U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

yes

all those people in the middle of nowhere are just getting books sent in the mail that teach them how to build bombs to blow up post offices anyway.

I do think its kind of terrifying to start measuring these sorts of things per economic viability tho - its a sad insight into the creepy economic mental sludge that is going on across the board in politics these days, and makes it even clearer that the neocons have won even while losing.

do you even know what the word neocon means

mail service is a constitutional issue. if you live in the middle of nowhere you still get, like, due process. sending off a letter is the same deal. so what if it's expensive!

all those people in the middle of nowhere are just getting books sent in the mail that teach them how to build bombs to blow up post offices anyway.

Get govmt out of my Medicare!

yes you insufferable little dude xxpost

nah the congress has the *ability* to create a postal service, not a requirement

http://gaffngun.com/forums/images/smilies/avatar54063_2.gif

l-r: ilx threads that even obliquely involve rural vs urban, iatee

The internets are making everything else privatizable, it seems

iatee just curious b/c I have not paid attention to this kind of shitstirring before -- have u lived in a rural area?

is there anything in section 8 that congress "shall have the power to" do, that it doesn't?

iatee, you realize that that's the whole point, that there's a minority of people who wouldn't be able to get service in the free market, but who need it, and whose services, in turn, we need.

Anyway "1% of Americans" is kind of a dumb stat to cite. It's more like 3+% of the labor force.

no I considered moving to one but then I remembered I was not a farmer xp

If the real point is to kill the unions and prove 'they don't work', the Republicans could just mandate that UPS and FedEx, etc..., serve rural areas which they could argue is a justifiable use of the commerce clause and totally wouldn't make them look like Mammon-worshipping hypocrites.

iatee what about all the people that need to live in rural areas to serve those farmers - grain silo storage/operators, farm implement sellers, harvest season laborers, grocery stores, etc etc?

the post office is kinda crazy for sending letters thousands of miles for, like, 50 cents. who does that? crazy people, that's who.

the post office is kinda crazy for sending letters thousands of miles for, like, 50 cents. who does that? crazy people, that's who.

^

p simplistic view of what the post office does imo

tbh guys theres plenty of decent stuff to talk about here and i know its hard to resist but this is kind of a do not feed the iatee sorta situation

They could just order their John Deere combines off of Amazon. Except nobody would deliver them. RIP farmers.

Yeah, who has ever heard of things like "economies of scale," am I right?

anyway outside of the rural/urban stuff this is what the post office does in 2k12

http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/MK-BP551A_JUNKM_D_20111005205703.jpg

the post office is bad for the environment and other living things! that's what you're trying to say. i buy that. so many tons of junk paper.

So instead of banning bulk rate/junk mail, let's def. eliminate the post office instead.

a) the rights that inhere to you as a citizen of the US and b) the sovereignty the US government holds over the country are both irrespective of the physical geography of the continent. each person and each square inch of US space is formally the same. if this makes the mail expensive in some places relative to others, that's a lesser concern.

both of those things are somewhat fictive (or abstract, if you like) but so what? i mean shit if health care is going to follow the same logic as rights/access then shuffling paper around the country in some useful, regularized way is nbd frankly.

you can argue that in the 18th cent the intent of the clause in Section 8 is idealized, it's about the state fostering the movement of information and correspondence and not about paper per se, but we're not borg yet so let's just pay for it, jesus.

if you banned them the post office would be even more fucked! xp

Less concerned by actual number of farmers than the idea of telling millions of people that they need to cut all their social/family connections and pack it up for Queens.

All indications are that Americans will continue to naturally urbanize in the coming generations, we don't need draconian bullshit like purposely making life outside of major metropolitan areas more difficult.

I have to admit I wouldn't miss getting mail from every Orthodox Jewish institution in my neighborhood (of which there are many) bcz someone put every plausibly non-Gentile name from my building's directory on their lists. Jesus, Mary, and Joseph....

Kept getting notices from The Nation when I subscribed that the bulk mail subsidy for periodicals had also vanished or nearly so, yes?

I'm pretty sure the post office isn't fucked becauase ppl like me are in charge it is fucked because people don't really use mail that much and, without a doubt, that trend is only going to continue

Less concerned by actual number of farmers than the idea of telling millions of people that they need to cut all their social/family connections and pack it up for Queens.

and they can't even send a return address because there's no Post Office! Yikes!

the junk mail thing is a non starter because the post office is not responsible for the content of the mail you get though xposts

right but its fragile finances atm are built on 50%+ of the mail people get being pieces of paper they will immediately throw in the trash

you can tell all those benefits that postal workers get make them really happy because everyone who works at the post office is always soooooooooo happy. just a bunch of good time charlies. i say release them from their inhuman chains of misery.

post office people are cocks! i like mailmen, though. my great grandpa was a mailman, and almost everybody he worked w/ was a WWII vet. Except for the dudes who worked in the offices, and they were all gov't job placement hacks, and he hated them a lot.

Less concerned by actual number of farmers than the idea of telling millions of people that they need to cut all their social/family connections and pack it up for Queens.

