redsunrise said:
This is a perfect example why all forms of collectivism, from various flavors of socialism to state owned and operated enterprises, eventually must either collapse or turn into parasites on the body public: that people are in name public servants does not make them so, they still have self-interest strongly overriding public interest. If they distribute the costs of their benefits over the rest of society and concentrate the gains on themselves, they will do so.
Good points. I think this is one reason why competition is good. It's a sanity check against the "that's the way we've always done it" mentality which impedes progress. I recall writing my uncle who was living in Africa at the time using airmail paper and envelopes. They weighted less than half that of regular mail. I kept thinking, "Why don't they use this for all mail?" I later thought, "Why don't letters come with self-sticky around the edges so that when you tri-fold it, it becomes it's own envelope?" I suppose stiffer letters jam less in reading and sorting machines.
Along comes e-mail, then various forms of social networking sites. I used to drop about three letters in the mail a week. Now I'm lucky if I drop one in the mail every six months. So, with e-mail and online communication, why do we need the USPS at all? Shipping boxed items, like a new shirt? Perhaps, but UPS does a fair job of that, and if you want speed, FedEx flies into the picture.
Then the post office took the commercial operators to court saying that while the law itself is not good, it must be obeyed. And so on.
"That's the way we've always done it." It's not good, but it must be protected. For some reason. Just to protect some people's jobs? That's not a reason. If the USPS doesn't want to can them, then they should figure out a way do business the way their customers want. Job's legacy is that he brought innovative products to the market that people could actually use. He didn't try to force a kludge. The Mac Cube is a wonderful machine, but people wanted portability, and when he realized they wanted more portability than a laptop i.e. shirt-pocket portability, he brought it to them via their cell phones.
The USPS's modus operandi rests mainly on shippling letters and packages. Yet they cut the workforce that handles the letters and packages. I'm not saying they shouldn't cut workers. I'm saying they spend 3 minutes per person in line to ship a box after the person has been waiting in line for 20 minutes. Meanwhile, I shipped a return via UPS the other day. The online store from which I purchased it has a link that allows me to log in, return an item, check the reason, and the next page is a completely prepared shipping label that took me less than 1 minute to slap on the box. It took me a second minute to drop it off at a drop box near where I live.
Two minutes! Compare that to the USPS's 23 minutes. Not only that, but it was entirely automated - no handlers to weigh and process the package. That's innovation, and the USPS isn't quite there. That's why they're failing.
I admit some centers have a similar do-it-yourself operation, but I've used it, and that's a kludge, too, not to mention the face that I would have to travel to one of their centers, which aren't numerous. Meanwhile, there are three UPS drop shipment locations within a mile of where I live.
How cool is that? Is it any wonder so many businesses ship via UPS or FedEx instead of the U.S. Mail?
I was actually thinking more along the line of something else entirely. The Postal Service delivers mail everywhere from the bottom of the Grand Canyon to the wilds of Alaska where they use snowmobiles.
