents (which should be converted to a secure digital format of some kind) why do we *need* to try and save/rely on paper mail? What possible benefit is there?
I check my mail every day, not because I actually get mail every day, but because every local store and service provider in the area send me crap that fills up my box. I immediately toss all of this into the garbage (not the recycling because the garbage is what is next to our mailboxes at my complex and I don't want to carry all this crap back to my flat).
I get maybe one or two pieces of mail a week that is actually for me, they are all bills for services that for whatever reason won't go completely paperless, even though I pay them online.
Ave Molech Setting
Nothing is wrong with the Post Office. If Congress would stop siphoning off $5 Billion a year it would more than break even. This is being done partly to support our massive government spending and partly to punish postal workers for having the audacity to belong to unions which try to guarantee a decent standard of living.
I think that the demise of USPS points to one thing: the external interface to offices is ceasing to be paper based. The information is still transferred, but no more is it done using paper as the medium. It does not necessarily indicate that offices are going truly paperless. Some are, some aren't. The definite trend is to transport less paper between offices, and I use the term widely to include both corporate giants and each home's "office". Within the offices, though, it's hard to infer the amount of information that gets printed out. Certainly as soon as it has to leave the building, it's converted to electronic form. Maybe all they do is scan things: there must be a good reason why Xerox advertises their document scanning & management services in prime-time spots in many U.S. markets.
I'm quite happy, though, that we finally woke up to the fact that shipping paper around is just a huge waste. Think of the millions of gallons of fuel already saved by not having USPS ship as much stuff around, their workers not having to drive to work, etc.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
They are only in the RED because they are required to handle their pensions differently than other entities.
If they were able to stop having pensions they would probably be just fine. However the Constitution gives Congress the authority to establish Post Offices which means they can do as they see fit. So they saddle the Post Office with requirements which can best be described as "What is your Whim today Mr Congressman???"
Yes they have some archaic work rules and some horrid processes (like you can ship your publication with them but if you use that rate they are not even required to deliver it - I mean, WTF? I paid you to deliver something they legally can lose) but they do make money.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Maybe it's because I live in NYC, but I've always found USPS service to be, well, excellent.
At the post office, the lines are reasonable, the staff friendly (although I do use the APC for most services.)
I've receive most of my eBay deliveries via regular mail, and it works fine.
The mailperson who works my block knows me by sight.
I actually prefer to use Priority Mail over UPS or Fedex. It's cheap and easy for one, and the post office won't sit on the package if they can deliver it faster than the TOS. If they can do it overnight, they'll deliver it overnight. If it's gonna take three days, they'll deliver it in three days. (UPS? If the deal is to deliver it in two days, its gonna take two days, even if the location is only thirty miles away.)
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
If it's only 7 out of 100-200 b, then what are we talking about ? Just raise the prices a few %, and the problem is solved.
A government-run postal service was set up by the same people who passed your beloved coinage law. It's hilarious when libertarians have so little knowledge of history that they suggest institutions argued for by the Founding Fathers are insidious Big Goverment.
All they do is drop off a load of trash at my door every day.
> tech evangelists are planning to meet in Crystal City in mid-June to sort out how to save and remake the nation's mail delivery service
A notebook type device providing secure, digitally signed, irrevocable, end-to-end delivery of most all that is currently being delivered on paper. It also functions as an electronic yellow pages and phone book that automatically updates itself, and you can do financial bookings using it.
I checked your source it doesnt cite anything, and I didnt find anything in the first two pages of google hits. It sounds made up.
Which will not address the underlying issues. What is needed is for them lower their future costs, not just current costs. THat was the problem with the solutions from 2005 or so. They did really did nothing for long-term solutions, only for the moment.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I'm pretty sure that the per-capital cost of anything is 1. :)
all those forms for cert/registered mail...can't they have one form that is easier to use ? some label printer for those forms ? preprinted forms with IRS address at tax season ? you wait on a long line to get some nice stamps, and the guy only has one type of stamp that you don't like, *and he can't get a different type of stamp*
un effin believable
how about a bag for the 40 bucks of stamps you just bought on a rainy day ?
Until you can buy something on ebay, craigs list, or similar and have the product emailed to you a physical post office is needed. (last time I looked the transporter hadn't yet been invented). The USPS is needed to keep USPS, FEDX, and others honest. The USPS is still the best buy in shipping for media mail (books, computer disks, etc) and if you think that all printed media is going away you are wrong.
