Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

“There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

usps.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 179 posts

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#91

Post by btipling »

tsally wrote: post #44
jonknee wrote: post #9

> Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three. ... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam.

I think the current solution for snail mail spam is the optimal one. Consider the two possibilities: (1) the government raises taxes in order to increase the USPS's ability to handle spam or (2) the USPS offloads the majority of the filtering process to the recipients (the current solution). On days I receive spam in the mail, I waste approximately one second when I have to pause to throw it away. If the USPS were to…

The USPS by law has to be profitable. It is not funded by taxes.

(Although when there is a budget shortfall the government helps pay its bills.)

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#92

Post by kscaldef »

cjoh wrote: post #66

Amazing stats in their footer: With 36,000 retail locations and the most frequently visited website in the federal government, the Postal Service relies on the sale of postage, products and services to pay for operating expenses. Named the Most Trusted Government Agency five consecutive years and the sixth Most Trusted Business in the nation by the Ponemon Institute, the Postal Service has annual revenue of more than…

Keep in mind that they also have a government-granted monopoly. They probably wouldn't be a big otherwise.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#93

Post by kscaldef »

leelin wrote: post #80

Isn't their logic confusing latency and throughput? Not enough mail to deliver suggests less mail volume, so less need for throughput, therefore we can hire fewer postal workers per post office. Cutting out one day of deliveries reduces throughput and increases latency. For example, Netflix becomes a worse deal. A power user could once cycle 2 roundtrips of DVDs in one week and is now down to 1.5.

1 person can only deliver to so many houses in a single day.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#94

Post by _delirium »

dantheman wrote: post #74
anamax wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No need to handle the spam, simply stop subsidizing it with a bulk mail discount. The USPS claims that bulk mail more than pays its way. In fact, there's a federal law requiring that. Yes, bulk mail does pay a lower rate. However, it must obey certain constraints which the USPS claims result in significantly lower costs. In other words, bulk mail is supposedly profitable even though they charge less for it. If you'…

I don't think anyone is saying they don't make money off of spam, just that they shouldn't be encouraging it. If spammers had to pay full price perhaps we'd see less of it, or if not then the postal service would make more money.

If there were no bulk-mail discount, though, there'd be no way to get them to follow the USPS's constraints. The discount is what gets them to presort their mail, put bar codes on it, etc.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#95

Post by steveklabnik »

argv_empty wrote: post #79
steveklabnik wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can only exist in the public sector? How do you explain FedEx and UPS? I can see both sides of this argument.

How do you explain FedEx and UPS? I think GP's claim is not that private parcel services cannot exist, but rather that if they were to deliver first-class mail, they would charge more than $1 per letter.

Gotcha. I would argue back that the "under $1" isn't even a legitimate path of arguing, because the post office doesn't deliver mail for under a dollar either; you'd have to factor in the cost of the taxes that subsidize that under a dollar price.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#96

Post by Frazzydee »

muerdeme wrote: post #33

I saw the chairman of their board speak not long ago, and it turns out the biggest problem is that USPS can't fire any of their union employees, who consistently get awarded UPS salaries + 15-20% in arbitration.

This is a huge problem, and we need to shift the power balance away from unions. The original purpose of unions was to compensate for the imbalance of power. I don't have a problem to the extent that they merely divert executive pay down to the workers, but where they significantly increase the cost of doing business, unions are economically inefficient.

In Canada, we have a huge union called CUPE. They support an incredible variety of workers (including health care, university staff, airlines, public utilities, non-profit organizations, etc.). Each division contributes to a "national strike fund."

In my mind, this allows unions to act as a cartel. It doesn't make sense for workers in one company to be able to offset the cost of a strike in a completely different one. Of course the workers will always be able to afford a strike as long as they do it one company at a time, and wages will slowly be pushed to unsustainably high levels.

If I'm wrong on this, please correct me, because although it seems completely unintuitive, it is my understanding of the situation (Article XIV of the CUPE constitution outlines revenue collection).

They also discourage innovation to the extent that they limit businesses' ability to fire unneeded workers. There is little doubt in my mind that the transit system in Toronto uses human fare collectors because they are not allowed to replace them with machines. These folks can cost up to $40/hour. We wouldn't have had the industrial revolution if we couldn't fire the people who were no longer needed.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#97

Post by funkdobiest »

jrockway wrote: post #36
pxlpshr wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not really, I see mail as a temporary problem. If Netflix Streaming contained all the top titles, I would use that almost exclusively. There really would be no reason for mail, it's slow and inefficient.

What's nice about mailing physical media is that the movie studios don't have much control. You can buy a widget and do whatever you want with it, including mailing it around. You can't do this on the Internet, though, because computers are magical and Someone Could Copy It!1111!!

you would think they would catch on that physical media is easily copyable where the instant downloads aren't so why not do instant for everything first then DVD.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#98

Post by tsally »

argv_empty wrote: post #79
steveklabnik wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can only exist in the public sector? How do you explain FedEx and UPS? I can see both sides of this argument.

How do you explain FedEx and UPS? I think GP's claim is not that private parcel services cannot exist, but rather that if they were to deliver first-class mail, they would charge more than $1 per letter.

Actually, my claim is not that the cost would be more than a dollar, but that private carriers would flat-out refuse to deliver to many locations in the US (and with good reason; it wouldn't be profitable). We already see this problem with the lack of internet connectivity in many rural areas.

So if you believe that this sort of communication is a fundamental right for all citizens, than the service needs to be provided by the public sector. It's impossible to build a profitable business in the private sector out of it.

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#99

Post by ryanelkins »

jonknee wrote: post #9

> Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three. ... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam.

Here is what I hate about the USPS and spam. I opened a PO Box to receive rental payments on some properties I owned. The only people who got this address were tenants. It wasn't used for anything else. I'd check it once a month and it would be crammed full of ads. By crammed I mean seriously tightly wedged full of junk. I'd have to pick through it all to try and find my rent checks and not throw them out with the ads.

That was a pain but here's the question: How did they (advertisers) know this box was open and active? If mail was going to it before I opened it, what did they do with it? I tried complaining but got the "we have to deliver every piece of mail regardless of the originator". My best guess is mail was being sent there from a previous user and while it was vacated they just threw it away or something. Once the new user (me) opened it back up I just started getting it all.

At one point I just let the junk accumulate to see what would happen. I'd get the "real" mail but the junk (which could no longer really fit) stopped showing up. Then I got a note that I need to clear it out more often or they would close it though :(

Re: “There is no longer enough mail to sustain six days of delivery.”

#100

Post by Titanous »

ryanelkins wrote: post #99
jonknee wrote: post #9

> Ten years ago, the average household received five pieces of mail every day. Today, it receives four pieces and by 2020, that number will fall to three. ... And it would receive much less than that if the USPS wasn't mostly a delivery network for spam.

Here is what I hate about the USPS and spam. I opened a PO Box to receive rental payments on some properties I owned. The only people who got this address were tenants. It wasn't used for anything else. I'd check it once a month and it would be crammed full of ads. By crammed I mean seriously tightly wedged full of junk. I'd have to pick through it all to try and find my rent checks and not throw them out with the ad…

In Canada this is called Unaddressed Admail, and it allows companies to send flyers to entire neighbourhoods without having to address the mail individually. I'm pretty sure there is a way to opt-out.
Post reply on HN