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Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

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Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#91

Post by precommunicator »

hadlock wrote: post #47
SoftTalker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or dri…

You need a non-electronic way to bill land owners for property taxes. That's it. Physical snail-mail is the de-facto way for the government to legally serve property taxes and other bills to private citizens. Yes we live in 2026 and everyone has email, but there's no legal requirement to give the government your email address, or even have one. You are however, legally required to provide a mailing address for your p…

Who says anything about e-mail? Government could legislate specific government electronic inboxes, with e-mail and SMS notifications of delivery, as has been happening in several, if not all EU countries.

I haven't got a snail mail from my government for years at this point, nor did I needed to send one that way.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#92

Post by SoftTalker »

stryan wrote: post #44
SoftTalker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or dri…

Practically speaking, USPS does a lot of last mile package delivery that no one else wants to do, including Amazon. If USPS wasn't delivering to those locations no one would be. And we're not talking middle-of-no-where-Wyoming locations, plenty of places east of the Mississippi have only USPS too. There's all sorts of philosophical arguments as well: government services shouldn't need to turn a profit, all citizens n…

There are lots of rural places the USPS doesn't deliver to. They require you to get your mail at a PO Box at the nearest post office, or have a mailbox at a common spot on the nearest public road (which might be a fair distance from your house).

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#93

Post by 15155 »

exabrial wrote: post #73
hadlock wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need a non-electronic way to bill land owners for property taxes. That's it. Physical snail-mail is the de-facto way for the government to legally serve property taxes and other bills to private citizens. Yes we live in 2026 and everyone has email, but there's no legal requirement to give the government your email address, or even have one. You are however, legally required to provide a mailing address for your p…

I pay all of my property taxes online.

That's wonderful: the option of a payment portal isn't the point. The purpose of snail mail is process can be served prior to seizing/applying a lien on the property when you don't pay (online or otherwise.)

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#94

Post by dawnerd »

SoftTalker wrote: post #37
lokar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.

I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or dri…

Those other countries are much, much smaller in land mass than the US making it much easier for private companies to be competitive. Privatizing post in the US would be potentially life threatening to some rural communities. More than just mail is delivered. Saying we don't need one is pretty out of touch IMO.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#95

Post by cma »

hnav wrote: post #89
cma wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS egress prices have been the same for a decade despite massive networking advancements. In two decades, since 2006, they've only come down by about 50%.

That's not exactly true, they expanded the free tier from 1 to 100GB/mo (1TB/mo out of CloudFront) and dropped egress from ~20c/GB to ~9c/GB. This was due to pressure from the Bandwidth Alliance formed by all the other Clouds and spearheaded by Cloudflare.

~20c/GB to ~9c/GB was the 2006-2026 halving I mentioned. Two decades to drop by half.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#97

Post by Hikikomori »

SoftTalker wrote: post #37
lokar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.

I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or dri…

Danskjävlarna ruined posten.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#98

Post by MagicMoonlight »

hnav wrote: post #89
cma wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AWS egress prices have been the same for a decade despite massive networking advancements. In two decades, since 2006, they've only come down by about 50%.

That's not exactly true, they expanded the free tier from 1 to 100GB/mo (1TB/mo out of CloudFront) and dropped egress from ~20c/GB to ~9c/GB. This was due to pressure from the Bandwidth Alliance formed by all the other Clouds and spearheaded by Cloudflare.

And it costs them nothing, because they have free peering agreements with every network.

Re: Amazon is adding a fuel surcharge to fees it collects from third-party sellers

#100

Post by duskdozer »

SoftTalker wrote: post #37
lokar wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of the USPS budget is from delivering bulk mail. They already fail to break even (albeit with absurd retirement funding rules imposed on them). Without the fees from bulk mail they would need to raise prices, and it's not entirely clear they could given they face strong competition.

I don't really understand why we need a US Postal Service in 2026. Yes, the Constitution grants congress the power to establish "post offices and post roads" but it doesn't mandate it AFAIK. Other countries (Denmark is an example) have completely privatized physical mail delivery. All official mail is electronic. There's some nostalgia for the postman on his red bicycle (or in the USA, walking the neighborhood or dri…

It provides the best service of all of them. I'm not sure why you would want to add a profit-seeking middleman when you can just fund the service at cost.
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