You are 1/3 right
the USPS is a goverment monopoly that provides (roughly) equal service to everyone in the country, rich or poor, NYC or Alaska.
If you go to a private company, it may be cheaper, but aside from cutting wages for rank and file, and greatly boosting wages in the c suite, the main way they will save mmoney is cherry picking - what happens in health insurance.
you live in NYC, in an apt building, doesn't cost anything to deliver mail. You live in Alaska, you outta luck.
just what the health insurance companies do - you sick, no health insurance for you !!
Subsidizing everyone living in the middle of nowhere in order that food can be grown doesn't make sense to me - as far as I can tell that can only decrease the efficiency of food production. In effect what it does is to have taxes subsidize food, but only if it is grown in the middle of nowhere. Remove the subsidies and food will still be grown because the demand is still there and it is inelastic (it won't decrease with increasing prices as everyone has to eat). What will happen, though, is that it will only be grown in the middle of nowhere if that is economically efficient. So the effect of removing subsidies from the middle of nowhere will be to increase the efficiency of food production by moving it to the places where it can be done most efficiently. It may also remove the indirect subsidy to food, though that could be corrected for either by directly subsidizing food (regardless of where it was grown) or by paying every American the difference, which they could then buy the more expensive food for. So the only net effect would be more efficient production of food.
There are legal reasons why mail must be delivered once each business day. For one thing if we got mail only once a week all bills would have to have their legal due dates extended by two weeks in some cases. E mail delivery isn't guaranteed, mail delivery by the post office IS. So not getting a bill by email would probably be a legal defense for the bill not being overdue. Lot's of laws would have to be changed (and challenged) if the postal service was eliminated or greatly modified.
Eliminate the junk mail discounts/subsidies, shrink the work force once the volume drops off.
Train the remaining workforce to actually be highly productive and friendly.
Success.
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
But they're NOT really losing $7 billion a year.
What's actually happening is that a few years back, Congress started making the Postal Service not only make massive pre-payments to their workers' retirement funds, but the Postal Service also was forced to make contributions to the retirement funds of workers who used to be in the military, for the time they were in the military. This shifted a large amount of costs from the military budget, to the Postal Service budget. Gee, I wonder why they did that?
If the Postal Service had to fund its workers retirement funds the same way the other government agencies do, and only had to contribute to the funds for the former military workers the portions that they worked for the Postal Service itself, they'd be in the black.
It ain't the Postal Service that's broken. It's Congress. Want to fix the Postal Service? Either put it completely back under the government as just another agency, or free them from Congress writing their rules.
Is this mentality entirely whole American or is this how everyone in Europe thinks about all their government does for them.
Why subsidize the sick population with healthcare?
Why subsidize kids with schools?
Why subsidize roads for those with cars?
Why subsidize those without cars with public transportation?
Why subsidize those in rural populations with Internet/Postal Service/etc?
Because it's what makes a society function. When I traveled abroad and the topic of healthcare came up, to the people I was with (Dutch) it just seemed unfathomable not to take care of your fellow Americans. Where as if it's breeched with a large part of the population it's "This is mine, you can't have any." I'm not saying either mentality is wrong but it just seems like a fundamental difference in thinking.
We watch CEOs walk away from failing corporations with hundreds millions of dollars in their hands and people go "meh". But try to get the homeless addict into counseling, off the street and into a productive role in society and everyone is up in arms. I was watching a documentary and people allow it because it's the "American Dream" and if they should ever magically win the lottery or become a multi-national CEO, the don't want that dream taken away from them.
And the most best part, we're a "Christian" nation. As my AP government told us. Jesus is the most popular socialist of all time.
Maybe I just need to move to Europe.
When UPS says I'll get a package "on Friday", I've had it show up as late as 9pm, if at all.
When USPS says I'll get a package "on Friday", it's always exactly at 4pm.
I prefer consistency.
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
Exactly. Nobody can even try to compete with a government-mandated monopoly that loses money. The way to 'save' it is probably to destroy it. I guarantee people will still need to send letters, and people will still pay for the service, and someone will step up and handle the issue.
I don't think we even need to be that drastic, though. Just repeal the law and force USPS to make a profit and the market will take over.
