191–200 of 503 posts
There is so little need for a post office any more except as a junk mail delivery system. I'd rather see phase out plans.
There are a lot of remote areas that only the USPS will deliver to because they aren't profit motivated.
https://carnewschina.com/2022/11/01/wuling-sells-an-ev-truck...
My neighborhood delivers the mail on foot, while the truck is parked most of the day. The delivery man walks more than a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker.
Seems to be at the discretion of the delivery person. Our usual one walks a lot, but there's one sub that literally drives to every house, hops out, delivers.
Because of the delays due to rules (vehicle in park before unbuckle, seat belt buckled before moving, door shut), and the huge penalties for forgetting a rule even once, it is common for drivers to park and then run back and forth to the truck.
https://jalopnik.com/watch-an-amazon-driver-explain-the-comp...
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I think what parent is saying is that in the US a disproportionate percentage of USPS budget is spent delivering mail to extremely rural areas (far from both cities and small towns).
I remember being at the post office and thinking it was dumb that the clerk thought Micronesia was part of the US and they could charge domestic rates. Only later that I discovered I was the dumb one. IDK how you can possibly economically send mail to places like foreign barely habited deep pacific islands for the same price as mailing to your neighbor.
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Because there are people doing things out there that are valuable to us, but we don't pay them enough to do those things that they could dream of paying the full cost of mail delivery.
Shouldn’t we be instead paying them the fair value of their labor rather than this and let them choose how to spend that money ? We tried subsidizing rural broadband for last 3 decades with 100s of billions of dollars with little to show for it , Starlink on the other hand is able to solve it with purely commercial enterprise not withstanding the small rural subsidy they got. Maybe it is better for the market to deci…
What is the fair value? We want them doing whatever they're doing, but we don't want to face the actual cost. So we subsidize the services they need/want, so that they will be willing/able to live there and do those things.
> We tried subsidizing rural broadband for last 3 decades with 100s of billions of dollars with little to show for it
It connected my village and the rural corridors on either side of Santa Fe.
> Starlink on the other hand is able to solve it with purely commercial enterprise not withstanding the small rural subsidy they got.
Everyone I know out here who uses Starlink says it is getting visibly worse as more people use it.
> If the market does not value the important things rural economy produces and is absolutely important then they either start valuing them correctly and pay for it or we can stop producing them
I thought COVID made it very clear that the market doesn't price based on the level of actual need, but rather on the desires of those with the most control over resources.
> It is acceptable trade off in some areas like defense, police, healthcare, insurance, or foundational research where for profit enterprise is not viable but package delivery is hardly one of them.
Clearly, you don't live in a rural area with a substantial drive to local retail. Living without any effective policing is a tradeoff many of us are willing to make, but a return to the pre-Sears days for shopping will empty the hinterlands out in an instant.
There are arguments you could make in favor of this outcome, but then be honest and say that's the outcome you're aiming for.
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> electricity prices per mile of transport per ton were about 25% that of fossil fuel prices per mile of transport per ton In shipping and logistics, time is money. Fuel can be dispensed in the US at a maximum of 10 gal/minute. Factor that against the largest charger you can find and see why the single cost difference doesn't matter yet. > They should really move all long-haul trucking to electric as well Reduced cap…
Sure, a long haul semi with multiple drivers is a use case that won't be filled by electric trucks anytime soon. But that's a fairly narrow niche. Even on long haul routes it's pretty normal for trucks to have only one driver and stop for several hours for a rest. With a megawatt charger and 500 miles of range on a charge, even long haul trucking is just a mild engineering problem. For in town trucks the math works o…
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> Reliable deliveries with all-weather protection. The roof over the DXP AU provides great visibility and protection against the wind and rain. Calling BS on this. Anything more than a light drizzle (or any kind of wind + rain combo) and that driver is getting wet.
You know they have to get out to deliver letters and parcels? They have a solution and it's called a rain coat.