U.S. Postal Workers Were on the Front Lines Before. They Were Ignored | Hacker News Reader

U.S. Postal Workers Were on the Front Lines Before. They Were Ignored

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

139 pointsanarbadalov144 comments

Unrelated to this specific article: The USPS is a crucial part of the US infrastructure. The thought that we could loose it over mail in ballot voting is a sick joke.

At the same token, we probably should rethink the USPS from first principles.

We want delivery to every address, but certainly there is a problem when ~50% of what's being delivered is junk mail[1]

1. https://facts.usps.com/table-facts/

That seems less of a problem with USPS itself, and more of a problem with the funding structure of USPS. They are now in the position where they are forced to deliver junk mail to subsidise the loss-making deliveries they are mandated by law to perform.

If the government mandates USPS to perform deliveries for a price that is below cost, these deliveries should be partly funded by the taxpayer. They should not be forced to subsidise these deliveries by delivering spam mail.

Why first principles? Create a do-not-mail list. Make up the funding gap with taxes.

It always puzzles me why this is the oft suggested answer. Surely the sane default should be to already not receive unnecessary spam? In the digital world, the general consensus seems to agree with this sentiment, I wonder why the same doesn't apply for the real world. If anyone wants your ads, they can sign up for it, delivering it to anyone else should be punishable by law.

The financial structure is very different. Email service providers deal with the costs imposed by spam. They wish to be rid of it. The USPS derives much of their revenue from direct mail advertising. They depend on it.

This argument is not convincing, if the postal service can't be sustainable on its own without sending spam, surely the right answer would be to address the problem at the root. Think of the time and effort wasted nationwide in producing, delivering and then subsequently throwing away this amount of advertising. Surely it would collectively be cheaper to simply not produce most of it to begin with?

"If anyone wants your ads, they can sign up for it, delivering it to anyone else should be punishable by law."

Let's say I am a Gray Actor, Company X, who sells great products but I want to make money on digital signups. I add this unchecked box to my order form: "By checking this box, you agree to be contacted by our partners with promotions." - can checking this box apply promotions to the mail address you entered on my shipping form? - can I sell the rights to send you mail promotions after you check this box? - how long can I send you promotions? - how hard can I make it for you to "unsubscribe" (phone, written by mail, difficult to navigate website)? - you demand proof from a partner that you did indeed check this box after I send you a promotion. What do I need to supply? - the original subscriber has moved (without my knowledge) and I send generic ads in their name to the new tenant at the old address. Am I still in compliance?

Even if you presuppose "sign up for ads" is the only way to get spam, there are a lot of protections that are still missing.

There's no reasonable way to tell if something is solicited or not, mail is not duplex, and it's not on demand. Most mail I get that matters was not explicitly requested to begin with.

As well, most ads I get in the mail look like normal mail anyway, and I don't really want the government opening my mail to check if it's spam or not.

I'd much prefer a way to opt out of receiving advertisements wholesale on a per-address basis (not per-person, mind you). While you can "opt out" of receiving ads, it's borderline impossible without giving PID to advertisers!

I would like to see a fee for unsolicited bulk mail senders to help pay for the service, along with a "do not mail" list.

I would prefer that nobody subsidies the delivery of landfill to my mailbox.

It's the other way around: bulk mail is incredibly cheap to sort, route, and transport, and it's that which subsidizes your hand-addressed letters.

The USPS literally has a service "deliver this flyer to every residential mailbox in this ZIP". It's cheaper per-item than a letter, yes, but the margins on "stuff a bunch of identical objects into N boxes" are much higher than "figure out which of N boxes this 1 unique mailpiece goes to".

> I would like to see a fee for unsolicited bulk mail senders to help pay for the service,

This is how it currently works, the USPS gets money for delivering bulk mail.

I wonder how much we would need to subsidize. As it is the junk mail is adding that money into the system for us.

This seems like a valid idea to look further into.

Mail in voting is equivalent to electronic voting. The USPS is worthless in comparison to what we would lose.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&query=jakeogh%20mail&t...

It's weird to me to hear comments like this. To me the postal service just seems like a slow email service with no spam filtering. (Sure they can delivery packages, but they're not unique in that regard).