"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
Your search foo is weak
The problem is they are closing post offices where they lose money (even if they say they don't), which unfortunately tends to be in the same rural communities that need the post office the most, since they typically end up on the wrong side of the digital divide as well. If we actually forced the monopolies to lay high speed connections to these areas I'd be fine with eliminating the postal service. Don't get me wrong, I like netflix, but it is going digital. I like cards and letters too, but I mostly get junk. If I am going to get 99.9% junk and bills and .1% letters and cards it might as well go to my email, because at least then it can be filtered more easily.
Get a web developer
All of those UNION jobs. Unions typically vote democrat, so look for democrat friendly tech firms to try to help prop up a dying institution. If the U.S.P.S. cannot keep up, then they need to go.
The solution was long ago to move into parcels to compete with UPS. That market is much more stable. USPS failed to realise this simple solution and seize it.
It is a Constitutionally Mandated function of Government. Ron Paul types should be all over this.
And that's exactly what would happen if UPS and FedEx were allowed to compete with the USPS. They would cherry pick the most profitable routes, and leave the USPS holding the bag with all the unprofitable ones.
I'd like to see citations please.
I'm currently working in Saudi Arabia where everything is subsidized. There's little to no taxes here. I've heard import taxes are 2%. Fuel is 13 cents American a liter. But to mail something is expensive -- $4/letter -- according to the Saudis I've asked. I haven't mailed anything yet.
I love that US mail is cheap. I used to mail things all the time. I'd much rather get an actual hand written letter than email.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
Because someone who lives on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere is going to have a decent Internet connection. Right.
I'm pretty sure internet access in the middle of nowhere is quite shitty, and barely serviceable.
So .. what is your point?? Where is it written that every American has the right to get daily mail??
The US Constitution. You might want to read up on it sometime.
Why would you want your currency to depend on the value of a commodity? If a big gold mine is discovered, the contents of your bank account shrink. If there's no more gold in the world, there's no way for nominal wealth to increase as productiveness increases, so you get deflation.
Inflation, by the way, has been below 3% for almost all of the last 20 years; how much more stable do you need your prices?
That's a pretty stupid argument. They also have the power to establish the Armed Forces. Should we shut those down too in favor of private replacements because they don't have to do it?
Wow, you just now realized that you don't get the same amount of gold from 1792 for your dollar, and that the dollar was taken off the Gold Standard?
News flash: Old laws can be changed and superseded by new laws. It was not long ago that sodomy was a punishable offense.
Well, since you're arguing that the Founding Fathers had this divine wisdom, did that somehow cease to exist when they came up with the Post Office?
Again, retarded argument. By that nature, they don't have to establish a Cabinet either.
yes, you said that nobody else can currently fill some roles that the USPS currently serves. Do you contend that if they were allowed to collapse, no current company would step up to fulfill that role, nor would a new company form to satisfy a need?
I'm pretty sure that the history of business says otherwise. if it is profitable to do something (and legal, and even sometimes not), somebody is going to step in and make the money.
Maybe you should learn a bit about US political system. The Congress was the body that passed the Coinage Act, not a president, that's first.
Secondly: people do right things and wrong things very close together, why is that a surprise?
You can't handle the truth.
The USPS doesn't really offer tracking, they offer delivery confirmation, which is what the service is called if you buy it (or if it's included on products like Priority Mail).
The post office still provides certain truly vital services and shutting it down would cause massive problems throughout the nation. But perhaps it is time to massively scale back the post office? Perhaps if there were fewer deliveries on fewer days it could avoid financial problems. Its main purpose for me for the past year has been netflix videos, which are not time sensitive. When I do have to move a physical option that is time sensitive, I virtually always turn to FedEx or occassionally UPS. I suspect I am in the majority in this.
Because it's part of the US constitution you all know and love so much.
So you actually are willing to pay $0.45?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
Why would you want your currency to depend on the value of a commodity?
- gold is money, not just any commodity. But I would rather use anything as money than any fiat currency (and I do, I only use fiat currency to get back into real money and when I need to run a transaction that only accepts so called 'legal tender').
By the way, if you didn't notice, gold was always going up once the dollar became just a piece of paper, printed at the whim of a politician. Why would you want your money to deteriorate in value all the time? What, you don't like having savings? You don't like prices going down, you only want prices to go up as you are taxed upon your entire holdings that are denominated in fiat?
If a big gold mine is discovered, the contents of your bank account shrink.
