Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is the United States Postal Service Obsolete?
Xerron asks:
"Now that e-mail is a big deal, friends and family rarely
need to write snail mail leters anymore. And when you need
a package delivered you use UPS or Federal Express, not
the USPS. Is the USPS in trouble? Since e-mail handles the
bulk of short letters and quick notes and UPS and FedEx
handles packages, that leaves the USPS with nothing but
junk mail and Publishers Clearing House mailers.
Could USPD dwindle in the future?" Considering that
less than 50% of Americans are on the Internet, I highly
doubt that the US Postal Service will be obsoleted in the
near future. But I could be wrong. What do you all think?
Sure, first class personal letters are declining, but they weren't making any real money on that, so there's no great loss there. The post office actually loses money delivering a handwritten envelope.
;-)
Bills and junk mail are just as popular as ever, that's probably the bulk of the USPS's business. On top of that, they're pushing their premium services, Priority Mail and Express Mail, which I'm sure are profit centers. They also are expanding their line of products for sale (another profit center). They used to just sell mailing boxes, now you can get books, tee shirts, caps, posters, stamp collecting supplies, phone cards, they even sell a leather carry bag syled after the ones the postal workers carry. I'm just waiting for them to start offering commemerative firearms
----
Open mind, insert foot.
Any organization where people are expected to die in the line of duty, including the Military and Police forces, has procedures for notifying next of kin. They almost always send an officer to your house to express condolences in person.
In general, while letters are one way to add a more personal touch to communications, there are plenty of other ways, depending on the nature of the communications (many love letters are sent by FTD, for example). USPS is not going to thrive by the dwindling number of people using snail mail for personal correspondance. They're going to thrive from everyone's electric bill, and the package you just ordered.
----
Open mind, insert foot.
I agree about the legal reasons why the U.S. Postal Service is not going away. For example, federal law often requires that you communicate via U.S. Mail in your dealings with the government (such as, e.g., your income tax -- last year was the first year that they allowed you to send your income tax return via FedEx or UPS, though it had to be at the IRS on tax day, a postmark wouldn't work). Similarly, federal credit card laws require you to communicate disputes via paper mail in order to preserve your rights, and 33 cents for a 1st class letter is a lot cheaper than $5 or so for UPS or FedEx.
On the other hand, if you don't get bulk advertising via U.S. Mail, you must be a hermit who never orders anything via mail order! For example, my mailbox was stuffed this afternoon when I checked it -- and after I discarded all the bulk advertising, there was one (1) single letter left in the mailbox -- a bill.
And since I'm paranoid about paying my bills via electronic transfer, that's another reason to keep the U.S. Postal Service around!
-E
Send mail here if you want to reach me.
I don't know about you, but Christmas cards cannot be replaced by e-cards and web-o-grams or what not. Besides, you can't tape ecards up all along the edge of the big mirror in the living room by the Christmas tree. (Well, you could, maybe, if your printer can print shiny ink and make raised cards, cut in the shape of Santa Claus, etc.)
It's the last one that gets me.
The process of writing a letter - a single letter - takes at least an hour. Getting an envelope, finding paper with nothing written on the back of it, finding a pen that works, finding a different pen that doesn't result in hand cramps after ten minutes.
Thinking of what to say. Writing very slowly and thinking everything out as you go, because there's no backspace and you can't fix any mistakes so you'd better not make any in the first place. Thinking of more stuff to say, because this letter is going to Feel Important to whomever receives it and thus it'd damn well better have Something Important In It, or they're going to wonder why you bothered to write and spend hours trying to read between the lines.
Finding the person's current address. Remembering that they moved, and that the address book isn't updated, and that their new address is on a piece of paper in an envelope somewhere. Writing the address. Trying to remember where you last saw the stamps. Putting on the stamps. Waiting for a few days until you left early enough for work that you can take the time to stop at the mail room on the way out of the apartment complex and drop the mail off.
Damn. The only messages *that* important are graduation, wedding, baby, and death announcements. Is it a coincidence that they have pre-printed cards for those?
I doubt the USPS will ever truly go away, much as most of us would like it to, but I can see it eventually living among the horse-buggies, steam trains, and other overpriced services catering to romantics and tourists.
-Mars
Actually, it is open to competition. Look at UPS, FedxEx, Airborne, DHL, and dozens of other courier services. And while the competitors offer better services in some areas, their costs are orders of magnitude higher and they still don't offer some services which you get with the mail (most notably free daily pick-up and drop-off).
