Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office?
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I think the USPS could be a profitable company, they've just royally screwed up customer service. Screwed it up so bad that most people actually resent it. Not only is going to the post office comparable to a bad visit to the dentist but just try to make sense of their services [2]. They're incomprehensible. If I just want to mail a letter with a tracking number I should be able to go to the post office and say, "I would like to mail this with a tracking number." Actually forget that, I should be able to go to a vending machine, put in $1 and have it print me a tracking number that I can slap on the envelope. Instead I have to wait 30 minutes in a slightly dilapidated room, with service change signs dated back to 2004 and ask for "First Class mail with tracking and delivery confirmation". Every time, I say "I just want a tracking number" and they have to ask me 10 questions. Just give me a damn tracking number and clean your office.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usps#Universal_service_obligat...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usps#Service_level_choices
>I should be able to go to a vending machine ...
Yes, they have those. They are called "Automated Postal Center"(APC).
> "First Class mail with tracking and delivery confirmation" and they have to ask me 10 questions.
These two things never existed together. There was delivery confirmation, which is not tracking. USPS did not previously provide tracking on First class mail.
Over the past few years they have been improving their tracking of delivery conf #s, and today it's similar to UPS/FedEx tracking.. so recently they renamed it to "USPS Tracking" (in mid-Jan 2013).
However, USPS has never failed to deliver correctly. And I think there's something to be said for their reliability in general.
and that, simply, is why mailing a letter through UPS is so expensive.
"FedEx and United Parcel Service (UPS) directly compete with USPS express mail and package delivery services, making nationwide deliveries of urgent letters and packages. Due to the postal monopoly, they are not allowed to deliver non-urgent letters and may not directly ship to U.S. Mail boxes at residential and commercial destinations."
I don't know what specifically the definitions of urgent and non-urgent are, but you get the idea. UPS may not now be designed to deliver non-urgent letters efficiently, but that's largely because they aren't allowed to, so why would they bother?
The original quote was
> that, simply, is why mailing a letter through UPS is so expensive.
So the actual reason is: Mailing a letter through UPS does not exist. Mailing an express letter does exist and it is more expensive.
And I think they wouldn't bother either way, simply because it's not economical for them. Once again a reason why having it as a quasi-government service makes sense.
If nobody was in that market at all and there was no legal barrier to entering the market, it would be economical for somebody to offer the service, be that UPS or some other company.
And by the way: My perspective is that of living in Germany and having actually worked for two years as a postman for Deutsche Post after it was privatized and the monopoly was abandoned. I think it is highly debatable whether we're better off with the "free market" (also a debatable term in this case) solution right now. I was employed as a help because they needed more capacity to deliver advertising, which is - by volume - what they mostly deliver these days.
Oh how I loath going through piles of coupons and other physical spam to make sure I haven't missed some vital bill. Which, as an added benefit, would be delivered to me by a much more manageable method if the post office quit offering their service.
Note: The Pony Express was pretty cool, though.
About two years ago I had to send a iPod Touch from Portland, OR to Akron. I stopped by Fedex and they wanted 11 bucks to ship it. USPS was a block away and they did it for under 3 bucks. And it arrived in two days.
Blame the people that sent you unwanted shit.
See https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm for example.
I don't get spam in my inbox more than once every couple of months.
Do you have any idea how much cheaper USPS is? Domestically AND internationally. How important it is to e-commerce? Online stores. Small businesses. My online store (http://www.dayonepp.com) shameless plug.
Do you realize that without it your ass would still be driving to Best Buy to pay for an overpriced TV? You'd have to pay $20 to mail your brother his PS2 that he forgot while visiting you. Without the postal service UPS and Fedex would probably do backdoor deals to inflate the cost of shipping since they wouldn't have to compete with the USPS.
It's not even costing you anything other than throwing away junk mail. Recycle it. But don't wish death on something so important.
What? Since when does the USPS deliver TVs?
>You'd have to pay $20 to mail your brother his PS2 that he forgot while visiting you.
Going by the original PS2 dimensions (apparently 12"x7"x3") their respective rate calculators show that the price for shipping with about the same delivery time was ~$12 for the post office and ~$13 for UPS (from Atlanta to LA).
Basically, if I weren't something of a luddite when it comes to reading (I still prefer to read some things on paper), I'd have absolutely no use for the USPS at all. As it is, if they closed down tomorrow, I'm pretty sure IEEE and ACM would find another way to get my journals to me, or I'd finally bite the bullet and switch to reading that stuff exclusively in digital form as well.
As I moved my bills online, and I communicate with family via dozens of online means, the usefulness of USPS has dropped to ZERO for me, it is just a physical spam location for me. Not claiming that applies to all people, but in my case it is true.
