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Society is not maintenance free, and the institutions and services society depends on are not maintenance free either. The Postal Service, like many services t

Society is not maintenance free, and the institutions and services society depends on are not maintenance free either. The Postal Service, like many services that we depend on in society, are just assumed to always work because for years and years they did work. Yet we allowed improvements to be delayed, allowed leaders in who acted in bad faith, and the result is an service that is substandard by it's own measure. What's the answer? Commit to do the work necessary to turn it around. The mail hasn't changed over the last two years in some fundamental way that makes it disruptive. Investment in the system was simply deprioritized. We know what the system needs, so let's just do the work. We need the Postal Service to operate as it should, as it's a key piece of infrastructure that society depends on, whether we recognize it or not.

jollybean 5y ago
"The mail hasn't changed over the last two years in some fundamental way that makes it disruptive" COVID has very fundamentally changed the equation. Also, some institutions are more adaptive than others, some are more resilient. I suggest the USPS is very low on 'adaptiveness', but probably fairly resilient.
- jermaustin1 5y ago
  What does the Patent Office have to do with the Post Office?
  - ptaipale 5y ago
    I suppose it is obvious that the previous writer just used wrong abbreviation, and meant the postal service. Snail-mail is in trouble in most parts of the developed world, because online services have replaced so many processes that were running on paper. Providing an example from my country and neighbours, i.e. the Nordics. Look at the graph that has numbers of delivered letters in different countries - it has roughly halved in 10 years, and the trend continues: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11236284 https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11236284 Parcel deliveries are growing, but there the postal services have competition. As the volume of letters decreases - particularly in businesses and offices but also in private lives - it becomes increasingly difficult to run the service without financial loss.
    - soco 5y ago
      Halving the number of envelopes does not imply increasing their transit time. If anything, it could actually speed them up... As for financial loss, it's a state-provided service. They are not created to make profits, but to provide a level of basic service. Just like primary schools, or local roads.
      - cipher_system 5y ago
        Assuming price stays the same that means half the revenue, almost the same fixed costs and probably slightly lower marginal costs. There is always a limit on how much money you can get from the government so they would have to save on expenditure with the decline. It's nice to have but it can't be considered critical anymore. Bills, paychecks and other important mail needs to be delivered digitally, there's no turning back. edit: parcels and legacy papers still need to work everywhere though and that is worth some public spending, but if you live in the middle of nowhere you have to accept longer deliveries on fewer days of the week.
      - ptaipale 5y ago
        Halving the number of envelopes implies halving the revenue. As much of the cost is fixed (dependent on the size of infrastructure such as premises and vehicles, and number of delivery people required to cover a geographical area with sufficient service), this creates a rather impossible equation to solve without any deterioration of service. A natural way in this situation is to make deliveries less often; we no longer need official letters urgently, except in quite rare exception cases that can probably be covered by parcel delivery services, with tracking (and much higher cost for the small number of deliveries). Over here, the postal service tries to solve this by arranging deliveries only three times a week, and in future perhaps once a week. I find that quite acceptable. If information needs to reach me faster, it'll come on-line anyway. A week's wait is OK for legacy services where someone wants a piece of physical paper with my signature, written on a pen, on it.
- igorkraw 5y ago
  The USPS has been legally blocked from adapting by anti-infrastructure ideologues (source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLyU1WCQQ8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLyU1WCQQ8A ) in order to set them up to fail. In addition to this, recent administrations have been actively dismantling their infrastructure. Any discussion of adaptivity or resilience is incomplete without considering these facts.
  - fortran77 5y ago
    Why are you posting this same thing multiple times?
    - igorkraw 5y ago
      Because I originally wrote it on level 2 in a thread, then felt it was serviceable as a reply to the thread OP, as well as a top level reply.
- dagmx 5y ago
  Republicans changed the equation in their attempts to sabotage it. From requiring pre-funding retirements years ago, to DeJoy dismantling sorting machines just a few months ago. It's hard to know how adaptable a system is, when it's actively being torn down at every opportunity.
  - AuryGlenz 5y ago
    The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was both put forward by Democrats and a Republicans and passed with broad bipartisan support.
    - blaser-waffle 5y ago
      The Democrats are pretty good at taking bribes, too. As long as it's not a wedge issue, the Dems are fine siding with the Republicans.
  - JPKab 5y ago
    The politicized nature of discussing the post office in its funding has contaminated the brains of many people. The load that is distributed by the postal service has changed in nature dramatically to be far more packaged intensive and far far less letter-intensive than it used to be. The sorting machines that were being removed were letter sorting machines because nobody sends letters anymore except for junk mail. Room has to be made for more package sorting machines. That was the explanation for the moves but the timing made people suspicious and the suspicions were jumped upon by political actors in an election year. Nobody bother to ask themselves why the GOP would remove sorting machines in states that are definitely going blue if it was part of some grand scheme. Again I really don't like the GOP and have never even voted for a GOP candidate but I get fed up with politics bleeding over into reality via misinformation designed to create an emotional and stressful feeling in potential voters to ensure they cast their ballots because that's what this is.
    - bananabreakfast 5y ago
      "The timing made people suspicious" If they were not planning on dismantling and damaging the way the system functioned, then it would be overwhelmingly obvious that simply the optics of literally dismantling infrastructure in an election year that would be the most widely dependent on mail are atrocious. People were not "suspicious" of the timing. People refused to believe someone could be so stupid as to think they could do what DeJoy did in good faith, after being appointed by someone openly demanding the shutdown of the system, and not look like they were blatantly performing a political hit job. No good faith actor would possibly act that way.
