U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

this btw is def a whole different thread topic and i dont want to derail, but retail survival is a fairly weak argument against low postal rates is all im saying

somehow I missed M White's French presidential debate thread.

I had a Sarko vs Royal thread back last time. This time I just posted 'eugh' on this thread:

J'ecoute le debate entre Sego & Sarko

haha I wanted to watch that is it up somewhere

maybe the USPS could make residential delivery services (except for expedited packages etc.) an option during three or four days per week? how would that really hurt anybody?

good afternoon! What's the scorecard so far?

I won the debate and then everyone agreed I won

maybe the USPS could make residential delivery services (except for expedited packages etc.) an option during three or four days per week? how would that really hurt anybody?

it hurts it when it comes to competition w/ fedex/ups for package delivery

chances of multiplying that shipping cost by 5? so not going to happen

Apparently online retail is a viable commercial model, regardless of what we think about what it does locally and I think the consumer's will likely trump the local retailer's interest. Taxes are not presently fair to both sides, though. USPS is still going to be useful to both sides.

Hands, please? Who regularly plans their online orders around shipping or only uses faster shipping, i.e. non-USPS?

maybe the USPS could make residential delivery services (except for expedited packages etc.) an option during three or four days per week? how would that really hurt anybody?

― fka snush (remy bean), Thursday, May 3, 2012 5:26 PM (4 minutes ago)

well your house might get burned down during the great netflix riots of 2012

It's kind of funny that the stuff that made online retail interesting a decade or more ago, books, music, movies are all going to be largely digital downloads or streaming digital whereas the amazons of the world are now shipping out hair conditioner and mustard and clothes and whatnot.

I think this very germane to this thread. Letters will soon be (if not already so) entirely quaint and soon so will bills and notices. What will we still have to ship and by whom?

I am no more going to learn to download than my mom has learned to use a DVD player.

i'll send you a carrier pigeon with a USB strapped to its leg

you don't have to download, you just go to the netflix site and press 'play'

i dunno if anyone has priced it out yet, but i suspect the overwhelming trash to signal ratio in digital delivery might be a larger eco disaster than our current catalogpocalypse.

I just read all the Patrick Melrose novels on my gf's Kindle and I'm awfully torn over whether to get one or not. It's a really good interface and you can buy and obtain a book in seconds but I'd rather kill the planet, tearing down trees and using up gas (and paying USPS salaries) and waiting to receive and read an actual book, tbh, but how long is that going to be a realistic option?

What are you talking about Philip? My dick is huge and I have a Nigerian fortune and I know a skin care technique that has local dermatologists absolutely livid.

I don't even think the catalogpocalypse element of the postal service and the 10 billion pounds of waste is that important in the big picture, but the fact that we're already at a point where half of every mailtruck is trash does sorta highlight the need for serious reform

or bigger mail trucks

Maybe the USPS could just get into the waste collection business

They could swing by with a truck full of junk mail and you'd have to pay them not to deliver it.

it already is in the waste collection business, it's just a middleman

Admit it, it's super efficient plus I kind of like the idea of putting the mob in charge of a major national government institution, or at least a different mob from the lot we've got now.

http://1010.co.uk/images/WASTE.gif

i'm not sure, but i think the environmental costs of kindles still worse than paper/fuel, at least for now. there's the electronics, etc...

I see that the gif is called waste but in what context? Is there some variant of cuneiform with curves?

xpost

Kindle's environemtnal impact depends...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WASTE

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Crying_of_Lot_49 xxp

Lot 49 is largely a meditation on the failure of communication, both in the present, and between generations. As in V, it is impossible to know what really happened in history, or even to distinguish fact from forgery in historical texts. The central mystery in Lot 49 is the symbol of the muted horn, which appears linked to an underground mail system (known as W.A.S.T.E.), and is also associated with a mysterious historical group known as The Trystero. The muted horn (the stoppage of communication) appears on the postage stamp of the W.A.S.T.E. system, but also on old postage stamps—perhaps forged. Oedipa also discovers that the unmuted horn appeared on the stamps of the old Thurn and Taxis courier service, the official mail service of the Holy Roman Empire, until its demise. Lot 49 plays around with the indistinguishable mix of fact and fiction.

well if nothing else the demise of the usps has reminded me how awesome lot 49 is and i think i will read that again tonight

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/business/seeking-revenue-postal-service-plans-to-deliver-more-junk-mail.html

“Given our financial situation, continued e-diversion, and increased competition from alternative delivery services, this is one example of how the Postal Service is pursuing innovations and new products to increase the value of mail and retain our business customers,” the agency said in a statement.

they ought to deliver every piece of that shit those who sponsored the bills making it unsustainable.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/07/us/postal-service-plans-to-end-saturday-delivery.html

http://www.theonion.com/articles/postal-service-and-wait-until-you-cocksuckers-see,31189/

:)

haha

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/post-office-business-trouble-0213?page=all

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-08-02/understanding-the-post-office-s-benefits-mess.html

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/03/07/berkeley-councilman-proposes-email-tax-to-fund-postal-service/

hahaha what a moron

sullying the wozniak name

I would support privatization, albeit with some regulation to ensure rural areas get decent and affordable postal service even though its not profitable, and ending the USPS monopoly on mailbox use (or at least allowing/encouraging a second mailbox of the type once common for newspaper delivery if necessary to avoid confusion). The growth and success of the private shipping business (which was nonexistent when the USPS was established) has rendered the once-essential government-provided postal service largely redundant. UPS does a far better job IME than USPS for reliability and decent shipment tracking.

privatization, albeit with some regulation to ensure rural areas get decent and affordable postal service even though its not profitable

This is basically what the USPS in its present form is supposed to be.

'decent and affordable' can mean a lot of things

basically i meant it not costing more for postage to or from rural areas than urban ones, at least for envelopes, by urban customers essentially subsidizing rural customers so every pays the same price. This could be made law for private mail delivery too.

well then yeah that's basically the way things are now

The growth and success of the private shipping business (which was nonexistent when the USPS was established) has rendered the once-essential government-provided postal service largely redundant. UPS does a far better job IME than USPS for reliability and decent shipment tracking.

Then ALL of my mail could not be delivered to me when I'm at work. Looking forward to finding the UPS slip on the floor next to my door letting me know I can take the train to their nearest office to pick up that wedding invite my friend payed more to have delivered to somewhere within a couple miles of my apartment.

It's not just rural housing, but apartment buildings, and all sorts of other locations that private companies just can't reach.