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Postal Arbitrage

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Re: Postal Arbitrage

#281

Post by nerdsniper »

Spare_account wrote: post #240
systemtest wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How can it be that low? The Netherlands has a stamp rate of €1.40 for 20 grams and you can traverse that country in three hours. 20 to 50 grams is €2.80. If you have to cross a border that goes up to €4.22 Can you send a letter thousands of miles for only 61 cents? That's amazing!

https://www.britannica.com/question/How-is-the-USPS-funded > the USPS faced financial difficulties, posting losses of $6.5 billion in fiscal 2023 and $8 billion in fiscal 2024, leading to a request for $14 billion in government assistance. It would appear that the USPS operates at a loss at these prices

In the same sense that public roads "operate at a loss", sure. Neither toll-free roads or the USPS were originally intended to somehow break-even. They're infrastructure services provided by the government towards a functioning society.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#282

Post by wizzwizz4 »

pdonis wrote: post #142
wizzwizz4 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said what I meant: most VC-backed startups could not survive in a real-world environment. Thank you for highlighting the distinction. Note that a free market isn't necessarily an unregulated market (see: Adam Smith). Personally, I don't believe that free markets are a sensible way to manage local affairs. They work well on a medium scale, where goods are fungible and efficiency matters: but for something like the l…

> for something like the local pizza place, customer behaviour doesn't match that of a market participant. I'm not sure why you think that. "Market participant" doesn't mean "always takes the lowest priced deal". People are willing to pay higher prices for food from local restaurants, as opposed to chains, fast food, etc., because they feel that the extra value they are getting (better quality, knowing the people who…

The funny thing about truth is that a lot of different, mutually-incompatible philosophical perspectives reach the same conclusions about it. https://existentialcomics.com/comic/258

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#283

Post by chatmasta »

rationalist wrote: post #103
chatmasta wrote: post #54

This is just being rude to delivery drivers.

I think they would prefer to deliver small items than large, heavy items.

The alternative is delivering no items. Spamming all your friends with $0.83 items is a waste of resources, period. When Temu did this on an industrial scale the USPS was not happy about it and it shouldn’t be any different when you’re abusing the postal system as a gag.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#284

Post by eru »

shagie wrote: post #247
eru wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to take into account your system requires there to be a nice store (presumably with aircon and lights on) within your cycling distance. With online shopping and delivery, the warehouse can be a dark, cramped, hot, robot-filled pandemonium in the worst part of town.

> With online shopping and delivery, the warehouse can be a dark, cramped, hot, robot-filled pandemonium in the worst part of town. Tom Scott - How many robots does it take to run a grocery store? https://youtu.be/ssZ_8cqfBlE (grocery fulfillment centers are different than Amazon) ... It's also coldish. https://youtu.be/w2HnKpTo2So

Sorry, yes, groceries would be kept cold. But non-food items can be kept in whatever the temperature happens to be in without heating or cooling.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#285

Post by weird-eye-issue »

kmoser wrote: post #271
weird-eye-issue wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of mail is marked as do not forward

Such mail is returned to the sender, which means you will never receive it, so problem solved.

It will still land in your mailbox at home, how would you never receive it?

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#286

Post by vasco »

wizzwizz4 wrote: post #255
vasco wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah so you shouldn't help them do that if you disagree with the practice

It's a collective action problem: it can't be solved by individuals like this. All you'll achieve is complicity in wage theft. A viable approach might be to prefer doing business with companies who promise their workers a good wage, but this requires that your local businesses actually make that commitment. To get that , you'll have to go outside the abstraction of the market, and actually talk to decisionmakers with…

No, I disagree that other peoples ethical failures spread to you if you don't participate in the ethical failure. If you disagree on ethical grounds with something, just don't do it. To the extent that you could simply not frequent those places.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#287

Post by Spare_account »

nerdsniper wrote: post #281
Spare_account wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.britannica.com/question/How-is-the-USPS-funded > the USPS faced financial difficulties, posting losses of $6.5 billion in fiscal 2023 and $8 billion in fiscal 2024, leading to a request for $14 billion in government assistance. It would appear that the USPS operates at a loss at these prices

In the same sense that public roads "operate at a loss", sure. Neither toll-free roads or the USPS were originally intended to somehow break-even. They're infrastructure services provided by the government towards a functioning society.

