Post Office and Snail Mail

From a Post Office?

Saying that, does the system not need changing so that a sticker is not required? Is a simple, easy to forge sticker required in the 21st Century? Why not just note the central computer which the police can check from your licence plate? Post, stickers and easy to forge documents are all so last century.

We need an annual road tax window sticker, mot (safety) certificate and compulsory insurance. Until a few years ago you needed these should we get stopped by plod (the police), now we still have the paper copies but plod just checks his computer from the licence plate recognition system in his car and only stops you if something is wrong. The onus is on you to ensure everything is in order before you drive.

 

Asking us to break the law so that you're argument against the post office is sound...No keep going, you're on a roll.

 

Depends on the country. There are places in the US where the private shippers simply don't go.

 

There are several workarounds to the paper and sticker scheme for 'proof' of vehicle registration. RFID tags, bar coding, something like the EZ-pass transponders, and probably a half dozen that I can't come up with right now.
Oh wait......snap!
There's this new thing called email!!!!

You know......receive. Print. Place in glovebox!!!

Hey Grumpy....
I do in fact have several oil lamps. We call them hurricane lamps in this part of the globe for reasons that should be pretty obvious. I don't rely on them for back-up lighting, but they're still a viable lighting supplement for times when the electricity is interrupted for over a week at a time, like...for example....after a hurricane.

They still work much the same as they did 150 years ago. We just don't need a large fleet of wooden hulled sailing vessels to harpoon some oppressed fellow mammal to supply me with fuel to light them with.

We evolved beyond that.

I'm thinking that supplying proof for vehicle tax payments and registration shouldn't be that heavy a lift, even for my beloved government.


...just sayin.

 

You're twisting my words and playing with me. Cool, carry on with your antiquated systems. Without the US postal service you'd have to change the phrase "going postal"

 

This comment makes no sense whatsoever. Grumpy was suggesting that the laws pertaining to registration stickers might need to be updated to eliminate the physical sticker. He wasn't suggesting civil disobedience.

Are you being willfully obtuse?

Tom

 

There are states that do not put stickers on the license plates. The state of New Jersey is one. Private autos do not have stickers on the license plates. This has been done in NJ for decades. The sticker is on the window and applied at the inspection station.

 

This actually makes good sense. With computers in all the police cars, tags are less necessary than they were.

OTOH, until all the cop cars have the automated plate-recognition devices, being able to visually see that a car's registration is or is not current may be helpful

Again, not everyone has access to email.

Computerize everything may be the future: A future in which people who cannot afford the gadgets become a new underclass, unable to fulfill the requirements of the law and therefore criminals just by being alive.

The post office is a useful service for people who cannot afford the gadgets and services of the digital age. Not surprisingly, the less need the wealthy have of snail mail, the closer snail mail comes to being eliminated.

 

Daniel,
You're smarter than that, but since you usually don't go in for the cheap shots, I'll engage you on the class warfare angle....with respect.
I work in telecommunications.
You're already paying taxes and fees to conquer the 'digital divide'.
Computers are dirt cheap. I know. I'm using a $200 net-book, since us working class folks have to wait for the Gucci new tablets to become sub-stratospheric in price before we can play like the one-percenters.
Email is even cheaper......like free.
If you cannot afford a $200 PC (and some folks can't) libraries abound with free workstations even down here in the Redneck Riviera.
People who live sans internet are usually doing so by choice, rather than being subjected to digital squalor by "the man."

OK.....so in the interests of POLI-SCI, let us stipulate that "rich" people don't need the USPS and the poor folks absolutely depend on it.
Rather than the usual government approach of using dollars to artificially resuscitate an already mortally wounded infrastructure why not consider, just for a moment, trying to run the USPS at something close to a profit?
The "Universal Delivery" aspect of the argument has already been proven to be less than true. Utilities (like mine) already deliver power, Natgas, and electricity to people in the USofA---much more universally, and usually at a profit.
I'd suggest that delivering electricity to nearly 100 percent of homes in America is something that is already being done, at a profit, while being stridently regulated at multiple levels, and without costing the US government nine figures to accomplish.
I would even suggest that it might be juuuust as important as getting the latest Belk's flyer, or Congressionally franked "fact sheet."

Just sayin.....

 

Oh I get it now. I had to re-read it with your comment in mind to understand.

 

But only because of federal law which created the REA in the 1930s. Private industry was not going to pay for rural electrification - there just wasn't the return on investment. It took government dollars and regulation to make it happen.

The same will be true for rural high speed Internet. No sane company wants to go after the one-percenters when there is no return. Eventually we have to spread the costs, either by subsidy or mandate.

Tom

 

"One of the worst jobs I ever had was out in the Navajo land with the WPA, putting electric lighting into outhouses. In fact, I was the first person ever to wire a head for a reservation."