USPS will continue for a very long time, I think. It's still the cheapest way to send packages in the US unless you count throwing them really far (and I might add that it's one of the cheapest postal services in the world; consider the UK's Royal Mail for example).
The main problem with the service is that it is technologically backward, compared to the competing courier services. In particular its computer system is abysmal, though there is an intranet project in the works (last I heard they were even going with WebObjects as the base); this will allow for package tracking and such.
Yes, other courier services are faster. But given the choice, I think most of us would still prefer to use the USPS in most cases for sending non-urgent packages. It's sort of the low end of courier services; popular, cheap, and perhaps not as fast as the higher-end stuff but it still gets the job done.
"I sure hope not. Why should it cost to mail a letter across town as it does to mail to Alaska or Hawaii or even just to the other coast? What airline would sell flat-rate tickets to anywhere?"
;-).
It used to be that way. Ben Franklin did a detailed analysis sometime around 1780 (IIRC) and showed that it was more efficient to use a single stamp price. I don't have a reference handy but it should be in your 6th grade history book
sPh
"Arguments about the value of mergers aside, you'll notice my original message stressed the unnecessarily high cost of local delivery, which could otherwise be handled by small businesses.
Question: how much of the mail you send goes farther than 100 miles? People tend to send bills, letters to friends and relatives, and "paid by sender" mail. Bills go to their local phone company, local cable company, etc. Letters and greeting cards to local friends are also common."
To merge with another thread farther up the discussion, this is exactly why the power to create a post office was written into the US Constitution. It was believed that the social benefits of having an accessible, universal communication device that by definition served the entire nation outweighed any savings from local delivery efficiencies.
That was true in 1790, and IMHO there is a strong argument that it is still true today. The breakup of AT&T can't be lightly dismissed in this context; there is very little evidence that it has turned out to be a good thing for the average consumer (keeping in mind that "breakup" != "entry of MCI into the LD market).
sPh
Sorry if my post seemed flame-like - that wasn't my intention. And your point is quite valid. But from my perspective, I think this person
3 9252&cid=259
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=99/07/22/01
covered what I was thinking better than I could at this point.
sPh
Obsolete? Not while they have the yellow jersey...
;-)
-adam a
I fell for a girl in a big way over the net, and I still have the letters she sent me (and the copies of the ones I sent her).
Although my relationship with the girl never advanced beyond email, the fact that relationships are created between people in faraway places eventually gives tons of money to the phone company and postal service, because there's nothing more personal than a delivered gift and even a phone call works far better than typed words.
Of course any letter I sent anyone will be typed on the computer. No human being on this planet could ever, ever read my handwriting. Sorry.
D
----
The same can be said of Microsoft. The vast majority of users are perfectly happy with Windoze and can't imagine any alternative. So the simple fact that you like them doesn't mean that they couldn't be better.
The difference is that at least Microsoft does have some competition to keep them at least somewhat honest. Imagine if Microsoft were granted a legal monopoly on the OS business how much Windows would suck.
I think we get used to whatever we use on a regular basis. If the Post Office monopoly were broken up, I think you'd see dramatice price cuts and vastly increased relieablity. There's a reason why UPS and FedEx are preferred by most businesses: they have to earn their customers. The Post Office has the first class mail market guarunteed, so they can afford to do a half-ass job in the parcel market. If they lose market share, what do they care? It's next to impossible to fire a government employee anyway, so why should they care?
Seriously! All we need is some "new" mail company with 1 year of experience to start delivering mail to some 300 million Americans. Yeah, that'll work.
OK, look. If you want to send your mail with the USPS, fine. Don't force me to. If I want to pay Fedex or UPS or the kid down the street to deliver a letter, what business do you or the government have telling me I can't? It's really that simple. No matter how good the Post office is, there's no reason I should be forced to use it.
Actually, it is open to competition. Look at UPS, FedxEx, Airborne, DHL, and dozens of other courier services. And while the competitors offer better services in some areas, their costs are orders of magnitude higher and they still don't offer some services which you get with the mail (most notably free daily pick-up and drop-off)
Um, private corporations are legally prohibited from doing first-class mail. That would explain why there's no competition in that area. And that would also explain why they're the only ones who do daily delivery and pickup: most of the mail is first-class, and its illegal for other companies to handle it.
Yes, other courier services are faster. But given the choice, I think most of us would still prefer to use the USPS in most cases for sending non-urgent packages. It's sort of the low end of courier services; popular, cheap, and perhaps not as fast as the higher-end stuff but it still gets the job done.