From the link I shared: "Today, the USPS receives no direct government or taxpayer funding."

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#288

Post by qingcharles »

tempestn wrote: post #209
qingcharles wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I did this on a mass scale. There are auction items that close at 1 cent with free shipping, so I signed up for the eBay API and wrote a bot to scrape all the auctions and bid one cent on them a minute before they closed. I ended up with an enormous overflowing mountain of packages every day for weeks. I might have gone crazier, but there was a serious bug in eBay's checkout. Try checking out with 400 items in your c…

What did you do with all the random stuff?

I was mostly handing it out to anyone and everyone that wanted any. Someone left a space heater on and burned the entire building down, so I lost everything in the end. I kept debating about whether to take it further and just go nuts and order a million items, but while it was "lulzy" as hell, it was also pretty wasteful.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#289

Post by kergonath »

mattmaroon wrote: post #224
kergonath wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Uber eats / Door Dash suck so much I have no desire to order delivery food at all other than the two that run their own delivery and I know it will be a consistent experience. Same. It’s about the only reason why I order from Dominos occasionally. But last week it got delivered by Uber even though I ordered directly on their website. It also took 45 minutes to get delivered instead of the usual 10. So now the only…

Dominos lets people order from Uber Eats but still handles delivery itself. Maybe they fall back to Uber drivers when they are short staffed. I don’t know of any restaurants that previously had delivery of their own and switched. I’m sure they exist but it’s vanishingly small, for the reasons outlined. So all DoorDash does is give you the consumer more options. If you don’t like it, you don’t use it and nobody is har…

> Dominos lets people order from Uber Eats but still handles delivery itself. Maybe they fall back to Uber drivers when they are short staffed.

Yes, I assume that this is what happened.

> I don’t know of any restaurants that previously had delivery of their own and switched. I’m sure they exist but it’s vanishingly small, for the reasons outlined.

I know a couple. But the reason why none of the pizza places around here do delivery (apart from Domino's, usually) is not that they stopped doing it. It's that these businesses have a relatively short life expectancy, and the ones that open don't have drivers and instead rely on Uber or equivalent. And I really mean that no pizza place handles delivery themselves. I checked. Quite thoroughly. Some Asian restaurants do have drivers but even then, it's not a given.

> So all DoorDash does is give you the consumer more options. If you don’t like it, you don’t use it and nobody is harmed.

The option is Uber, Deliveroo, or walking to the place (driving there is not practical because of the limited parking space). The result is that we do it less often and when we do it it's more expensive or cumbersome. I am willing to accept that it's different where you live but here the days of free delivery are mostly over.

Re: Postal Arbitrage

#290

Post by heavenlyblue »

horsawlarway wrote: post #148
mattmaroon wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But why do you think they’re harming “local infrastructure”? The food delivery services didn’t hurt anything but their investors in the end. And they kept the restaurant industry alive during the pandemic, the fallout would have been so much worse. I work in the industry and know several bar/restaurant owners who will tell you DoorDash and competitors are the only reason they made it through 2020-21. Early on they st…

This has not been my experience. From my side, as someone old enough to remember Domino's running the "there in thirty minutes or it's free" promotions... These delivery services absolutely tanked the quality of delivery. Now you can basically only get slow delivery of over priced, cold food. Sure, you can get it from far more places, but it's a pyrrhic victory if I've ever seen one. Used to be if a restaurant offere…

Yard Sale Pizza in London does it's own delivery and it's great where it's available. I hated that I had to use their website but delivery is always good and still warm.
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