U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

and again any benefit compared to ups/fedex is gonna be going away as this advertising company ends up operating on 4 and 3 day schedules

that's not some impossible problem that can't be solved

get rid of the pension funding requirement and it can remain an advertising company that delivers 5-6 days a week

ya for example we could turn it into a bank, but that's not gonna happen

i don't see what the connection is

that was an xp

currently the taxpayer input into the postal service is about $100 million, which pays for free mailing service for the blind and mail in ballots. good luck getting fedex or ups to take that on for that kind of money.

there are alternatives such as blind people using computers and also voters using computers

yes of course it would cost way less than $100 million dollars a year to ensure that everyone who is blind and every overseas absentee voter has full access to a computerized system that can do everything the postal service does, great point

well as the 3-day-a-week-advertising company post office continues to collapse into irrelevance the costs of replacing its remaining capabilities will certainly go down

lol u r so dumb

yes one could get rid of the free mail for the blind and mail-in ballot services (not that i advocate it but whatever) and at that point it would have a fractional impact on the revenue of the postal service and wouldn't matter about the viability of it one way or the other.

post office is fine. it ships packages good. i like my mail. its year-over-year volume + revenues are actually increasing in "competitive sectors" (i.e. its services that go head-to-head vs. ups etc are gaining). its structurally the "market dominant sectors" that are in a decline. but the extent of the decline remains to be seen. things that go up don't keep going up. things going down don't necessarily go down forever. sometimes they just... adjust.

but fuckit we should all pay landlords half our income and pay the rest to private enterprise because the goverment is just the... worst, man.

iatee you should print out this trenchant piece of advice from noted thinking mans comic "zits" and staple it to your forehead:

http://arnoldzwicky.s3.amazonaws.com/ZitsArguing.gif

why do you think I hate government when I'm suggesting a public option for personal banking

anyway while its true that there might be a bottom, we are at the moment not anywhere close to 'everyone pays and receives all their bills electronically' but we will continue to go down that path and its effects will be felt. iirc the post office actually tried to get involved w/ electronic payment systems and was prevented by congress? again, it's not that it's run by incompetent people, it's that it's not allowed any flexibility.

xp

its true it has its hands crippled by lobbyists yah, that's a huge issue. but the idea that mail is just vanishing is ridiculous. also it wouldn't have needed to be a bank to be a payment clearinghouse anyway.

it wouldn't have needed to be no, but it happens to have locations in every city in america and we have shitty banks so

again most of the arguments I'm making (allow it operational efficiency and to diversify its business) are made by the people who run the post office so the idea that I'm some secret libertarian or w/e is kinda lol

the best way to ensure that it dies is to pretend like the post office in 2025 should or can operate like the post office in 1940

who cares that the government is currently running a program to send 100 billion pieces of junk mail out?

― iatee, Thursday, March 28, 2013 6:39 PM (52 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't really see what the concern is

― 乒乓, Thursday, March 28, 2013 6:41 PM (50 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think there are some pretty legitimate environmental concerns tbh

this thread is interesting. my parents worked for the post office. i hope it continues to exist. what could it conceivably look like, other than a PO/bank hybrid? (also, why does this have to be about rural v. urban?)

bcz iatee

because the entire postal service is run as an urban->rural transfer program.

and are the distances between people really at the heart of the matter/the main thing to consider? (not a rhetorical q, just haven't thought about that way)

yes. it costs more money to get things to remote places and to keep offices open in places fewer customers. the post office isn't given much flexibility here to adjust like a normal business.

places with

but the solution must surely be more complicated than asking people to not live remotely?

USPS should become the facebook public option

sry the social network public option

I've asked before it never works xp

People have a right to get things delivered to remote places by the federal government. It is a just use of state powers.

And while we're at it, FedEx and UPS should be penalized more for competing against the state. Their competition lowers the efficiency of the state's economies of scale.

We should outlaw email too, because that really ruined economies of scale for the USPS.

i have no idea if those posts are serious or not

new board description

'competing against the state'

iatee too literal

clover otm

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/04/us/monitoring-of-snail-mail.html?hp&_r=0

interesting

if you go to live in the woods they will probably just have a division that uses birds to spy on you

Home delivery ending in Canada within five years:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/canada-post-to-phase-out-urban-home-mail-delivery-1.2459618

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hox-ni8geIw

Home delivery ending in Canada within five years

...urban home delivery.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116374/postal-service-banking-how-usps-can-save-itself-and-help-poor

big in japan, right?

"A document unearthed in proceedings before the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reveals why the APWU is adamant that the Postal Service’s deal with Staples – and others like it – must be stopped.

The March 26, 2012, document exposes the secret privatization recommendation a Postal Service consultant made to USPS management: Eliminate most retail facilities throughout the country, along with the work of APWU employees.

The document is covered by a “protective order” that prohibits its disclosure, but the Administrative Law Judge presiding over the case has ruled that the contents can be summarized and brought out from behind the veil of secrecy.

As described by the judge in his order, the document reveals that the Postal Service’s consultant made a number of proposals to the USPS, including that the Postal Service invest in high-traffic Postal Service locations and that it eliminate the majority of the standard-volume Postal Service locations and migrate that work to retail partners that are not staffed by APWU members...."

http://www.apwu.org/news/web-news-article/secret-document-exposes-usps-privatization-planning

USPS is so great and I will miss it fiercely if it ever goes away

I'm really feeling the damage the Trump admin has done to the USPS. I still use the mail to send in payments for about 10 monthly bills, but two bills have failed to show up in the last couple of months and one payment (for ACA plan) failed to get there, requiring me to make a quick online payment on 12/31 to have coverage in 2021. I'm thinking about changing to all online payments but I hate that this seems to be part of the conservative plan for privatization. Break shit > say "see, shit is broke" > private sector takeover > profit!

We’re gonna need investigations into a lot of things. This should be one of them.

yep

Book that went out right before the holiday crush still hasn't been delivered.

Book that went out on the 21st of December still hasn't been delivered, and shows that it hasn't even reached a main sorting facility— just that "the label has been created."

A package filled with cookies and other things (sent by my long-suffering aunt every Xmas to everyone in the family) arrived a month late.

In the meantime, things I ordered a week ago are arriving on time, and so is tons of useless fucking junk mail.

I know the decimation of the post office under Trump has been dire, particularly during Covid, but the policy of slowly dealing with the backlog while keeping up with mail delivery isn't cutting it— there simple should be a two-month backlog of important mail sitting in post office sorting facilities while I'm getting offers for credit cards.

*there simply should NOT be a two-month backlog