I get the utility of certified mail and associated services, but I don't really understand why we need first-class/marketing mail service in the 21st century.

I agree it was important infrastructure 250 years ago.

Imagine a world where state or federal government wants to do mail-in voting, or conduct a census, or mail emergency checks to all Americans, or send out tax refunds, or passports, or birth certificates, and private companies refuse to do it, or charge exorbitant rates. Would you prefer:

a) The government can compel private companies to do any of these things at any time whether they want to or not.

b) The government can do these things by itself.

c) None of these things are possible.

Or, imagine a state election that includes a ballot question about raising taxes on large corporations, and the only company that can deliver and collect ballots is Amazon. Can you think of any problems this could cause?

As I said, I understand the utility of services like certified mail. That seems like the appropriate level of care for most of the mailings you mention. You wouldn't want absentee ballots or passports to be lost, right? Or if my county wants to summon me for jury duty, they probably should pay the $3 to make sure I get the summons.

At heart, though, my beef with USPS stems from my hatred of spam. They're a service I interact with multiple times weekly... when I move their garbage from my mailbox to my trashcan. When 95% of my interactions with them are negative, it's hard for me to understand how some people can like them.

Nobody likes marketing mail. If you think you know how to convince Congress to let the postal service operate like a normal government service and stop trying to make a profit, let me know how I can help.

HN has this conversation about web services all the time. "I'm tired of seeing ads" -> "Somebody has to pay server costs, would you prefer all content be paywalled?" -> "Someone should implement a micropayment system so we can all support these things collectively."

Only here we already have the centralized payment system in the form of taxes, but it turns out when you use that to subsidize USPS operations everyone still complains.

If we get rid of the post office for last-mile delivery of anything to anywhere, we can be virtually assured of having to bail out the major package delivery services every few years.

Because not everyone can afford internet access?

It's harder to afford stable housing with a stable mailing address than it is to afford internet access.

And those without internet access can go to public libraries or even get free public wifi in many cities. Even some homeless shelters provide wifi now, which is much easier for them than providing mail service. Technically, I think those without a permanent address can register to still receive mail at a post office, but that seems more difficult to manage and more limiting than finding internet access.

>It's harder to afford stable housing with a stable mailing address than it is to afford internet access.

Gotta disagree. You aren't required to have stable housing to have a stable mailing address. The USPS provides services to all.

https://faq.usps.com/s/article/Is-there-mail-service-for-the...

This doesn't seem to be a common opinion, but I generally don't understand why USPS is critical infrastructure. Vote by mail is just about the only essential service they provide that I can think of, and that could potentially still be supported in other ways without USPS the other 364 days of the year.

Many of the justifications I've come across of why mail is essential seem to center around transmission of information being essential, and I 100% agree with that. But these days important information does not need to be transmitted by mail. The fact that many important services are still tied to hard-copies of paper - like mailing checks, mailing bills, mailing a warning when a bill has been missed, etc. causes some completely unnecessary problems. It's easier to keep a phone number or email address active for many years, but an address for a large percentage of the population is temporary. I've seen the argument made that not everybody has internet access, and that this is an equality issue that physical mail is still necessary for less privileged people. But many poor people are more likely to have a cell phone than have stable housing with a stable mailing address. And public libraries provide internet access for those who don't have it otherwise.

Also, and this part is arguably a first world problem but it's still a big annoyance, the junk mail that props up USPS is completely out of control. How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is? That seems crazy. Imagine if the fire department made you watch some ads after they put out your fire.

I'm not arguing for getting rid of the USPS now, we do seem to need vote by mail at least for a while longer until we have a better, sufficiently secure alternative. I just think all these arguments about how essential it is to the fabric of modern society are bit outdated.

Edit: anyone who is downvoting me care to comment on what I'm wrong about?

>It's easier to keep a phone number or email address active for many years, but an address for a large percentage of the population is temporary.

Working with low-income folks daily, this is not true in total. We have to check phone numbers and e-mail addresses every time we interact with our clients, because they cycle through them almost monthly. Physical addresses tend to change annually.

>And public libraries provide internet access for those who don't have it otherwise.

