Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is daily USPS service to a postbox at the bottom of the Grand Canyon that is only accessible by mule paths. I guarantee this service would either be cancelled or go up in cost to thousands of dollars per letter if USPS was privatized. You say that like it's a bad thing. Why does a hill billy who insists on living at the bottom of the Grand Canyon deserve a subsidy? That public money would be better spend help…
> Why does a hill billy who insists on living at the bottom of the Grand Canyon deserve a subsidy? I'm going to say this nicely once instead of the reply I really wanted to say because I'll give you the benefit of the doubt of not knowing or looking it up. Because it provides postal service to the Havasupai people living on their native land at the bottom of the Grand Canyon. Would you like to take a guess as to why…
What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
101–110 of 156 posts
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#102Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just split the US into 50 individual territories, if you think that being small is a benefit in service provision. > There is really almost no comparison to the US in terms of rural areas anywhere in Europe. Why do rural people deserve subsidies by virtue of living in the sticks?
> Why do rural people deserve subsidies by virtue of living in the sticks? For the same reason urban people deserve subsidies, for things like public transportation, by virtue of living in the city. The first sentence of the US Constitution lists "promote the general Welfare" as one of the foundational reasons for the creation of the Constitution. There is no "one size fits all" for a nation this size - the welfare o…
They don't.
> The first sentence of the US Constitution lists "promote the general Welfare" as one of the foundational reasons for the creation of the Constitution.
Just lower general taxation instead. That's even better for promoting general welfare.
> Also, mail delivery to the sticks benefits people in cities given that mail in the sticks is often sent to or from cities.
Well, the senders can pay then.
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#103Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also voting. If you privatize the post office, then either mail-in voting stops completely, or else a private company can control which mail-in ballots get delivered, and which ones don't .
That'd be mostly a net-positive since mail-in voting seems to be hard to get right in your country. Better to get rid of it in all but the most pressing cases - those who can not leave the house, overseas military and such - and have people go to the voting booth themselves, show their ID, get a ballot and fill it out using a writing implement. Do the count locally at the end of the day and send the ballots to a cent…
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
You’re correct that time is the fundamental challenge. It’s also really what the money is always a proxy for at some level. Meetings in DC are probably not the right focus. Every congressional officeholder has offices in the region they represent, most have multiple. Most people don’t use them for the same reason they outsource their understanding of current events to Fox News or Rogan & guests. Some people do contac…
I get where you’re coming from, truly. I do also wish people were more politically engaged. But I just can’t go that far toward victim blaming, especially when so many forces work against people doing exactly what you suggested they do. Just look at how Occupy Wall Street was broken up and twisted into irrelevancy by our media. It was a nonpartisan movement that corporate influence successfully split off into the two…
The statistics I've encountered suggest that this is smaller than 10%. Between there and the percentage of people who even vote is one margin of responsibility, and there are many people who have time for more but put it somewhere else.
That's a choice, and people are free to make it. It also has consequences, like the elections that select officeholders.
Calling this "victim blaming" seems like rhetorical lane-shifting. We're not discussing crimes where someone suffers a violent attack of some kind they had no agency in, we're discussing a society where those who govern are selected by voters in elections, which at some level means issues are representative of those who vote (and those who don't).
We're all very used to locating agency in large systems somewhere we don't have control over, and at one level that's even pretty understandable as a first approximation -- most people don't have substantial influence at an individual level. And no individual contribution to your retirement account will leave you comfortable, it's the collected effort over time that might. That's true for individual influence too, and magnified by organized cooperation.
You brought up OWS. That's a reasonable example to consider in a lot of ways -- it was collective cooperation, certainly better than apathy, and I respect it for that (and did not take kindly to the ways it was disparaged especially in some partisan media).
