
Do We Really Want to Live Without the Post Office? - patrick-james
http://www.esquire.com/print-this/post-office-business-trouble-0213?page=all
======
newishuser
It seems nobody at esquire even bothered to read the wikipedia article on the
USPS as they would have crossed the section titled _Universal service
obligation and monopoly status_ [1]. This brings me to 2 things; 1) Monopoly:
The USPS has a legal monopoly on letter carrying. You're not legally allowed
to compete with them and that, simply, is why mailing a letter through UPS is
so expensive. 2) Universal Service: One problem with completely privatizing as
that you would have to legally mandate private companies to deliver to
everyone.

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...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usps#Universal_service_obligation_and_monopoly_status)

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usps#Service_level_choices>

~~~
mmanfrin

      and that, simply, is why mailing a letter through UPS is so expensive.
    

What?

~~~
skore
I'm confused as well. I thought the reason why mailing a letter through UPS is
expensive is because using a system set up for delivery of packages to deliver
a letter is a bit wasteful and thus they have to set higher costs to make any
money on letters.

~~~
streptomycin
Wikipedia says:

"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?

~~~
skore
(Not strictly a reply to you, but following up since I found that
interesting.)

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.

~~~
streptomycin
_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.

~~~
skore
True, but it would still be debatable to what extend the service would be as
useful as the USPS if it was "economical". Today, though, it _is_ more likely
to be somewhat decent, so that is debatable as well, but not so when the
postal system was first put in place.

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.

------
the_economist
I can't think of too many things that would make me happier than the Post
Office shutting down service. Dumping piles of junk in my mailbox 6 days/week?
No thanks.

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.

~~~
johnpowell
So are you ditching your ISP since you get spam?

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.

~~~
kevingadd
The USPS _are_ the people who send you unwanted shit. It's how they subsidize
the cost of their service. They explicitly offer to third parties the ability
to spam huge swathes of US taxpayers with unsolicited mail; this would NOT be
possible without the USPS encouraging and enabling such behavior.

See <https://www.usps.com/business/every-door-direct-mail.htm> for example.

------
mindcrime
Other than a few academic journals and a couple of trade magazines, I get
essentially nothing by snail mail that I actually want. Everything in my
mailbox is junk mail, unsolicited credit-card applications, political crap
that I don't care about, bills that are redundant because I pay them online
anyway, etc. Conversely, I can barely remember the last time I had any call to
mail something snail mail.

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.

~~~
nbouscal
What, exactly, is your point? Are you actually using anecdotal evidence to try
to state generally that people don't need the mail? I certainly hope not,
because I thought the level of discourse was at least a little bit higher here
than that kind of absurdity. If not, it seems like you're just telling a story
with no real purpose.

~~~
MetaCosm
More than half of all physical mail is junk mail(1). This is the equivalent of
your email service provider selling access to your mailbox, and delivering the
spam directly to your box (guaranteeing delivery).

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...](http://stateimpact.npr.org/new-hampshire/2011/09/27/how-junk-mail-is-
helping-to-prop-up-the-postal-service/)

------
ams6110
Nice sympathy piece full of heartstring-tugging stories of rural Americana.
But...

 _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?

~~~
skylan_q
_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...

~~~
nbouscal
What does this day and age have to do with it? Things still need to get from
one place to another. It is still a laudable goal to have the cost of that
process be socialized; that aspect has not changed. Yes, many things have gone
digital, but that does not change the underlying nature of the mail, nor does
it invalidate the way we should be thinking about it as a society.

~~~
tsotha
>It is still a laudable goal to have the cost of that process be socialized;
that aspect has not changed.

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.

~~~
mgkimsal
Because you're getting subsidized as well. When there are natural disasters in
larger areas, money from poorer areas is used to help clean up. The cost of
the roads to and from your more populated area is split/shared with road costs
in less populated areas. And so on...

~~~
tsotha
Sure, if you want to talk about single line items. But if you look at the
total rural people are heavily subsided by the rest of us. It's not just mail.
It's mail. It's roads. It's electricity. It's airports. Hospitals. Internet
service...

------
WalterBright
> Want to send a letter to Talkeetna, Alaska, from New York? It will cost you
> fifty dollars by UPS.

It's explicitly illegal for companies to compete with first class mail. This
is why you see such prices.

------
pravda
Well, let's give it a try. A better question is, who did the Postal Workers
Union pay to get this tripe published? _"What it is is a miracle of high
technology and human touch. It's what binds us together as a country."_
Really?

------
PAULHANNA84
Would it even be in the best interest for UPS or FedEx to compete in the
letter mailing service sector? It seems to be more of a cursed Monopoly than
anything else which is why USPS is now aggressively pursing the package
delivery business. I think the post office is doing a great job with
innovating and outsourcing some of their business to private sector companies.
For brick and mortar's they've become much better in offering opportunities
such as UPS and FedEx franchise stores. They now have computer kiosks at most
post offices allowing you to easily print labels and ship a package. They've
teamed up with many online postage vendors such as mail.com and endicia.com. A
big part of eBay's business and ecommerce in general for small items comes
from USPS flat rate shipments which tend to be a substantial discount in
comparison to UPS or FedEx. Even if money is lost in order to continue first-
class, it's still a necessity. In total, people are not ready to go completely
paperless anytime soon. By the time that happens I see USPS being just as
robust if not more so than the private sector carriers. I'm a major advocate
for private sector business as its nature is to turn a profit thus requiring
innovation and motivation to do so but these days it seems that gov. sector
entities are getting smarter by allowing partnerships with private sector
entities. They're almost becoming hybrid models (Gov/Private).

------
nawitus
If an article ever needed a TL;DR, it would be this one.

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.

------
expralitemonk
A post office near me was slated for closure, but the citizens who would have
been affected by this closure raised a stink and it was rescinded. This
particular community is composed of fairly wealthy people who felt that it was
a hardship to drive an extra 3 miles to the nearest post office, but
interestingly, don't think it's a hardship to drive 10 miles to get groceries.
(This town has no grocery stores.) As long as the post office leadership is
overridden by whiners and their congressmen, no progress will be made.

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.

------
mauvehaus
If you answered this question "yes", you've never been a hiker. Most people
probably don't know about the idea of General Delivery[1], but if you're going
to be without a fixed address for 6 months and passing through a bunch of tiny
towns that don't have a Fedex or UPS store, you quickly learn 1) How awesome
it is that most towns in the country have a post office, and 2) That USPS
Priority Mail is both inexpensive and reliable.

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.)

------
joshuaheard
The post office doesn't cost taxpayer money? Bing "post office bailout".

------
drucken
Reminds me of this standup set bit :)
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhP4pHTpra0>

------
ck2
The post office is actually in the constitution.

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.

~~~
streptomycin
The Constitution says the government _can_ institute a postal service, not
that they must. Very different from the Second Amendment.

~~~
ck2
If you want to get picky and allow inability to see the future, you can have
all the muskets you want.

~~~
lmm
So it'll become legal to own a fully-armed 17th-century galleon again?