--Utah Phillips

 

I have no problem with tiered pricing. In the electric world there are different rates for different customers, or use patterns. We don't have to re-invent the system, just adapt it to the one that we're trying to implement.
You're also right about the REA. There was no electrification infrastructure in many parts of the USofA before my beloved government stepped in and established one.
It worked.
NOW......I presume that most of the electric grid in the country is operated by private or semi-private, and often publically traded (and profitable!) companies BECUASE the infrastructure has already been established.
You may not 'like' your electric company or co-op, but there's a feedback loop in the form of your local PSC, or Public Service Commission to prevent the greedy, thieving, one-percenter fat-cats in the BODs for the electric companies from doinking over the little people.
It's not perfect to be sure, but it IS working fairly well, and more importantly (!) NOT ONLY does it not cost my beloved government much in the way of state or federal dollars, there's probably a revenue stream from these utilities in the form of taxes.
In fact.....I'd just about bet my CPO coin on it!

OK....so.....we come to the USPS.
We don't need to launch a multi-trillion dollar Rural Postification Agency (RPA), because most (like: almost ALL) of the infrastructure is already in place!!! We also do not need to establish a PSC (TRUST ME! I KNOW!!!) since this infrastructure is also already in place.

So....why the screaming, wailing and gnashing of teeth?
Electric Company:
Unionized (in this area.) Regulated. Profitable. Delivers a product universally to every address (that pays the bill)
Phone Company:
See Electric Company, above.
GAS:
Ditto.

I know it's not as dead-bang simple as I've made it out to be. I also know that there's a better way of doing the 'Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night' gig without tearing a nine figure hole in our government's budget. There almost has to be.

 

To be fair, however, there is very little competition for your gas and electric company to contend with-- in fact in many areas your power service is effectively a government sanctioned monopoly. For instance, I don't have a choice about who services my electric or natural gas. If they piss me off I'm stuck with them.

The post office has competitors that have pushed it for quite some time (despite many advantages that the USPS gets that the other services dont) and is being buried by the advent of new technology that is changing the landscape of communications.

Power companies aren't facing those kinds of challenges.

 

They aren't? Well perhaps your system needs further consideration?

I can choose my power company and have chosen one that only produces 100% renewable power (despite only being a wee bit more expensive). Ecotricity - the green energy company, supplier and generator of eco electricity and gas

Am surprised America (the bastion of free enterprise) allows utility monopolies. Get a little competition going guys. My power company, despite being small, offers 100% green electricity, renewal natural gas, electric vehicle charging points - free to its customers etc. It is a tiny company but in my mind has the right ideas and that's why I support them with my custom.

 

When you start talking about cutting delivery days for US Mail delivery, you are talking about cutting jobs. You are talking about reducing hours. This means taking on the American Postal Workers Union (APWU) head on. What do you think would happen to the reelection hopes of any Democrat that jumped on board such a move?

The truth is that the USPS is solvent and could remain so for many years to come. There was a law passed requiring them to fund the retirement for many years into the future which is actually by all accounting currently done overpaying.

Now that is on the positive side. On the negative side is that because of the union contracts and lawmakers caving to lobbying the government it is a battle to close any unneeded facility. There have been many closures recently but those employees were realigned to other facilities.

Qbee, the REA Cooperatives are a very interesting topic and would make a great thread. Basically the power companies didn't see the value in running electric lines out of town to light up a few light bulbs at a couple remote farms. Sure came back to bite them in the butt in retrospect. Now the power companies have no room for expansion but the EMC are booming.

 

With respect, some people do not have $200 for a computer. Some people would find it extremely difficult to have to go to the library and wait in a long line to get their email. (If email was the only mail, there would be long lines.) And maybe you have access to free internet access at home, but there is no such service here. The woman who came in to clean my home occasionally (before she moved out of town) could not afford to pay for internet access. Well, let's be more precise: She had competing needs (food, rent, medical bills) and no money left over at the end of the month. Internet access is a luxury she could not afford.

I worked at a homeless shelter and we operated a soup kitchen. There were people who came to eat towards the end of the month because they simply ran out of money. Requiring them to buy a $200 computer and pay $20 a month for dial-up service so that they could get their email would just mean they'd run out of money for food that much sooner.

We also gave out food baskets. Some will assert that people who came in for food were just gaming the system, and maybe some were. But when you saw the look of gratitude on most of their faces, at being given a bag of groceries, you knew that most of those folks were living on the edge and really needed it.

We as a nation made a decision a long time ago that free mail delivery should be provided to all. (Except in extraordinarily remote locations, and in small towns people may have to go to the P.O.) Expecting everyone in the country to have to get a computer would be a big step backwards.

And some folks just cannot use computers. I've never been able to understand this, but my mother, who was a very intelligent person in other ways, could never manage a computer without extreme frustration. We take it for granted that computers are easy to use. Well, they are not easy for everyone.

I accept the fact that the PO is probably going to fade away. I do not think that's a good thing.

 

Daniel, rest assured the USPS will not fade away during our lifetime.

 

The future is very good at foiling predictions.

 

Yes but the APWU won't go down without a fight... 330,000 members? That's a lot of dues.