If it's so great, why should the government have to give it a legal monopoly? If I want to have someone else deliver my mail, by what right does the government tell me I can't? All the good things the USPS does could be done just as well as the private sector. In addition we'd see the benefits that result from an open, competitive market. I'd be willing to be money that you'd see prices drop and reliablility improve. The USPS is really not reliable at all. Mail regularly comes mangled or doesn't come at all, and there's nothing you can do about it.
If folks out on the farm had to pay ten times as much to mail their payments in to the phone company as I did (living in the city), it just wouldn't be fair.
So if I choose to live in a lot in the middle of nowhere, and it takes the mailman half an hour to pick up my mail, you're saying that it's "not fair" to charge me more for that service? How is that? If I choose to live in the boonies, how is it "fair" for the rest of you to subsidize me? It might be convenient, and it is nice for me, but it most definitely not "fair" by any definition I can think of.
The reason we give the post office the upper hand is because we can't trust a business outside the government with our nations mail. If they went under the country would be screwed... so we keep USPS.. and as a matter of fact I think they do a great job.
That's funny. We trust private corporations with our food, our banks, our health care, and our networks. The nation would be in trouble without those. Do you think we should nationalize those too?
In a free market, there would be several carriers offering a variety of services. That's a hell of a lot more reliable than a single, monolithic government agnency. How do we know the USPS won't go down at some point? If they did, there would be no alternatives in the first class mail space, because it's illegal to deliver first class mail.
Therefore, the precise opposite is true. We need a free market in the mail business because it is so important. We can't rely on the government to be as reliable or efficient as private companies.
The FDA is charged with keeping food safe, and banks are completely dependant on the gov't.
But there's not a government provider of all banks. And it certainly is not illegal to open a competing bank.
Networks don't have as much gov't control, but the wires themselves do--AT&T ring a bell (pun intended)? Or Portland requiring that wires be opened to competition? The effects may be good for business, but the gov't is running the show.
But your point was that if we let the private sector provide the service, that they could go under and we would be without service. This is true in all of these markets. Yet we don't employ government farmers, bankers, or long-distance companies. Regulation is a long way from nationalization.
Um, *how* could the USPS go under? Either the gov't would have to collapse, or it would have to be purposely dismantled, and in both cases the laws concerning sending mail follow it.
The chances of several mail-delivery firms all going under simultaeneously and so fast that no one could take their place is equally small. A company the size of UPS doesn't just "go under." They lose money gradually, and other businesses take over their marketshare as they decline. Of course, strikes can cripple a carrier, but that's partly because labor laws prevent companies from hiring replacements.
And what incentive would there be for me to use them over the USPS?
Who says you have to. We can privatize the USPS and leave it intact. If you're happy with it, then go right ahead and keep using it.
The point is that some of us are not happy with the USPS and want an alternative. We are prevented by law from doing so. That's not right.
As for why another company would be more efficient: they've been a government monopoly for 220 years. How can they possibly be efficient. They've never had any particular incentive to keep prices down or provide good service.
$.33 provides a lot of potential profit. The average household gets at least 4 letters a day. That's $1 per household, per day, 365 days a year. By my calculations, that's a more than $25 billion industry. That's a lot of potential profit if someone can find more efficient ways of doing it.
Look any socialist country. All state-run industries are bloated, inefficient, and under productive. What's so special about the USPS that it should be different?
Oh, and another thing---there's nothing stopping any new mail delivery services from starting up, but I don't see any. Perhaps it's not as cost-effective as you think?
It's illegal. There actually was a startup in the seventies that tried to do first class mail deliveries (letters, not packages) in New York (This may not be quite right. Don't remember where I read this). The government shut them down. The fact is that it's illegal to compete with the post office in first class mail delivery. That's stupid.
urban delivery subsidises the rural post.
People keep saying this like it's a good thing. I don't understand it. If it costs more to deliver mail to a given location, then that person should be charged more. The same thing is true with bananas. I pay more for my bananas here in Minnesota than someone would in Central America. Is that a bad thing?
The fact is that different geographical areas have different costs and benefits. Cities are more crowded, dirtier, and have less open space. The country has higher mail service, less access to technology, and other problems. We balance the options and make a choice. Why should we single out one piece of that equation and subsidize it? Does the government pay me for the lousy air I have to breathe or the lack of peace and quiet? The fact is that I chose to live where I do and I chose to bear the costs of living there. Why should someone who chooses to live in the country be any different?
