It's been decades since I wrote a letter and mailed it.
I can send one to you if you want :-)
Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
51–60 of 78 posts
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#52It’s striking that while many states push citizens toward digital-only public services, almost none provide a state-run email service. Instead, official communication is effectively outsourced to foreign, commercial platforms with uneven privacy records (e.g. Gmail). If governments are serious about digital sovereignty and data protection, they should operate their own email infrastructure and issue each citizen an o…
> state-run email service
I think that companies providing certain basic services like email or messaging should eventually become branches of the government. This is the only way to provide these services with subsidies without enshittification.
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#53It could be worse.
They could rely on providing banking services via shoddy software, and prosecute people, and hound them to death rather than face up as to how crap their software is, until someone makes a TV mini series about it to highlight the issue.
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not a monopoly. While FedEx, UPS, DHL, and the likes are not obliged by law to deliver mail, they will certainly do it if the price is good. Even Uber does it.
Lysander Spooner tried offering letter services cheaper than the postal service in the US, and by most measures was better and cheaper at it. As it turns out as soon as you can do it cheaper, they just did what government does and used their monopoly on violence to put him in a tiny cage. n 1844, hearing from citizens from every party and under pressure to reform the postal system, Washington lawmakers and the Postma…
Is this the plot of back to the future part 2?
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#55It’s striking that while many states push citizens toward digital-only public services, almost none provide a state-run email service. Instead, official communication is effectively outsourced to foreign, commercial platforms with uneven privacy records (e.g. Gmail). If governments are serious about digital sovereignty and data protection, they should operate their own email infrastructure and issue each citizen an o…
This is something that worries me. I know that the laws/constitution that guarantees the rights of somebody may vary from country to country (and may not even be enforced by the letter), but lets say: All commercial companies will have a ToS, data sharing agreements, etc. You, as a user, i assume is not obligated to agree to that ToS at the expense of not using the service. If a government body requires you to use their service to access basic services (and offers no 'offline' alternative) required by law, are they, by proxy, coercing you to accept a commercial ToS? I would very much like to hear a lawyer opinion on this.
I know some government may do this with intent, but i imagine many governments simply never thought about it, or no citizen ever didn't accepted a "popular smartphone OS provider's ToS" and challenged that government requirement. I know some make offline alternatives very inconvenient, but that still technically legal.
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#56Just to clarify. There is at least one chosen and contractually bound Mail Service provider in Denmark. Their terms are set in public tenders. The old state owned company - Post Nord - basically decide not to compete for the contract. A newer company - DAO - won the tender. What this means in legal terms: Under law: DAO must comply with its postal permit obligations (nationwide service where offered, pricing transpar…
And the reason the existing public corporation shut down service in Denmark > citing a 90% decline in letter mail since 2000
Canada Post is in financial crisis for similar reasons.
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#57It’s striking that while many states push citizens toward digital-only public services, almost none provide a state-run email service. Instead, official communication is effectively outsourced to foreign, commercial platforms with uneven privacy records (e.g. Gmail). If governments are serious about digital sovereignty and data protection, they should operate their own email infrastructure and issue each citizen an o…
The Dutch government has one approach to the email service issue, by having a website and app, Berichtenbox, where you can receive official communications. They're regularly extending it to include municipalities as well.
However it's one-way only at the moment, there's no way to use it for two-way communication.
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
In other words they've just privatised the mail service.
It's been a private company for over a decade and a half. This is pretty common in many European countries. e.g. Germany's postal system is wholly owned by DHL.
It’s the other way around, DHL is owned by Deutsche Post AG.
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#59Just to clarify. There is at least one chosen and contractually bound Mail Service provider in Denmark. Their terms are set in public tenders. The old state owned company - Post Nord - basically decide not to compete for the contract. A newer company - DAO - won the tender. What this means in legal terms: Under law: DAO must comply with its postal permit obligations (nationwide service where offered, pricing transpar…
Postal service is a public service, thus there shouldn't be any contracts, TOS or competition.
Sad to see civilizational damages caused by neoliberalism, even in such countries as Denmark.
Re: Danish postal service to stop delivering letters
#60Will companies be willing to pay more to send junk mail if it is no longer largely subsidized? In this regard it could be a good thing assuming they don’t already have a regulation against junk mail there.
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