Do we really need the postal service? What would it be like after say...

Do we really need the postal service? What would it be like after say, a 6 month period where people figured out how to deal with a world without it?

I think the people still clinging to it for bills, letters and greeting cards would be able to handle it if it just went away. As for people getting packages - there's UPS, FedEx and others that aren't tax payer subsidized doing just fine.

Seems to me the biggest barrier to shutting it down and the only reason it still exists is it's a tax payer subsidized advertising service and business donors have an interest in the government delivering trash to your mailbox in exchange for a price that wouldn't support a real business doing the same thing.

So really - would the world fall apart without it or would we be able to handle it?

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t. Antifa cuck

I'm puzzled by this comment. I googled it and only came up with anti fascist stuff. I'm either too ignorant to understand how this thread relates to that or you didn't mean that.

I'm interested either way if you want to explain.

Oh, my bad, it was meant for another thread.

Have a bump.

Good luck trying to find quality discussion on this board tho.

the USPS should resume Postal Banking as a public service

Never looking for that when I come here. These are the only boards that embrace the fact that such a thing doesn't exist on the internet anywhere. Everywhere else is a combination of people trying to have a quality discussion until it turns into a bunch of whining about how people are not making quality posts. I'd rather just skip the pretending part.

Getting rid of the postal service would be an indecent infringement on our liberties. As of today. It is the only way to send post that requires a federal warrant to search.

Yes because you need a warrant to open US mail unless ur a postal inspector so it keeps all my Alphabay parcels nice and sealed.

> As for people getting packages - there's UPS, FedEx and others that aren't tax payer subsidized doing just fine.

These companies still sometimes transfer to the post office anyway, I've had it happen with deliveries before.

they deliver drugs quite well, rather keep them desu

I wasn't aware of the warrant issue. But now that I am 1) the other services should be equally susceptible to warrants and if not, that should be changed. 2) The need for the postal service so you can ship contraband is really more a symptom of the liberties we've given up in exchange for banning contraband. I don't actually use drugs but recognize that the reason I might even get asked by a COP when pulled over if they can search my car is because of laws banning contraband.

It seems to me instead of keeping the postal service up just because it enables someone to buy weed is a sub-optimal alternative to simply legalizing shit the government has no legitimate interest in banning in the first place.

I wonder if Jeff Bezos is behind this post.

there could probably be a more efficient service using drones and the blockchain. the only thing is the usps has the "trust factor" that it's built up over the years, you can be reasonably sure that nobody is going to be stealing your shit off a truck with them.

USPS is one of the few functions of government that actually works. They are mandated however to fund pensions out for some absurdly long time and have a ton of people abusing disability that it really is a miracle that your mail arrives at all.

yeah - this occured to me after my initial post. All symptoms of the same problem though. USPS doesn't charge enough to cover their costs and since they can't refuse packages, it's not surprising UPS and FedEx use them. I don't fault these companies for that either - perfectly reasonable to use laws at your disposal for profit.

The affect of USPS disappearing would probably mean the cost of some types of deliveries would increase. I'm ok with that too.

He uses the shit out of USPS. In a way, Amazon Prime is taxpayer subsidized. The $80 fee or whatever it is these days would probably increase without it. Not really that concerned about that either.

Well sometimes it's a case of FedEx/UPS not being able to reach the place, isn't the case usually for me but sometimes they still use it anyway. Makes sense though for certain areas

pbs.org/wnet/need-to-know/five-things/the-u-s-postal-service/11433/

>Operationally speaking, the USPS nets profits every year. The financial problem it faces now comes from a 2006 Congressional mandate that requires the agency to “pre-pay” into a fund that covers health care costs for future retired employees. Under the mandate, the USPS is required to make an annual $5.5 billion payment over ten years, through 2016. These “prepayments” are largely responsible for the USPS’s financial losses over the past four years and the threat of shutdown that looms ahead – take the retirement fund out of the equation, and the postal service would have actually netted $1 billion in profits over this period.

so do you look up whether what you're saying is true or are you just in the business of verbal diarrhea

So what if there was a taxpayer subsidized service just to deliver to those places and not the whole country along with a mandate that anywhere that can be reached by a road connected to another road that connects to a major city is not such a place? Wouldn't that be a little cheaper?

I do get your point though - enormously expensive to ship something to a remote town in Alaska only reachable by boat or plane.

USPS lost my fucking package in customs. And they haven't gotten back on my missing mail request.

it's a loss if it's red no matter the reason - including the government setting up an unsustainable retirement fund for postal workers and other government employees.