There is no public library with internet access within 100 miles of my current address.

>How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is?

They're not entirely ad supported?

>I just think all these arguments about how essential it is to the fabric of modern society are bit outdated.

And this is my take - your view is of a young, middle- to upper-middle-class person with no problems accessing the modern world today. For poor people, for rural people, the mail is essential. I receive all of my bills via mail, because the internet is so bad here. My bank does not offer bill-payment, and I don't want to link my bank account to a third party site, outside of using my bank to auto bill pay, if that's even an option.

> I don't want to link my bank account to a third party site anyway.

And this is just my take, but this last sentence really weakens the rest of your argument. Your view seems to be that of someone who's uncomfortable with modern technology. At some point, we'll need to accept that being uncomfortable with the status quo of antiquated, painfully slow, inefficient non-tech solutions is just as valid of a viewpoint as being uncomfortable with technology.

Sorry, I wasn't as clear as I should've been. I updated the comment to clarify. It's not that I don't want to pay bills electronically. It's that my bank won't let me. So I assume the only other option is some kind of third party, similar to paypal, if that even exists for this kind of thing.

You shouldn't be downvoted... you're expressing valid questions that should be understood. With issues like mail, voter-id, etc you really need to remember that there are 300+ million people in the United States, and most of the others that you know are like you. You gotta walk a mile in others' shoes.

I come from a place in rural upstate NY where broadband is only available to about 75% of the population, the legacy POTS system is being allowed to fail, and cellular service is available to about 50%. Should my former neighbors be cut off from functioning in modern society because they can't get mail?

Today, I own a home and have to pay property taxes and garbage bills. Should my ability to keep my home be contingent on my phone service? What if my phone carrier screw up and ports my number without my permission? What if I screw up, don't update my credit card and have service suspended?

The other alternative, public libraries, are also being starved of funding in many areas.

USPS may deserve to decline or evolve. But killing it in the middle of a crisis for stupid political reasons is not a strategy.

Genuine question - how available is home phone service and DSL internet in that area? Email, and ability to load some official websites is the critical service, which doesn't need to be that fast.

> Should my ability to keep my home be contingent on my phone service?

No, ideally not just on phone service. But on something digital that is free and doesn't require any effort to keep it live over an extended period of time (perhaps email). This kind of thing is exactly my point though, should your ability to participate in society be contingent on living in one place for a prolonged period of time? When I was younger I knew a lot of people that would bum around for a while, travel, crash on friends couches, etc. I remember multiple friends who had a relatively small bill get sent to collections and ruin their credit for the next 7 years because the service had an old address on file. It seems crazy to me that this can happen, that you'd just be sent a few pieces of paper of which it can never be verified that you've actually received them, and no one ever needs to make an effort to call or email you, and then that ruins your credit. And these people were relatively well off and overall pretty responsible in the scheme of things, I can only imagine this type of thing must also screw over chronically poor people all the time.

> killing it in the middle of a crisis for stupid political reasons is not a strategy

100% agree with that, I've just wondered a for a long time why so many official things still done primarily through mail. In my opinion it's worth at least having a public discussion about why things are even still done this way, and therefore whether we still actually need the USPS. But it seems that even on this tech website most people don't agree.

I do appreciate your comment, ultimately it seems like these arguments fall along a very stark a rural/urban divide. I'm so used to living in cities that it's just ingrained in my mind that housing and something like a physical address is a premium and scarce resource and anything digital can be much more freely available and unconstrained. It's hard to even fathom that in some people's reality it is the opposite (and even after reading your arguments, I'm still skeptical to what extent that is the case).

> I've just wondered a for a long time why so many official things still done primarily through mail.

Easy. Two reasons: universal service and no standard ID.

If you aren't homeless, you always have a physical address that can be delivered to. A physical address is a piece of the earth than can be proven to exist or not exist, and even audited by various means. "Virtual" services like phones and internet are not universal for many types of people. For a professional, access to the internet or mobile phone is very reliable. For many others, you are one missed payment or reload away from losing that number forever.