I thought the mail was privatized in Queens.

http://www.officialpsds.com/images/thumbs/Doug-Heffernan-King-of-Queens-psd41765.png

reasons why the junk mail thing doesn't matter

1 - the recipient is not the customer/funder of that mail, so their demands and wishes have nothing to do with the financial situation of the post office
2 - basic economics say that the only reason for the sender to pay for that "junk mail" is that it actually has a higher return rate than the cost of mailing. so no matter what we call it, it works enough for it to be growing business for the post office, and our value judgements about it dont really matter

'basic economics' say that it doesn't cost 50 cents to send a piece of paper anywhere in america

you are amazing

you really think that billions of dollars of subsidies to send paper trash around the country is a good thing because of 'basic economics'

How much does it cost? xxp

do you really think that you can get away with this level of hilariously misapplied argumentation xpost

http://i.imgur.com/7WenP.gif

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_t5Xqp0AYeg4/S8yJXKVoO5I/AAAAAAAAAPs/pYPHjEyGBNo/s1600/mail+truck.gif

reasons why the junk mail thing doesn't matter

1 - the recipient is not the customer/funder of that mail, so their demands and wishes have nothing to do with the financial situation of the post office
2 - basic economics say that the only reason for the sender to pay for that "junk mail" is that it actually has a higher return rate than the cost of mailing. so no matter what we call it, it works enough for it to be growing business for the post office, and our value judgements about it dont really matter

I just want people to look at this post for a while, just look at it

everyone can learn some 'basic economics' if you just reread that post I think

well apparently you cant but yknow

There's a question on the table about how much it costs to send a piece of paper.

usps works the life out of people and those people can never leave because they will never find better money/benefits and its a vicious cycle and it kinda sucks unless you are a chill rural route carrier but mostly you sell them your soul for good healthcare.

I think you should write a textbook called 'basic economics' where you teach people how the government paying money to send trash around the country is just 'basic economics'

Spent a good chunk of postage to make sure an overseas package got shipped and delivered on time. Got a notice a few days back with a "return to sender" notice on tracking with no explanation. Just got the returned package in the mail. Reason for return - no customs form declaration. Clearly attached to the package - a customs form declaration!!

This is as much if not more another sign of the general unraveling of society, but reportedly there have been a number of armed robberies of mail deliverers here in the last couple of weeks. Gunmen just run up in broad daylight and demand packaged and master keys. That's fucked up.

when you're gonna misdeliver one of my packages, absolutely make sure it's my pills.

some days i feel like a single-issue voter, and that biden doesn't deserve my vote for not immediately ousting this piece of shit crony dejoy on day one.

he doesn't have the power to do so unfortunately

I can't say I'm a fan, but his tenure has had some welcome surprises.

Talking to my neighborhood postal worker (who both lives here and delivers here, which seems like a great setup), it sound like there's a rash of attacks on postal workers where the attackers steal their building/group mailbox keys and then steal packages. Sounds like a very unpleasant time to be a postal worker.

Yeah, I've heard that in Oakland a bunch.. I caught a dude red-handed trying to break into my apartment's mailboxes, and he had a ring of keys instead of a screwdriver

I feel like there's been a crazy spike in postal crimes in general. Check fraud has definitely gone up, and it's tied to mail theft. It's gotten so bad, I never mail anything unless I'm doing it INSIDE the post office into a kiosk or slot that's either constantly watched (i.e. within their tellers' view) or going into the area they're stationed at where they can see the mail being dropped in. Last year, some guy came into my local post office to tell them someone was trying to steal mail from their outside boxes using some kind of sticky thingie (and fled before he could be caught), and they told him "we're very aware of him." Not in a blaisé way, it was kind of implied they were doing something about it (what, I don't know).

U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

I can't say I'm a fan, but his tenure has had some welcome surprises.

― birdistheword, Friday, January 5, 2024 12:30 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

counterpoint: go fuck yourself

There are definitely some good things about the USPS recently. Their newly introduced Ground Advantage rate is cheaper and seemingly quicker for sending packages domestically. When I have to ship CDs, I'm paying about a dollar less per package than I used to and things are arriving in the same amount of time.

xp I'm not a fan of DeJoy's austerity plan - it's going to needlessly slash jobs and delay service - but he was also instrumental in getting the Postal Service Reform Act passed into law. That codified six-day delivery into law and ended the disastrous federal mandate that the USPS pre-pay the health plans for retirees, neither of which is a small thing. So right back at you.

I feel like there's been a crazy spike in postal crimes in general.

A lot of mail boxes have vanished here, like months ago. I think it's because crooks figured out a way to wash signatures off of checks, so they were stealing from the boxes in search of those (and who knows what else). Supposedly more secure replacements are on their way, eventually.

I actually talked with a carrier about this - there have been cases where they found boxes sawed or cut-through. So in addition to upgrading locks (like maybe a double-validation system), they're hoping to make the physical mailbox tougher to slice or puncture. It's really crazy how it's come to this.

he doesn't have the power to do so unfortunately

The Postal Board where he's nominated the majority does, tho

“checks”?

<cheques notes> yep.

Some people get paid via actual checks in the mail — idk if that’s what’s in question but checks in the mail are a v real thing fwiw

Also my mom got frauded via a check recently. It’s not insignificant imo.

Literally waiting on two important ones right now.

And for every pension I administered, there was 10% of our population who got paper checks