U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

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.

I live in the city. Does my landlord hand out keys to every asshole with a muted horn patch on his jacket? Or to we just put cubbies on the outside of the building and cross our fingers? Maybe my landlord could contract with a mail receptacle service that will work with all the competing private postal services to collect the mail and get it into a secure place that I can access. Efficiency!

that's not some impossible problem that can't be solved but the usps's long-term problems aren't due to the govt being inefficient at delivering mail so its a nonstarter

the usps long term problems could be solved by congress fixing the idiocy of their pension requirement

those are its short-term problems

nope

i mean i guess its other long term problem is idiots thinking that govt agencies that are public goods should somehow be required to turn a profit but hey until we force all the republicans to get gay married and realize that they like it that isnt prob going to happen

http://www.zerohedge.com/sites/default/files/images/user5/imageroot/2013/01/USPS%20Volume.jpg

long-term problems

wouldn't be a problem if the USPS went back to being subsidized by the American taxpayer

until when? for how much?

I dunno, forever? Why not? It's cheaper than tanks.

we just have email now

handwritten letters are cool but i'm pretty sure if god gave adam and eve email we wouldn't be so attached to snail mail

would support USPS being repurposed as our nationalized broadband provider

I said upthread we just need it to be a national bank