So yeah - eliminate the retirement fund if that's all it takes but don't use its hypothetical existence as evidence that it's not profitable because that doesn't make any sense.

the post office isn't subsidized by tax payers

and ups and fedex move a shitload of parcels through the usps network. they'd have to expand a shit ton.

For years I that that icon was an extreme autistic looking envelope until I analyzed it more and found that it was an eagle.

offering financial options to the poor would put it in the green

thought that*

Too much legal shit goes through there. Jury summons and shit. Postal voting. It'll phase out eventually, but it's time is not yet coming. Plus it employs so many fucking people. We need to employ stupid people.

It would. But those options are helping the poor get cheaper access to credit ie, debt, ie buying more shit they can't afford.

I guess yes, that covers the profit equation. Maybe it finally puts payday loans out of business. But things like lending club could do the same thing and yet, people still get 10,000% APR loans and 3% check cashing because they don't know any better. I guess my only issue with the idea of a postal bank is a question of whether or not it's the government's duty to provide such a service especially when maybe enabling poor people to take on more debt for less cost is not actually helping them, it's just costing them less than many existing ways to make the same bad choice. The private sector is already screwing over financially ignorant people as it is. The government should be fighting ignorance, not enabling it for a discount.

One of the staples of a government is to provide a postal service in my opinion, so I'd rather it stay existing.

>Be me
>Own house in southern Minnesota
>All bills paid online and on time
>USPS brings me coupons
>I'm happy

I wouldn't miss it, but I actually like getting "junk" mail

Actually it still exists because it is, unlike many other government projects, constitutionally permitted to exist.

I mean, so does your great aunt who doesn't do computers sending you greeting cards that go straight in the trash every Christmas.

But I suspect in a few years, the generation that couldn't figure it out will die off and then we're just left with the junk mail. I'm sure you'd still get it with or without the postal service. The only difference will be the direct mailers paying a private sector business a higher cost which reflects the actual cost of delivery + profit instead of the postal service dipping into future retirement commitments or taxpayer funds to cover its lack of ability to charge enough.

Fun Fact: The Postal Service receives NO tax dollars for operating expenses and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations.

That's actually a good point. But the constitution doesn't need to be amended to eliminate the postal service or at least scale it back to what's required of this age. The statement: "To establish Post Offices and post Roads;" gives congress the power to do it but doesn't specify how, when or even if it's a requirement.

And except for remote island territories or places like remote roadless places in Alaska - the need for the government to execute a postal service is questionable.

Fuck ALL shippers these days.

Every fucking one is gouging because they all did too much for their employees for far too long, and now they ass rape us all on rates for everything.

I could ship a 1 lb. UPS parcel to a business for $3.20 and to a residence for $4.70 back in 2001, now, it's about 2.5x that much for the same thing, just with shittier service and more problems.

I don't think the USPS should be taxpayer subsidized, but I don't think that private corporations did that great for shipping, either.

The constant rate hikes (even when fuel prices drop 40%, UPS/FedEx/etc. all raise their prices), knowing we're paying shitloads to pay for pensions on guys who retired decades ago, etc. all have made me hate every fucking shipper out there. They all suck a fat cock.

change no to "rarely" and add to your list, "future increases in revenue even though it's declining and has been for some time" and you'd be completely correct. Oh yeah and one "answer" is to stop making payments into its future retirement fund which would temporarily solve the problem for a while but then you'd have an insolvent retirement fund.

We don't need it and should quit while we're relatively ahead rather than pretending this thing is solvant with bookkeeping tricks and renegging on retirement agreements at some point in the future when gutless politicians are left no other choice but to cut back.

Oh yeah the coupons can def be handy.

Fuck you they deliver my animu figures.

Really? Damn son. USPS has gotten pretty damn good in the past few years. I'm impressed they did so as essentially a private company.

If you haven't sent a package USPS recently I highly recommend it.

They deliver shit to me too. I even use them to send shit to other people. But you'd get that shit some other way if they didn't exist is what I'm saying. And if it costs more - something tells me the anti-pattern broken window economics applies to the argument that you're worse off because you pay more for shipping.

USPS is hands down the best.
As soon as congress stops raping their coffers...bullshit as congress, dude.

The Post Office is just welfare busywork for niggers. It keeps a few of them off the streets, but has no reason to exist beyond that.

Same could be said for literally any public utility besides the police.