Therefore, the precise opposite is true. We need a free market in the mail business because it is so important. We can't rely on the government to be as reliable or efficient as private companies.
That's been my position all along.
So, you also support the current crypto policy I would assume. Because, really, there's no way to protect our mail if private companies start being the cole deliverers.
I think that crypto should be unregulated. Anyone should be allowed to use any strngth encryption they please with no strings attached.
As for the privacy issue, certainly there is a possiblity that a private mail carrier will go reading you mail. But the same possibility exists with the USPS. I don't see any reason why the private alternative is worse.
Not too long ago, I heard it said (dang, don't remember where I heard that) that 5% of all packages (not letters) now shipped by the USPS are eBay transactions. My wife discovered eBay and now I'd say that number is a bit low :-) Seriously, the free, self-adhesive, priority mail boxes you can get at the post office has got to be one of the best marketing coups the USPS has had in a long time. They make life soooo easy. Also, be aware that there are a couple box sizes (6-9" squarish type boxes) that are not available at your post office - you have to order them by phone and they'll send them to you free.
Thanks to sites like eBay, people are sending more mail than ever. Think of all those checks that people are mailing. Sure, eventually, this can all be done electronically, but not for a few years, at least. Also, while big businesses may get better deals for packages from UPS and the likes, most consumers are better off with US Mail. Again, eBay and Amazon Auctions result in many more small packages from the USPS.
About two months ago there was a study saying that now over 50% of households have computers. I submitted it to /. but it didn't get posted. And to think--you would have known! Oh well!
Other benefits would be
1. Cheap shipping to AK and HI (though the rest of us subsidize it)
2 automatic pickup (just leave it in the box! You have to drop stuff off or call ahead for UPS or FedEx to get it)
3. Government workers can't strike. I'm not sure that postal workers count as goverment workers (it's a special case of a semi-public entity, like AmTrak). We all remember that little kink with UPS.
Besides transmission of non-virtual things, bandwidth is the other reason the post office or equivalent physical-mail services will be around for a long time.
Say in the near future I've put my 500 records/CDs on a half-dozen MP3 DVDs, and I want to share them with my friends. Even assuming I only have cool friends with high-bandwidth connections, I bet they'll be happier to receive a small package in the mail then to have to wait a week until they've downloaded everything (my server will be happier too).
Same goes for movies, pictures, maps. It's best not to understimate the storage capacity of the physical world.
> Why should it cost to mail a letter across town as it does to mail to Alaska or Hawaii or even just to the other coast?
:)
Not that I don't really know what I'm talking about here; I'm just making wild-ass guesses.
Anyhow, my guess is that most of the cost is with the local delivery to the individual mailboxes and the overhead of all those POs. Shipping the letters from central office to central office (the extra cost incurred for long-distance mail) is probably much smaller than this, so a long-distance mail shouldn't cost a lot more. So if the costs are similar, why not just make them the same, and save on complexity and processing?
> What airline would sell flat-rate tickets to anywhere?
Ugh. Airlines. A whole other can of worms. What's with airline rates, anyway? Their prices *really* don't reflect how far you're going. From California, you can usually get to Bangkok cheaper than you can get to New York.
I found this nifty 1998 Annual Report at the USPS web site. They delivered 198 billion pieces of mail in 1998, 3.7% more than 1997. Most of the mail was First Class.
I don't think the point is if this is welcome, I think the point is the formality attached to written correspondence [sp?]. Sure, this is cultural and could change over time, but in this time, an e-mail on this subject could be seen as somewhat of a slight, almost like a form letter or fax might seem to be.
:-) ). We send e-mail back and forth to our customers all the time, but some stuff is in paper, just because everyone expects a certain level of formality for some things. (invoices, project authorizations, dispute settlement, etc.)
Another example is professional correspondence (guess I'd better look up the spelling if I'm gonna keep using that word
If I got an e-mail from my lawyer with his statement of his charges for work on my fater's estate, I would probably have an odd reaction. I would expect a letter with a hand-written signature. This is just customary. I'm sure in 20 years that custom will change and people will be comfortable with e-mail for just about everything.
If it's so great, why should the government have to give it a legal monopoly? If I want to have someone else deliver my mail, by what right does the government tell me I can't?
Actually, the governments right to do that is in
the Constitution - Article I, Section 7 says that
"The Congress shall have Power...
