U.S. Postal Service: salvageable or doomed?

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'

Don't make me use the gavel and call the previous question or w/e.

iatee, you realize that you arent actually fooling anyone here right

no you convinced me w/ basic economics, I'm on your side now

what i heard was USPS actually earns money from junk mailers paying them to send crap everywhere but this was from a pamphlet i received sponsored by awesome patriot junk mailers for america or some such group.

um, you should probably double-check what 'basic economics' refers to, iatee

iatee if you had bothered to read the first post in the thread you'd know that the turn to increased junk mail is in large part a result of absurd pension-funding requirements designed to kill the postal service

1. postal service exists, 2. prices set by (?)(no idea what bulk rates are tbh), 3. business that want to cram your box with coupons use it.

again this seems like a minor problem. solving 3. by getting rid of 1. doesn't make much sense to me.

prior to the passage of the union-busing bush law discussed upthread, the USPS actually managed to break even year after year. the postal service paid for itself. i.e., there is was no subsidy to mail paper around the country.

ppl who think post office ppl are 'cocks obv need to move out of the city

most people in cities are cocks btw

iatee if you had bothered to read the first post in the thread you'd know that the turn to increased junk mail is in large part a result of absurd pension-funding requirements designed to kill the postal service

its obligations have nothing to do w/ its revenue sources - the revenue from traditional mail is going to continue to decline regardless. does anyone believe they will be paying their bills by mail in 2030?

best way to reduce the amount of useless bulk mail would be to slightly increase the cost of sending it. would weed out a few who can't afford or don't really depend on it, while generating more income off the remaining users. i suspect that the post office has already pushed this as far as they can. what's probably required is a subsidy to offset the cost of making bulk mail prohibitively expensive to all but a few users.

i'd say the fundamental problem with the USPS isn't that it sends paper around -- how is the core function of a thing a 'liability'? -- it's that its service (to everywhere the same) and price (the same everwhere, and low) are highly constrained by politics.

the education and blowing-shit-up functions of the public sector don't have to worry about this kind of strict return; the mail is more like that, no matter what a great job UPS and fedex are doing picking and choosing what they send and how, which the mail can't and shouldn't do.

does anyone believe they will be paying their bills by mail in 2030?

― iatee, Wednesday, May 2, 2012 10:19 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

not if the gov't succeeds in destroying the USPS

i kind of like junk mail when it's awesome, like cereal samples, coupons for free burgers, $1 bills, fancy CD cases...

well and wrt the current discussion, the junk mail thing is really a red herring, like i said upthread - it makes no sense to talk about junk mail percentage in a conversation about the sustainability of the post office. xposts

i'd say the fundamental problem with the USPS isn't that it sends paper around -- how is the core function of a thing a 'liability'? -- it's that its service (to everywhere the same) and price (the same everwhere, and low) are highly constrained by politics.

well, I agree w/ the second part but w/r/t the first part, it's a business that's in an inevitable decline.

see but it is not a business per se

'the necessity to send pieces of paper across the country is quickly becoming less of a necessity'

yes i don't think it's a business, it's a public service. therefore if it's expensive you do what you can to manage it but ultimately say "huh interesting, here's the check"

Literally waiting on two important ones right now.

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