I wish I could get a permanent address such as myname@usps.com and get paper mail directed as needed every time I move. Allowing people redirect paper mail to spam could save USPS billions.
This is what I thought too. That, coupled with snow plows repeatedly taking out my mailbox in the winter, and the fact that most junk mail doesn't get delivered to non-residential addresses and I decided to just take down my mailbox and receive all my mail at my work address.
I've been doing this for about ten years now, and it works pretty well. There are some unintended consequences though as many places just assume you have residential mail delivery. The first thing that happened was that six months or so into it, the USPS told HUD that my house was vacant. This led HUD to tell my insurance company. My insurance company freaked out and called me in a panic, but I was able to explain it to them and they made a note. The other biggest issue is that I constantly have companies ignore my 'mail to' address and send mail to my residential address, then get all uppity when it bounces. When I tell individuals that they have to send mail to my work because I don't have a mailbox, they often look at me like I'm Ted Kaczynski. I also can have trouble proving residency to places that want a piece of mail showing my address. The poor credit agencies get all confused, as they can't tell what the heck is going on, and seemingly randomly show my residential address as either of the two addresses. The latest issue was the federal 'every household in America can get free covid tests' program. Well, no. It's actually 'every household with a residential mailbox'.
But I definitely don't get much in the way of junk mail...
If actually everyone do this, we will even have an ID number that's not SSN.
I had a similar thought but about a bank account.
So apparently the Federal Reserve got into a lot of trouble for just considering giving every person a bank account but what if we actually do it using the post office infrastructure? The post office is secure enough to handle your passport. Why not your money?
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/10/bernie-...
Centralized postal banking is not a new concept and actually is a long-term trend.
Regardless, I dont want the federal government to be even more nationalized. How do I even begin to disagree with the IRS, for example? On top of that, I thought nationalism was bad?
Have you ever had a bad interaction with the IRS? If so, it is probably because the IRS is chronically underfunded.
Anecdotal but among the people I know, the consensus is the people at IRS are very kind. Contrast that with the people at a state, any state, Department of Revenue. You do not want to make those people mad.
In any case, the answer is as I'm sure you know, to get a lawyer.
I am so saddened by comments like these which come from a position of privilege. They don't know nor understand the kind of pain people go through.
A friend of mine can't get a bank account because her father wrote bad checks in her name. She refused to make a police report (he was already in jail).
I also have a bad interaction with them every year when I have to tell them how much I owe them down to the dollar correctly under penalty of law. Failure to do so is also a penalty of law.
Yeah, fantastic experience.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system>
Seeing the high fees that some banks charge, I'd love to see USPS savings accounts come back as some low-fee competition.
Of course there’s not much when the street number is off… but even then you have the name.
I believe in the case of the USPS there’s also a lot of stuff not going into sorting machines either. It’s not all automated
I think you could do PO numbers for lots of stuff of course, and lots of checksumming could be put into place. But I think that for a lot of existing flows the zip code is super important and relied upon, and obfuscating that level of routing would not be worth it for the USPS
is that what a PO box is for? You can give out your PO box instead of an address.
unfortunately, the mailing address is sometime (ab)used by parties that also want your real address.