- welcome to the age of the printer. Do you know that they can print until they run out of trees (and also out of cotton and plastic now?) They don't even have to discover a mine of something to print. Pretty illogical to complain about a possible mine discovery (and they do discover mines all the time) and the fact that money doesn't have to be even printed anymore, as Bernanke said, he just 'adds zeros to the account', but don't take my word for it, how about a humorous perspective?
If there's no more gold in the world, there's no way for nominal wealth to increase as productiveness increases, so you get deflation
- yes, deflation. Terrible terrible deflation. Prices falling. Awful thing. Things costing less in a year, than they cost a year before. Just impossible to live in that situation, especially if you are not that rich. Totally impossible. Well, impossible, unless you are USA 19 century that is. When deflation was actually the state of affairs while the economy was growing. Yes, the new businesses were appearing, new products coming into the market, new services, new wealth, but golly, what a shame, things didn't rise in price and instead they fell in price.
Awful.
Terrible.
Of-course thank government for saving you from this disaster. Government with its awesome powers to take a silver dime minted prior to year 1968 and make sure that the dime goes up in nominal price to about $4, while a gallon of gas also going up to about that price. What a shame that would be, to have that money to buy this gas. Terrible shame, it would be just the cheapest gas ever in US history in that money. Government to the rescue.
Of-course government also came to the rescue of a minimum wage worker, who was only getting USD1.50/hour before 1970s, and for that miserly amount he could buy what, about 6 gallons of gas then? Or he could maintain a family even without debt on that money. Well, government inflation took care of that nonsense. Now that same minimum wage workers get an astounding 7.50 or so? That's amazing, that's almost 2 gallons of oil, and of-course, since the minimum wage worker never paid any taxes (and even got some money back), his actual salary today would have to be over USD60/hour to compare to that of the minimum wage worker who worked prior to 1970s.
But yeah, we have to fear the deflation. Horrible horrible deflation, because one most important concern is that the government must be able to finance its scams with lots and lots of debt, and deflation would really put a squeeze on that.
Inflation, by the way, has been below 3% for almost all of the last 20 years; how much more stable do you need your prices?
- oh, you must be a real genius there. 3% ha? You are quoting the CPI, the core inflation numbers, with all the substitutions and hedonistic adjustments? Yeah, makes sense. Never mind the prices of actual things people buy, let's go by the government numbers.
You can't handle the truth.
Just repeal the law
The "law", is the constitution.
I don't always use unix-like operating systems; but when I do, I prefer FreeBSD.
Are you suggesting that the founding fathers, in their infinite wisdom about so many other things, was wrong about the postal service?
News flash: Old laws can be changed and superseded by new laws. It was not long ago that sodomy was a punishable offense.
- yeah, clearly, having the chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank defining the dollar as "whatever it buys" rather than actually defining it as a measure of weight of gold/silver, as it was defined when people cared about such nonsense as their money, and having sodomy as punishable offense.... yeah, those are the same things, you got me.
You can't handle the truth.
Because I don't want to live in a city where crime and cost of living is so much higher. I would prefer the peace and tranquility of not having to live next door to idiots like you. Or at least if I do have to live next door to an idiot like you - you're half a mile away and I don't have to hear you whine.
A postal service that serves all Americans equally, even if they live at the end of a dirt road a few hundred miles from civilization, is a founding value of our republic.
This is one of the key services necessary for our country to properly function. You should have all learned that from that Kevin Costner documentary that came out a few years ago.
Global warming and other natural disasters are a direct effect of the shrinking number of pirates - Gospel of the FSM
And when "dirt road in the middle of nowhere" meant "homesteader" instead of "backward anti-social extremist", and "receive mail" meant "the only way to give someone a message" instead of "archaic form of communication insisted upon by idiotic lawyers and technologically-illiterate local governments", that was relevant.
Ah, so you have defined the need for rural mail delivery out of existence because a) people living in rural areas are "backward anti-social extremists" (and thus undeserving of any sort of physical delivery), and b) they shouldn't (according to you) want or need any sort of physical delivery anyway.
News for you bud - lots of non-urbanized areas get zero UPS and FedEx service. You don't even have to be all that far outside of a significant town to be "off route". Did you know that?
Second - lots of physical things still need to get delivered not just the "archaic forms of communication" which you feel shouldn't exist (but nonetheless actually do).
Solving problems is easy if you get to wave your hand and say "no one should want or need that".