[1]: http://stateimpact.npr.org/new-hampshire/2011/09/27/how-junk...
Want to send a letter to Talkeetna, Alaska, from New York? It will cost you fifty dollars by UPS.
That's because it's thousands of miles away and freaking in the middle of NOWHERE. Why, rationally, should it cost the same as sending a letter across town?
That was the point of it; to socialize the cost of mail delivery. Now why would we want to be doing that in this day and age? I don't know...
Why? I don't see any reason I should be subsidizing other peoples' chosen lifestyles. They have the option of moving to a more populated area.
Honestly, "chosen lifestyle," how quaint of you. You act as if people that live in rural areas are living some posh lifestyle of choice. That's just completely ridiculous.
Bullshit. I pay more money out than I receive in services because sparsely populated areas receive more services than they pay for. Your argument is just pure sophistry.
>Honestly, "chosen lifestyle," how quaint of you. You act as if people that live in rural areas are living some posh lifestyle of choice. That's just completely ridiculous.
That's what I'm arguing, yeah, though you're doing your best to warp the point. "Posh" is misdirection. There are lots of advantages to living in rural areas. The air is cleaner. Housing is cheaper. Less stress. There's not much traffic. Hell, a lot of the disadvantages have disappeared recently, since the internet brings entertainment and shopping choices that people used to have to go to the city for.
But this isn't China where you have to get a permit to move to the city. Living in a rural area is a choice, and I just don't see why people who make that choice shouldn't pay their own way.
My argument sophistry. It is recognition of reality. Whatever pays your bills is probably partly possible because of subsidies. It's just reality. And if not you, specifically, since you aren't a special snowflake and the world exists for reasons beyond your existence, it is certainly the case that many people are wealthy because subsidies.
Many people are not living in rural areas because of that sort of choice; many people live their because they feel like they don't have good options.
Honestly, you're whole point is a bit silly to me anyway. The issue with the USPS is this ridiculous pension requirement that is being thrusted upon them by the same political party that brought us the Iraq war, how was that for corporate subsidies?
How can this make sense to you. If I pay a dollar in taxes and get $0.80 in services, does that sound like a subsidy to you? On my planet that's not a subsidy.
>Many people are not living in rural areas because of that sort of choice; many people live their because they feel like they don't have good options.
I'm not really interested in their feelings.
>The issue with the USPS is this ridiculous pension requirement that is being thrusted upon them by the same political party that brought us the Iraq war, how was that for corporate subsidies?
You may have noticed the Democrats ran Congress from 2006 to 2010.
I claim you are getting more subsidies than you believe.
> You may have noticed the Democrats ran Congress from 2006 to 2010.
You may have noticed that there is something called a requirement for a super majority such that and you might also recall that the other parties stated agenda, see Mitch McConnell, was to block all legislation. So, I don't see how this is the case.
That's an interesting claim. Completely without merit, but interesting.
>You may have noticed that there is something called a requirement for a super majority such that and you might also recall that the other parties stated agenda, see Mitch McConnell, was to block all legislation.
There's no supermajority for the budget. And no, the Republicans do not have a state agenda to block all legislation. I imagine whatever comment you're referring to was taken out of context, but even if it wasn't Mitch McConnell doesn't have the power to make that stick.
Why shouldn't people in Alaska subsidize my manhattan rent? What (besides status quo bias) makes mail special?
Being able to send mail is a basic skill required to participate in society - tons of democratic rights (voting by mail if you're disabled comes to mind) can be exercised through mail. Furthermore, being able to receive mail is just as important. We are a society that still has a lot of its fundamentals build on the exchange of physical documents. Sure, it is starting to be more economical in some instances to do that electronically, but that doesn't change the fundamental fact behind the idea.
There was a time when fresh water and, later, electricity were an outlandish commodity to have always ready in your household. At some point, society has made the decision that they should be a basic human right (although that depends on where you live - in some parts, there is a weird quasi-privatization going on that I find absurd).
Finally, it makes sense. If you have a thousand letters and 90% of them cost 10 cents to deliver while the other 10% cost 100 cents to deliver, that means the total cost are 19000 cents. An average of 19 cents per letter.
The question is: Would the people who would have to pay 10 cents actually care about paying 9 cents extra? Do they care that much that it outweighs the burden that is put on the 100-cent people? Put differently: Is the happiness and relief that the 100-cent people feel worth more than the minor grudge that the 10-cent people feel?
I think that is the case. It improves society to do economically sensible things like we do them. And that is why some commodities are "socialized" and others are not.
As for your arguments about subjective feelIngs, if the minor grudge people feel when they are forced to pay for video games is smaller than the enjoyment gamers gain, should the government force non-gamers to subsidize gamers? If not, why not?