To establish Post Offices and post Roads;" among
other things
Try reading it sometime
When someone takes the time to handwrite a letter, its a unique artifact with sentimental value. Email cannot match that. In the future, I don't see people saving their old love emails. While email is a great way to keep in touch with people--it's fast, cheap, and easy--nothing beats a nice, handwritten letter once in a while.
The DMCA--for corporations, the best copyright law money can buy.
What matters to people is more the amount of effort put into it, and perhaps the increasing *novelty* of getting snail mail.
As far as your examples goes, do you think a parent would be more happy to receive your example note by snail mail, or to receive it plus e-mails from members of their son's platoon telling personal memories and how much they miss him?
Also, which would you prefer to receive from your girlfriend (esp. in a long distance relationship):
a) a letter, or
b) a video e-mail where you can see her
Technology doen't bring impersonality - it's how you use it.
Of all the "overnight" services I have ever used (and list includes just about all of them), the *only* organization which has a 100% record delivering my packages on-time, without damage or loss, is the United States Postal Service.
Need I also mention that the USPS will deliver Express Mail on Saturdays and holidays at *no extra charge*? They even deliver on Sundays for Express Mail!
When it absolutely, positively, without-a-doubt, life-or-death, MUST BE THERE, my first choice will always be the US Postal Service.
For most forms of printed information (letters, information, brochures, etc), email (or electronic messaging in general) is more than sufficient. Once digital signatures become standard (and more common), this method will suffice for transmissions that require confidence. I would opine that most Americans are not comfortable enough with email to trust it to the exclusion of the USPS; the USPS has been around for a long time, while email has only been around for about 30 years (but ask a kid nowadays--they all think email started in the 80's). There are confidence issues, reliability issues (real and imagined), and technological issues.
A more interesting--although not completely related--question is this: When are digital signatures going to become standard?
There were rumors that the US government wanted to "issue" email addresses to babies at birth, along with social security numbers. While issuing email addresses is technologically problematic (now there's a server I don't want to maintain), issuing a digital certificate at birth is not, since prime pieces of information (e.g., name and SSN) are present shortly after birth. Perhaps this is the "number of the beast" of which Revelations warns us...
(darren)
who doesn't perfer a handwritten letter on an interesting piece of stationary and a decorative envelope to a bunch of 1's and 0's from anyone who takes two minutes to write? snail mail from friends and loved ones is so much more heartfelt that email. email is boring.
the USPS is hear to stay.
That's the biggie for me. That, and I type really fast (hoping to break 100 WPM in the next year), but I have very nasty handwriting unless I'm actually trying to be neat, in which case I write v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y. Kind of gives new meaning to "snail mail."
That said, I was in a LDR that despite both of us having e-mail (admittedly, I had JUST gotten it), we continued to write snailmail letters to each other every day. *smiles*
Also, writing to Grandma still means *writing* to her, though admittedly I tend to compose on-computer and print it out so her poor old eyes don't have to deal with my scribble.
Mostly, though, e-mail is the Great Lowerer of Phone Bills for me. It is weird because it's not-quite-snail-mail yet not-quite-telephone, but for me and my friends (who have this annoying tendency to scatter around the world) it's helpful.
I'd certainly rather try to get e-mail to Poland than either a letter OR a phone call.
"Somebody exploded a letter-bomb today
There was a funny cartoon about this a number of sunday globes ago. I forget the name of the strip -- it's the one w/ the 3 or 4 20somethings who drink alot of coffee.
Anyway, one of them gets a letter, and is completely confused by it. "what is this?". After having the concept of snail mail reintroduced to him, his comment is "wow! you mean someone took the time to write the message by hand and then paid someone to carry it to my house? I'm so touched!"
To: Jane Doe
- ------------------------------
From: Col. William Smith
Subject: John Doe
------------------------------------------
It is with a heavy heart and deepest regrets that I must inform you of the death of your son, Pvt. John Doe. John died valiently and honorably during the final push of our three day assault on Baghdad sacrificing his own life so that the rest of his platoon would not perish. He was a couragous soldier and served his country well.
My prayers are with you and your family during this most grevious time.
Sincerely,
Col. Bill Smith
United States Army
-----------------------------------------------
Yah, this is a little extreme, and one certainly doesn't see these too often, but my point is that some things are best expressed through a written letter. Email is convenient and quick, but it lacks the personality of a hand written letter, and I think most people in the U.S. would agree. As long as there are special things to write to someone, there will be the USPS.