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
I don't think you understand how much land is actually needed to grow the amount of food American (and other places in the first world) actually consumes. Food would still be grown in the middle of nowhere, but the prices would increase substantially if there weren't subsidies. It won't be economically efficient to use that amount of land in the middle of a town because land prices in towns is more expensive. I think you would find that people do grow things efficiently already because that's how they make their money
Mod up insightful
As a Brit currently living in Canada, yes that's exactly how most people in England view America. Indeed, it seems to me that's how most Canadians I've talked to view America.
Are you suggesting that the founding fathers, in their infinite wisdom about so many other things, was wrong about the postal service?
No. He's suggesting that times change, and that the conventional wisdom that existed 200 years ago can be proven wrong in the future, but only with regard to the postal service. I mean, geez. Stop making straw men.
Please, USPS, I have begged and pleaded with you to stop delivering SPAM -- I have signed up for online bill pay for all of my services, and turned my mailbox into a Planter!
I pay for a P.O. box that I give out to friends and relatives, but I could just as easily pay another more expensive and less SPAM friendly mail service for the odd letter I need delivered (I'd wager that it would be cheaper than the P.O. box).
I don't need double mail, and I don't use USPS for parcels -- I don't want or need mail at home, stop adverts in my variegated ivy! It's not a mailbox anymore!
Save the gasoline, and skip my driveway! Perhaps If I could opt-out somehow, it would save some USPS money? If not, GO DIE, I don't need you anymore, and I'll be happy when the junk mail stops showing up on my doorstep (and littering my yard thanks to the wind). Alternatively, please stop littering or hire delivery personnel that can read -- There is a sign on the waste bin near the entry way: "Place mail here", (Why will you not?) -- I would get fined If I did to someone else's yard what you do to mine...
Please Google, et al. for the sake of the environment and my sanity, let the dead-tree SPAM system get blocked by the very effective filter mechanism of supply and demand.
There are degrees of "nowhere". If production is already optimal then moving subsidies from rural areas and moving them to all food production regardless of where it is grown wouldn't make any difference. I suspect it would make a difference.
The portion of the population that tend to be most strongly opposed to helping the less fortunate share some rather notable characteristics:
1. They are overwhelmingly white.
2. They are mostly over the age of 60.
3. They are mostly from the southeastern area of United States.
4. They are more rural than the average American (who these days is more likely to be living in a city or suburb).
In other words, they are the people who were on the receiving end of the Civil Rights Movement, and in many cases are descended from people who were on the receiving end of the Civil War. They were folks brought up in a racist society, and whether they took part in it or not they were used to an environment in which killing black people for the slightest of reasons was socially acceptable while helping them in any way was generally frowned upon. The perception among these folks (carefully stoked by the Republican Party as part of their "southern strategy") is that benefits that help the less fortunate are for black people, and thus they oppose them.
I am officially gone from
What we should be complaining about here is the USPS website and how much it needs to improve.
1) their 'clicknship' app hasn't changed much in years, and works only for Priority Mail and Express Mail. You can't use it to print postage for a regular first class #10 envelope. You can't even use it to print the envelope. This is embarrassing.
2) their 'USPS Shipping Assistant' is a surprisingly bulky .NET desktop application which you can use to print labels and envelopes. It has a lot of quirks, though. When you print an envelope out, it won't print out the ZIP+4 or any barcode.
3) You can't do 'delivery confirmation' with a #10 envelope, only with a padded envelope or package. You can do 'certified mail' with an envelope, but again you can't do it online.
3) Overall, their technology is still geared towards sending people to the counter at the local post office to mail anything other than a Mother's Day card or pay their electric bill.
I think the USPS needs to acquire Stamps.com for a billion dollars, and then let them run the USPS (as a private subsidiary) until their house is in order.
I am about to move to an area that is fairly far out of in the boonies, but I will be choosing between cable and FIOS for my Internet connection at the new place. A friend of mine lives in downtown San Jose, Ca, the best he can do is really poor DSL. He is pissed at me.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
I forgot to mention, it is at the intersection of a dirt road and a paved road that is barely wide enough for two cars.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
There is no longer any reason the government needs to be involved with communication and/or delivery services. The USPS should be phased out (and should have been long ago).
If they were unnecessary, then yes.
Your argument is even stupider. At least I was citing facts, not putting up strawman arguments.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
If they were unnecessary, then yes.
