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Too much policing at no profit in your scenario. If a foreigner wants to send a piece of mail through the USPS, then they are more than welcome to at (atleast)

Too much policing at no profit in your scenario. If a foreigner wants to send a piece of mail through the USPS, then they are more than welcome to at (atleast) $0.44 each. If we are only using email and spam is a federal offense, then that guy can mail to his hearts content, making the government waste time and resources trying to catch him. In the current situation, if the government wants to hunt him down, they at least have $132 million to fund the chase...

winternett 16y ago
Profit for a government agency? The USPS has never been a profitable operation as far as I can recall, Haha.. What would really happen here is that expenses would be spared, and turnaround time for mail delivery would be reduced greatly by not having to physically ship letters, and possibly even payments. The USPS would make profit through printing and stationary used during point-to-point email, where official documents could be scanned at one post office, and then printed at another on official paper. Local delivery could be done from each post office after email is routed to the correct center and then printed [locally].
- SHOwnsYou 16y ago
  God forbid I say profit rather than revenue (though it seems you used them interchangeably as well in paragraph 2). I just don't think you're thinking through this completely. Expenses would be lower after the infrastructure is built, yes. But there would be minuscule revenue also. The new deficit, however, would likely be comparable to the current deficit. The reason private delivery services (UPS, FedEx, etc) haven't put the USPS out of business is because they only deliver where it is profitable. Live too far away from the drivers' regular routes? Too bad, no package for you. USPS's UJP (unique justification proposition) is that they deliver anywhere, no matter the conditions. The implication of this is that there would still be a great need for postmen, but there would be substantially worse economies of scale for the shipment of items. In addition to the worse EoS, there would also not be the revenue from stamps and associated products to offset the costs. There are other possibilities that might be better, but ultimately the problem is the distance between the goals of public institutions like USPS and private, profit seeking institutions like UPS and FedEx.

winternett 16y ago

Profit for a government agency? The USPS has never been a profitable operation as far as I can recall, Haha.. What would really happen here is that expenses would be spared, and turnaround time for mail delivery would be reduced greatly by not having to physically ship letters, and possibly even payments. The USPS would make profit through printing and stationary used during point-to-point email, where official documents could be scanned at one post office, and then printed at another on official paper. Local delivery could be done from each post office after email is routed to the correct center and then printed [locally].

SHOwnsYou 16y ago
God forbid I say profit rather than revenue (though it seems you used them interchangeably as well in paragraph 2). I just don't think you're thinking through this completely. Expenses would be lower after the infrastructure is built, yes. But there would be minuscule revenue also. The new deficit, however, would likely be comparable to the current deficit. The reason private delivery services (UPS, FedEx, etc) haven't put the USPS out of business is because they only deliver where it is profitable. Live too far away from the drivers' regular routes? Too bad, no package for you. USPS's UJP (unique justification proposition) is that they deliver anywhere, no matter the conditions. The implication of this is that there would still be a great need for postmen, but there would be substantially worse economies of scale for the shipment of items. In addition to the worse EoS, there would also not be the revenue from stamps and associated products to offset the costs. There are other possibilities that might be better, but ultimately the problem is the distance between the goals of public institutions like USPS and private, profit seeking institutions like UPS and FedEx.