It was also a movement that was probably overfocused on the the idea that social leverage is primarily about expressed demand, especially given that the goals of participants were diverse and unfocused. At times it almost seemed like the tactic (occupation) was the goal. It was successful in injecting some longstanding ideas into some parts of public consciousness (there's a 99% that's poorly served by things as they are now and 1% that are dramatically overserved) and may have created some networks that have had a longer influence. But I think it also showed that many participants don't know what effective ongoing influential cooperation looks like.
We want achievements like the civil rights movement but we have Woodstock ideas about what that looks like instead of movement-momentum habits.
I've had this conversation enough to know that I'm also in a sense making a similar mistake, expressing ideas and expecting that alone to change things, which is especially naive given that I know the mindset shift is a bit of a hard sell. At least I know that someone who argues back and forth over a series of comments probably cares more than average, maybe enough to create ongoing habits of influence themselves.
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
Also voting. If you privatize the post office, then either mail-in voting stops completely, or else a private company can control which mail-in ballots get delivered, and which ones don't .
That'd be mostly a net-positive since mail-in voting seems to be hard to get right in your country. Better to get rid of it in all but the most pressing cases - those who can not leave the house, overseas military and such - and have people go to the voting booth themselves, show their ID, get a ballot and fill it out using a writing implement. Do the count locally at the end of the day and send the ballots to a cent…
Strawman. You might have the belief that it’s hard to get right, but that seems based on the American news sources you are consuming from your spit in the world. In reality, there are very little issues with this.
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#106It's already a (public) corporation. You can send mail through the non-profit, old postal service. You have to measure the postage yourself and put it in the slot called non-domestic mail.
Are you referring to a different method?
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#107Doesn't USPS also play a key role in a lot of other services? * ID verification * Vacant home notifications * Registered mail I have a hard time seeing a private company scrupulously handling these operations when the incentives to manipulate them could be very large.
Also voting. If you privatize the post office, then either mail-in voting stops completely, or else a private company can control which mail-in ballots get delivered, and which ones don't .
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
The process of lobbying Congress involves physically showing up to the congressional offices in Washington DC, meeting with congressional staff, and often submitting draft legislation, which essentially requires a law degree to have the technical ability to write something of that sort. Walmart is the largest private employer in America and they are have the most employees in America who receive SNAP benefits due to…
You’re correct that time is the fundamental challenge. It’s also really what the money is always a proxy for at some level. Meetings in DC are probably not the right focus. Every congressional officeholder has offices in the region they represent, most have multiple. Most people don’t use them for the same reason they outsource their understanding of current events to Fox News or Rogan & guests. Some people do contac…
That’s not a reason for non-engagement, but it’s wrong to shift the burden onto the public. Congress is elected and paid to represent the will of their constituents, and part of that job is constant fact-finding to determine what the people want and need.
Blaming constituents is like blaming drivers and non-recyclers for climate change when the military is the largest polluter, by far. Or blaming poor consumer choices for the cost of health care. Perhaps victim blaming isn’t the right word, “burden shifting” seems more apt. The media and politicians constantly try to shift the burden for large, difficult problems onto the public, when there is an obvious coordination problem (“raising awareness” will never solve the issue) and when there are often actual identifiable parties who are to blame for the bulk of the problem.
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
> USPS does last mile delivery for a lot of rural places. Not in the rural places I've lived, including my current one for 20 years. UPS and FedEx deliver to my porch. USPS has never been here. I drive to my PO box in the nearest town. I think that in this whole county they only deliver to post offices.
How does that square with their universal service obligation? Which county is that?
Re: What does privatization of the US Postal Service mean?
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
That'd be mostly a net-positive since mail-in voting seems to be hard to get right in your country. Better to get rid of it in all but the most pressing cases - those who can not leave the house, overseas military and such - and have people go to the voting booth themselves, show their ID, get a ballot and fill it out using a writing implement. Do the count locally at the end of the day and send the ballots to a cent…
> That'd be mostly a net-positive since mail-in voting seems to be hard to get right in your country Strawman. You might have the belief that it’s hard to get right, but that seems based on the American news sources you are consuming from your spit in the world. In reality, there are very little issues with this.