Your argument is even stupider. At least I was citing facts, not putting up strawman arguments. Twice.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
They are also the only carrier I've found that will ship live goods. E.g. day old chicks and rabbits.
... have the USPS setup and run municipal ISPs.
the constitution is dead.
That's exactly it. The USPS does something that, from a profit point of view, is a terrible idea.
Yet that terrible idea provides a huge value to the country, even an economic value in terms of the tax revenue generated by businesses that could not otherwise exist.
That's why the free market can't replace it.
I have seen relatives use them for Christmas and birthday presents. It makes me wonder how often that actually happens. Charge for the boxes when someone gets one. Don't give them away free expecting everyone to use them to mail something.
I don't know where did you pull those statistics from. Perhaps you're thinking on racist retired people, but from what I have noticed such population is an overconfident youth too.
I've talked to recent graduates that landed jobs in very urban areas (like NYC). Note that this contradicts most of your items. I'd say that it's the overconfident belief that they (the people opposing helping people) will not have economical issues and so they will be able to afford anything in their path. I've seen lives falling down to pieces rather quickly just by texting and driving. You're irresponsible one day, and the legal system in the US will eat you alive.
I hope those people think that they can easily be on the "other" side of the wall and reconsider their willingness to contribute to other's peoples lives.
I'm pretty sure internet access in the middle of nowhere is quite shitty, and barely serviceable.
Depends, for certain values of 'middle of nowhere', you're probably correct. However, I live in rural Alaska and we have really quite good connectivity. Listening to everyone else in the US complain about their trials and tribulations, we may pay a bit more than along the Boston-Atlanta Metropolitan Axis but have similar line speeds. I have a choice of DSL with 3 Mbs down / 512 Kbs up or Cable with 10 down / 1 up (along with dial up for the true traditionalist).
High speed connectivity is the boonies is still in it's infancy and is spotty. Alaska benefited from Saint Ted (Stevens) who would whore out his Senate vote for a couple of bucks, as long as Alaska got it's fair share. It's an ill wind that blows nobody good....
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
No, you were putting up a straw man argument. Arguing semantics is a straw man.
No, your was stupid. You didn't cite facts at all. You argued semantics. The fact of the matter is that the Post Office is a Constitutionally mandated function of government.
There's this other thing called the House of Representatives. You should look into it.
Beyond the suggestions for tracking, etc., here, I'd like to print my own postage.
Today I either buy stamps, get a postage meter from Pitney-Bowes, or visit the PO (or local authorize PO reseller) to get exact postage. Why can't I simply print a QR (or similar) code directly onto the envelope? My inkjet printer is great for names and addresses and has the resolution to handle this easily.
Heck, with the address information encoded in the "stamp", mail could route itself. The code can contain a nonce, and that code could be registered in the database used to scan and forward the object. Tie the nonce to an account number, then charge my PayPal account for mailing/shipping as the item goes through, no need to worry about calculating postage a priori.
Word 2003 had a feature to print the postal Delivery Point Bar Code on envelopes. It worked great. Do the same for postage.
Vision with execution is hallucination.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the US Constitution
I don't get what your point is... you said you're not willing to pay it, and in the same sentence you say you pay it, which therefore means you ARE willing to pay it.
Just because the U.S. is a republic does not mean it is not a democracy. Democracy/republic are not mutually exclusive.
You know, he might be ironically comparing the current state of the Federal Reserve with sodomy.
I am not sure, but it does look a bit similar, doesn't it? As the chair of the Fed slowly takes his pants down and bends everybody, who holds dollar denominated assets over and has his way with them without even a hint of lubrication.
You can't handle the truth.
Ack - sorry - forgot that Americans don't know what sarcasm is. Should have used the #sarcasm tag so you knew.
USPS anticipates losing about $7 billion during the fiscal year that ends in September and is in the process of eliminating 7,500 postmaster and administrative positions to save money.
That should work out just right and put the USPS in the black (assuming each one receives a $1 million salary).
Where do you live that delivery by mail is guaranteed? Not in the US, I'm certain.
Go to your local USPS and say "Jimmy sent me a letter 3 weeks ago and I don't have it" - they will conscientiously do their best to find your letter, but if they don't find it, you have NO recourse. None.
-Styopa
You're wrong and ignorant. No where in the Constitution is it mandated.
Go read the thing before you sound any more like a dumbwit.
Here's a clue though. Power to establish != mandated.
