I wish they’d cut service to zero days a week. It’s ridiculous that the government loses money every year doing something that should so obviously be done by the private sector.
AND you can mail it back on Saturday so they get it early Monday. Yes, any shortening of USPS delivery days per week would make a dent in my Netflix habits.
The postal service pays for itself. It doesn’t receive taxpayer money. I thought this was common knowledge by now.
If there’s one thing I don’t want the Private Sector doing, it’s delivering the mail (FedEx and UPS don’t count; they’re Parcel Delivery and Couriers.) There are some things that really should be the Government’s responsibility and, IMHO, the Post Office is one of them.
Mail used to serve for fast communications which today are done by phone or email. There was a time when London had five deliveries daily and when I was a kid in Madrid there were three daily deliveries all week and only one on Sundays.
But times change and mail usage will decrease as it is replaced by email. I believe the next step will be just to subcontract it out to someone like FedEx.
Why?
Because it’s a vital part of a civilised society and if a private company was to try and run it, the prices would skyrocket (“Well, normally it’s $3.80 to send a letter to Perth, but Perth is a long way away so there’s also our 50c Convenience Charge since you’re not delivering it yourself, and there’s the Fuel Surcharge to cover the cost of the petrol involved…”) , and the whole operation would cease to be run for the benefit of the country and the people living in it, and instead be another moneymaking exercise for a private company that’s probably owned by an even larger company that makes squillions anyway.
You also have to understand that, in Australia and NZ, the Post Office is more than just a place to mail your letters. You can also pay most of your bills there (very handy!), renew your Car Registration (ditto), apply for a Passport, and do your banking (which is very useful if there aren’t any branches of your bank nearby).
These are all things that I (and most other people I know) feel a lot better being in the hands of a Government Department (or Government-owned business).
So is food, but I don’t rely on the government to supply it. Look at Russia, where they did.
There’s nothing about a private company that requires the pricing scheme you propose nor an increase in overall cost to the customer. The whole point of privatization is to reduce costs, not increse them.
Fedex ships a letter-sized package anywhere in 48 states for the same price. And even if pricing were by distance, wouldn’t that be fairer anyway? I sometimes mail 300 newsletters to neighbors, none of whom are farther away than 4 miles, and I pay the same postage as if I mailed 3000 miles away. What’s the logic in that?*
Sounds like a nice idea, but there’s nothing to prevent combination of services if privately run. Ever heard of shopping malls? Banks, florists, optometrists and pharmacies are often booths in large supermarkets.
And there are others that feel the opposite.
- I could deliver the newsletters myself in a few hours and save big bucks in postage, but it’s illegal for me to put any mail in a residential mailbox, guaranteeing a monopoly.
The Government here will give you money to buy food if you can’t afford to get it yourself. And the Government in Australia hasn’t supplied food to people as a matter of course since about the 1790s or so. They have, however, been in charge of the Post Office since its inception. I don’t see any compelling reason to change that.
The Australian experience has generally been the opposite- I think the only things that got cheaper when it was privatised were phone lines and air travel. Admittedly those things are much more accessible now they’re cheap, but even s
FedEx and UPS charge insane amounts of money to ship anything anywhere here. I think they only have offices in Australia to handle deliveries being sent from the US to addresses here, to be honest.
Not sure what it costs to mail a letter in the US, but it’s 55c here and there’s more than 55c worth of effort involved in walking 6kms to deliver a newsletter IMHO, so I don’t see it as a problem. Try mailing a letter to NZ from Australia sometime, though. That’s expensive. (New Zealand is a lot closer than Perth from the Eastern States of Australia).
True, but at the least the Government won’t start making up “Service Charges” and “Processing Fees” and the like just to make it worth their time the way a private company would.
They’re frequently a zoo to get anywhere near or accomplish anything whilst there. There are Post Offices all over the place which are far more convenient.
Not in this country they aren’t. (At least, not in QLD.)
I’ve yet to meet any, but we are in different countries with different cultural and social attitudes.
There’s no law against it (that I’m aware of) here, and if there is, it’s buried at the bottom of a dust-covered tome of Postal Regulations that hasn’t been enforced since 1906.
Can’t speak for Australia, but it’s rigid rule in the US (and militantly enforced):
Not only that, but the customer must pay for the construction and maintenance of all recipient mailboxes.
One way around that is a duplicate box mounted just below or to one side of the official USPO box which can be used by anyone (typically newspapers or ads), but not all homes have those.
Privatizing is a joke. There are routes ,especially rural, that would be unprofitable. A private company would find a way to weasel out of them. Then they would cut wages and try to hire illegals .