No standard ID is the other thing. There's no root of trust for humans, and no good way to link you to who you are. Biometrics are only available for limited use cases (mostly criminal), and almost all forms of "trust" (in the identity sense) are tied to physical locations or events. Your driver's license or passport (if you have them) is linked to the record of your birth, marriage (if your name changes), your place of residence, and one or more bills or other business records.

The system as it is has many flaws, but you can't fix it without a strategy. Getting rid of a service like the mail or monetizing it in a way that spikes the costs undermines many expected parts of life for almost no benefit.

>I generally don't understand why USPS is critical infrastructure

Private citizens and businesses need to get physical things from point A to point B regardless of where point A and B are in the country. It should be self evident that the infrastructure needed to do that is critical. As for whether or not the USPS is the best way to do that, there's been some constitutional arguments and debate that's taken place over the last 250 years.

> How is an essential government service entirely ad-supported like USPS is?

Because Republicans hate taxes and unions, and the USPS is one of the largest public sector unions that they can't get rid of (due to aforementioned Constitutional requirements) so they force the USPS to over-fund themselves without taxes.

>Imagine if the fire department made you watch some ads after they put out your fire.

Imagine if Congress told fire departments across the country that they weren't allowed to take tax dollars to fund themselves.

You forgot about shipping. USPS Priority is the most efficient way to ship packages domestically in my experience.

Judging by the comments no one is actually reading TFA. Article is about the 2001 anthrax attacks. Two USPS employees died. Article is basically complaining that the USPS didn't upend their entire way of doing business in response to an isolated terrorist attack.

Wonder what happens when soldiers can't send/receive mail from their families

An uninhibited free market would absolutely produce a price for that service. If no mail is sent, it's because the market is inhibited or both of the parties (government and families) are unwilling to pay the price.

Pricing would likely be similar to the free market pricing for prison phone calls. What, $50 per letter, something like that?

What will happen is that they'll continue to vote overwhelmingly Republican, as a bloc.

Edit: This isn't political snark, FWIW. The deleted parent comment pointed out that soldiers on deployment rely on the APO/FPO system under USPS to receive packages from home, and wondered what the soldiers would do if the USPS is allowed to fail by the Trump administration.

It's objectively demonstrable that those who end up worse off because of Republican policies are among the most faithful Republican voters, and that almost certainly holds true in the armed forces as well. Warfighters and their families will likely pay more, get less, and continue voting the same way.

Soldiers don't have access to the internet?

Correct. Soldiers often don't have access to the internet.

Soldiers often receive care packages from family, and those ship via USPS. You can't exactly send snacks over the Internet.

Yes, digital care packages sure will go over swimmingly. Nothing like some home-cooked bits...

I was nearly at the end before it occurred to me to wonder about references for all this. It's really light on actual facts while being generous with the rhetoric.

Didn't Holland and other central European countries privatize their mail systems? Maybe HN users from those areas could share their perspectives.

Yes it has been privatised but there is basically only one postal service (PostNL). The other one (Sandd) only exists because when PostNL was privatised they weren't allowed to monopolize.

Because mail has been so drastically reduced in the last years due to digitalisation of banking and Government, PostNL has trouble staying profitable so recently this monopoly limit has been removed again to allow of a fusion of Sandd and PostNL.

Everyone who works/worked is an essential part of the machine we call society and should always be celebrated.

USPS makes Canada Post look like a Bond villain by comparison.

Why don't they talk about raising their mailing rates? I would imagine their demand is pretty inelastic.

Congress controls USPS rate setting, as well as mandates the rate of healthcare and pension benefit contributions.

I didn't know that. That seems to be the root of the issue then. Let the USPS set their own rates.

That's not the issue. The issue is the Postal Service was required to prefund its pension plan 75 years in the future, a requirement no other government corporation has: https://ips-dc.org/how-congress-manufactured-a-postal-crisis...

Why does this institution still exist? Or, what is so vital to America about paper mail/communications that it cannot be delivered once each week?

Seems like the primary beneficiary in this era is the direct mail marketing & advertising industries.

Anyone in the country can send information to anyone else in the country for almost nothing. Is there any other infrastructure that provides this service today?

This kind of unfettered, nearly free (should be entirely free, but I digress) communication is the cornerstone of a healthy society.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com