From an economics point of view at least, how do various country’s postal systems settle up with each other? e.g. to send international mail I pay for postage in my country, and the mail is then transported to the destination country - their postal system has to deliver the mail for free? does it all even out in the end? or are transactions stored, added up and paid out annually or something like that?
If anyone has any cool postal factoids, do share… I think the current (global) system is remarkable.
Oh, BTW, I am a postal worker, and I can tell you something about this. What Cecil says is right (natch), but bear in mind that the postal administrations of the world treat ex-overseas mail like shit.
Think of it this way…
Once you factor out all the value-added mail (express, priority, what-have-you), a decently sized mail processing facility in a big city will have to process thousands or millions of standard-rate letters in a day.
How does it decide which to process first?
Consider further that the world’s postal administrations have been subject to the usual corporate bullshite of “internal customers”, competition within their own ranks, and “best practice”, in the last decade or so. This results in a culture of blame, and a fragmented postal service rather than an wholistic one.
If you live in, say, Los Angeles, and there is a Los Angeles Mega Mail Sorting Centre, that centre will process mail posted from Los Angeles to Los Angeles first. Why? Well, because if the mail is late, that centre can’t blame anybody else. Second in priority is mail of general domestic US origin. They won’t blame that centre particularly for late mail, but they’ll blame the USPS. Lastly is the stuff posted overseas: “Whaddaya mean it was posted in 1987? We just got it at LAX last night. Maybe a yak ate it in the Republic of Yourletterslateistan or something…”
Basically, the Universal Postal Union operates on the idea that every letter gets a reply. Therefore if I deliver mail with your stamps and you deliver mails with my stamps it all works out in the end.