The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;
To borrow money on the credit of the United States;
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Hardly. Here is the relevant text from that document:
"The Congress shall have Power ... To establish Post Offices and Post Roads; ... To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers"
You will notice that it does not require the Congress to do so, nor to outlaw competition. The laws that would need to be repealed are known as the Private Express Statutes.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
But that is of course hardly an argument for the continued existence of the USPS.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The Canadian Government started to close smaller postal stations and move them to pharamacies. They rent a 12ft x12ft area, have one clerk, and do the stamp, mail acceptance, registered mail activities and occasionally. They closed many buildings, they are beginning to accept some advertising on the mailboxes. Some of the little post offices in the pharamacies have boxes, so, one can get a postal box that actually resides inside the pharmacy. The pharmacy is a double winner. It pays some of the rents and it draws potential customers into the store. Now all we need to do is put an atm beside them as they accept only cash. The post office eliminates big postal stations, and all the related costs. It also cuts staff. The pharmacy pays for the employee, who when he/she is not busy with postal stuff, can stock shelves, do some other chores. You can also consider taking advertisements on the mail boxes
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
What valuable rhetorical tools are words like "equal" and "same". How easy to equivocate with them. Charging "the same prices" for vastly different services is not "serving equally" if we are using the word "equally" to mean "with equal treatment", or "justly". If Smith lives twice as far from her job as Jones, is she treated "equally" if she gets to buy fuel at half the price per unit that Jones pays, so that her commute is equal in price to Jones's?
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Sounds like success to me.
For optimal comment enjoyment, take red pill now.
When I traveled abroad and the topic of healthcare came up, to the people I was with (Dutch) it just seemed unfathomable not to take care of your fellow Americans. Where as if it's breeched with a large part of the population it's "This is mine, you can't have any." I'm not saying either mentality is wrong but it just seems like a fundamental difference in thinking.
The Europeans have lived under the blanket of US security since WWII, of course they can afford to pay for health care and expect that all other nations in the West do the same. In fact, international commerce has been quite successful for quite awhile now thanks to the US Navy. What do citizens of other nations say when asked about this? "Huh? Meh."
Word!
So what happens if mail delivery isn't profitable? Do you really think its profitable to deliver mail cheaply as USPS does to po-dunk Alaska? How about having post offices in every community large and small around the country? How profitable would this be? If this was a 'profitable business' model, I'd expect my local FedEx or UPS office to be much closer, instead of having to drive to the outskirts of town to the warehouse district to get a package.
Business doesn't always provide the best solution, especially when we're talking about equal provision of services across the country. It reminds me of the Rural Electrification Act in the '30s. Basically, electricity companies at the time had refused to electrify rural communities and farms because it wasn't profitable to do so. The REA corrected this by providing government backing to provide electricity across the country, and by doing so, greatly raised living standards and productivity of the rural and farm sector.
Have you really not read the Constitution, or are you just a troll?
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.
Call me when your country is a fraction of the size of ours and has as much empty space as ours.
Anyone can run a functioning postal system in France. Running one in the U.S. or Canada is a whole different beast.
And you're an idiot who is arguing over semantics. None of the other things listed say they are "mandatory", yet we still believe they are critical functions of Congress. Should one thing simply happen to be not done just because you don't like it?
No, it's not semantics.
You said the post office was mandatory.
I said it was not, just enabled.
All of the items enumerated above are done because they are important. Not because they're mandatory.
The entire fucking article is about whether or not the post office is important or needed any more. And if it's not needed anymore, then the government doesn't have to do it. But you said they do because it's mandatory. Which is CLEARLY WRONG. And clearly NOT semantics. Maybe you need to go look up the definition of semantics.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Ack - sorry - forgot that Americans don't know what sarcasm is. Should have used the #sarcasm tag so you knew.
Same here. Yoiu may want to reread the last two sentences. (the first one isn't really a sentence, it's just an exclamation followed by inappropriate punctuation. Feel free to ignore that one)
Private industry continues to grease the palms of our politicians to undermine every public institution.
If you study the USPS annual report close enough, you can see that they would be in the black if they could simply raise the price of a stamp 3 cents. However, Congress refuses to allow them to raise the prices, hence they knowingly put them into the red. Then they turn to their constituents and bemoan the post office is loosing money and that we will just have to do something radical!
Kucinich is the only one with a clue on this issue.
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