I am generally an economic utilitarian. I just can't see any utility gain from subsidizing rural folks.
Ah, so it's "government subsidy" and you have a hard time imagining how that is good for society. Understood, you really are trolling.
This will probably continue to be the case until someone figures out how to make vertical farming competitive.
Why would market pricing fail in the case of letters when it seems to work so well (as you notes) for package delivery, food production and technology?
No, that does not follow.
> As for your arguments about subjective feelIngs, if the minor grudge people feel when they are forced to pay for video games is smaller than the enjoyment gamers gain, should the government force non-gamers to subsidize gamers? If not, why not?
Because you're trolling. I have no interest discussing this with somebody who obviously has no interest in what I have to say about it and instead just wants to have an excuse to talk about themselves.
Honestly, and I don't want to be mean, but you have a stupid argument. Rent is actually subsidized in certain cases if certain qualifications are met. The same is true for post office. It's not like someone like you, apparently of the same intellectual level, who would build a house at the top of a volcano could (since you want to play the silly examples game) can expect the USPS to deliver mail to you.
You think you are being logical but honestly you are just silly and not educated about these matters.
Back on topic, I think you're right (despite the fact that it would make letters much more expensive where I live). There's no reason why someone in New York sending a letter to their friend in Albany should have to subsidize my 6-year-old self sending a letter to Idaho.
That said, if they allowed competition, I would have far less of a problem, as the New York->Albany people could just go with another option. I'm not sure the post office could survive competition, but I don't really care - IMO, it's fundamentally economically unsound to prohibit competition in the marketplace (with a reasonable view of what the marketplace actually is).
It's explicitly illegal for companies to compete with first class mail. This is why you see such prices.
For perspective, the way post works in my country is that there's a company which is owned by the state and is forced to provide a postal service in all cities. The post office can still make a profit (and usually does). While courier firms like UPS compete with it, the post office probably delivers most packages in the country.
The postal system was devised back when it was a major, all day hassle to visit the closest village. Now it takes 5 minutes and you can pick up a coffee on the way.
The idea of General Delivery is that instead of having an address in the second line, you write "General Delivery", and fill in the third line as usual. The main post office in the area holds the mail for 30 days after receiving it. In a small town there's only one post office, and that's the one you go to to collect it. In conjunction with Priority Mail packages, this is an awfully convenient way to get resupplied with things you can't find in small towns when you're traveling through.
I've done mail drops on the Appalachian Trail using Priority Mail, and while it would be possible to do a thru-hike without mail drops, you'd have much more limited food options. If you had any kind of non-standard dietary requirements, you'd be hard pressed to meet them in most of the towns along the trail.
The AT is unusual in that there are hostels and outfitters along the way that will receive and hold packages on the behalf of hikers, and they're well publicized in the guidebooks. I've also bicycle toured through the US, and being able to pick nearly any town, confirm that it had a post office, and pick something up there 3-4 days later greatly eases getting stuff to you. I couldn't get a replacement derailleur hanger before I left, and wanted a spare (because a hanger is usually specific to a manufacturer, or even a frame), and I picked it up somewhere in Montana after my local bike shop was finally able to get one in.
By the end of the trip I had used up a set of bottom bracket bearings (the ones that make the pedals go around smoothly), and if I hadn't been ending the trip, I would have needed a new set. Since mine were pretty uncommon at the time (external BB in 2006), I would have had a hard time getting replacements from a random bike shop, and I would have relied on General Delivery to get a set from either the manufacturer or a higher-end bike shop.
It's probably easy to underestimate the reliability, efficiency, and convenience of the Post Office. Most people will probably never be in a town of 70 people [2] that doesn't have any sort of store but does have a post office, and if they do they probably won't be there without a car. Those of us who have been know that the ability to get a box sent there from the other side of the country in a couple of days is nothing short of miraculous.
[1] https://www.usps.com/manage/forward-mail.htm#3
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caratunk,_Maine (I was through in 2010. In 2012 the Post Office was apparently still open, but Fontana Dam, which has only marginally better services, lost theirs.)
So you can take it away when you give up your guns, I'll make that trade.
Until then, congress needs to stop messing with USPS.
They don't use any tax dollars, why is this even an issue.
Yes, except the right to be a monopoly is not. I'm fine with the USPS existing, but you must let private couriers exist as well.
You really want to turn mail delivery into what the taxi system is today?
UPS and FedEx legally cannot deliver letters, only packages.
> You really want to turn mail delivery into what the taxi system is today?
The taxi system today, like mail delivery, consists of a regulated monopoly that prevents competition and limits quantity (through the sale of taxi medallions); prospective competition has numerous restrictions placed on it (no spontaneous curbside pickup in the case of taxis, no letter delivery in the case of mail).