UPS is a private mail company that was formed to pick off the most profitable deliveries. They are not there to supply a service. Our mail service in America is pretty good. If it was privatized we would regret it. Then of course ,if we privatized ,the companies would be bought up until there was a monopoly.Can you imagine how powerful that company would be? How many times do corporations have to exploit us before we figure out they are not interested in fair wages and treating their workers well?
If you want to get rid of the USPS all you have to do is make them use metric measures. Because Americans will sooner stop using the USPS than learn the metric system.
People’s expectations are conditioned by what they grew up with and most of the arguments boil down to “because that’s how we’ve always done it”. But that means progress is undesirable and also that what should or should not be kept depends on what you grew up with. Telegraph companies were mostly state-owned in Europe but private in America. Same thing with Telex and telephone. Telegraph and telex had their heyday and then declined. What is the point of keeping something for which demand is quickly diminishing? Where does it say that no one should be subjected to change and that we have a right to continue with what we had?
Gasoline in Spain used to be a monopoly and it had the exact same stable price anywhere and everywhere and people liked this predictability (never mind that it was extremely expensive everywhere alike). Many people could not fathom that something as necessary and essential as gasoline could fluctuate with the market and that people here might have to pay more or less than people over there. But there is no intrinsic reason, only what they were used to. Then the EU came, prices fluctuated with time and place… a few people grumbled but soon everybody got used to it.
I hate it when a product I buy is discontinued but I don’t think I have a right to it. So what if some people like to have mail delivered 7 days a week? Where is it written that the whole of society needs to pay so that those few can enjoy that convenience? Especially when experience shows other people are moving to more convenient ways of doing things.
Article 1, Section 8, US Constitution.
“To establish Post Offices and Post Roads;”
No, that’s not seven day delivery, but it does say that the feds have to be involved in it, and pretty much by implication that it has to serve everyone equally, if possible.
No. You have quoted a few words out of context and you got it wrong. Section 8 is an ennumeration of powers and establishes no obligation. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution, known as the Postal Clause or the Postal Power, empowers Congress “To establish Post Offices and post Roads”.
Not shall have obligation.
Besides, do you know what "Post Offices and Post Roads"means exactly? Do you know the meaning of “post” in that context?
When was the last time the US government was involved in a service of horse relays and roads to serve such service?
Well, if they got out of that business because it was no longer necessary then I guess they can get out of the business of carrying letters when it is no longer necessary.
Note also thet the USPS is an independent agency. Their website is .com not .gov
All the statistics I’ve seen place US internet usage at between 70-80% of the population. Get back to me when internet usage approaches 99% of the US population, and I’ll consider eliminating the US postal service. Until then, it’s a non-starter for me.
Now, as for changing the number of days mail is delivered, I’m amenable to that, but I’d rather have the non-delivery days broken up rather than together, as suggested above.
And for me, it isn’t even the point that so many of us have internet access. Heck, I have internet access (obviously), but I still get snail mail too, and some of it is still valuable to me.
Ed
The private sector picked off all the profitable deliveries years ago. UPS was formed for that purpose. You do not get services from the private sector. You get robbed. They would love a non competitive mail service to stick to the people.
My dad’s a retired postal worker. He would probably love it if they went to five day week deliveries and he was still working. I don’t know if they still do it like this but back when was working he rarely had two days off in a row to compensate for the six day week. He’d get off Sunday and Monday one week then Sunday and Tuesday the next and so on and so forth.
What I’ve always thought is that they should stop the yearly one penny increases on consumer mail which does not constitute the majority of what USPS delivers, and reset the balance. No more 4-6 cent per piece discounts (compared to similar weight/size first class) for bulk, commercial mail. Charge the people who make the most use of the postal service the highest rates.
It’s all junk anyway. Most of it ends up in a landfill. It’s bad for the earth in numerous ways (wasted trees, toxic inks, wasted fuel for delivery, not recycled) and while it is nice to know that I might save money if I switch to Bob’s Insurance Company instead of staying with Fred’s and it’s exciting that all three of the major local supermarket chains have the exact same items on sale for the same price +/- $0.10 per unit, it’s ridiculous that it’s cheaper, per piece, for the grocery chain with $6 billion in annual revenue pays less to send me their flyer than I have to pay to send a birthday card to my aunt across town.
And if higher prices for bulk mail cause companies to send less, that’s a bonus for consumers, for the USPS and the environment all at once.
Oh, and add me to the people who will be extremely peeved about waiting 3 days for a Netflix delivery.
It’s good no one is considering eliminating the USPS quite yet then.
As I understand it that is exactly what is being considered.