Consultant32452 5y ago
>What's the answer? Commit to do the work necessary to turn it around. No. I'm going to commit to dismantling an outdated and unnecessary burden on society that serves mostly to deliver literal garbage to a box in my yard. Since it's easier to destroy than to build, I predict I will win in the long run. I don't know what world you live in but the Postal System has been a running joke for at least the last 50 years. I mean there's even a meme called "going postal" where someone commits mass murder. When was this time you're imagining when it worked well?
- viro 5y ago
  Are you stupid? Have ever used another service to mail a fucking letter? The USPS is one of the most advanced logistics networks in the world that is price capped by law and are literally required by the constitution. So kindly STFU and go back to ur open delivery network crack pipe.
  - philwelch 5y ago
    > literally required by the constitution I don’t think this is true. The Constitution provides Congress the power to “establish post offices and post roads” in Article I, Section 8, but the list of enumerated powers begins with the phrase “The Congress shall have Power”, which does not seem to establish a positive mandate to exercise such powers. For instance, other enumerated powers include: > To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; There hasn’t been a declaration of war since 1941, and it’s been even longer since Congress issued any letters of marque and reprisal. The postal service had the same constitutional status as pirates: Congress certainly could commission them if they want to, but it’s not strictly required.
  - Consultant32452 5y ago
    Maybe. Yes. Price caps are immoral. I don't care about the Constitution any more than our PATRIOT Act passing, right to bear arms infringing, throw you in a cage over growing your own food government does. The Constitution is the right's "gun free zone" signs. It means nothing.
nieksand 5y ago
Honest question... why not kill it off instead and push legacy users into the digital world? The USPS claims to have 230,000 vehicles. How much of that environmental footprint could be eradicated? https://facts.usps.com/postal-service-has-more-than-200000-vehicles/ https://facts.usps.com/postal-service-has-more-than-200000-v...
- reom_tobit 5y ago
  Even if everyone went fully digital, and letters became a thing of the past, you would still need a functional postal service. Packages obviously will still be sent for one, but also from a national security perspective it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire delivery logistics network. Lastly, if you see the government as enabling an economy for free markets, a state run postal service is a great backbone for that.
  - kingsuper20 5y ago
    >it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire delivery logistics network. When you consider how much of US logistics is done by private companies, I'd say we're pretty much there and always were. Even if you dig into the USPS by itself, how much is done by private contractors? ..especially upstream from the local office. That last mile of to-the-house delivery is a non-trivial thing but I'm not sure how essential it is. Restated: it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire electricity generation and delivery network. Yet here we are.
    - reom_tobit 5y ago
      > Restated: it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire electricity generation and delivery network. Yet here we are. I suppose this was a restatement to point out a flaw in my previous point, but I do agree with the notion that critical national infrastructure should not involve private businesses. Just because “here we are”, doesn’t mean it’s where we should be. There are different points of view on this so I don’t expect everyone to agree with this (market efficiencies, etc etc), but I just see it as a solution looking for a problem in many cases. Downsizing the USPS, putting increasingly more onerous rules on it, then turning around and saying “well look, the private market is already doing so much, let’s just go with that”, seems shortsighted to me.
crispyambulance 5y ago
> Commit to do the work necessary to turn it around. Someone once wrote, years ago, a speculative piece about having the USPS take on a digital role as a kind of nationalized 3rd party identity authentication service. That seemed like a good idea to me. We could certainly use that and it's probably a better and more interesting business model than what currently provides them a huge amount of their revenue-- junk mail.
- elliekelly 5y ago
  Whatever USPS is paid to deliver me junk mail I would gladly pay a premium to USPS for them to not deliver me junk mail. Of course as I say that I wonder just how much money USPS is paid to deliver junk mail to one person for a month? It's probably a lot more than I'd expect.
  - thrill 5y ago
    Nice "pursuit of happiness" you have going there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to bury it in junk mail unless you paid me a monthly fee.
  - asoneth 5y ago
    In FY2019 the USPS earned $16.4 billion from marketing mail [1]. Estimating 121 million households that's ~$136 per household per year. The households that might choose to spend $136 per year to avoid junk mail are probably wealthier than average and therefore more valuable to advertisers. So letting those households opt-out would also probably reduce the value of those that remain. As a wild guess I suspect they might might need to charge closer to ~$200/yr to be revenue neutral to the USPS. Having said that there are cheaper options [2] and I don't think the USPS should have to resort to delivering ~41 pounds of unwanted junk to every citizen every year just to stay afloat. [1] https://about.usps.com/what/financials/integrated-financial-plans/fy2020.pdf https://about.usps.com/what/financials/integrated-financial-... [2] https://www.paperkarma.com/ https://www.paperkarma.com/
    - AH4oFVbPT4f8 5y ago
zikduruqe 5y ago
It would be nice to re-implement the Savings System that used to be in place. It would help the "under banked". Hell, even go radical and support USDC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  https://fortune.com/2020/03/04/post-office-banks-sanders-warren-bloomberg/ https://fortune.com/2020/03/04/post-office-banks-sanders-war... ("Bloomberg, Sanders, and Warren want to use post offices as banks") As always, call your congressperson and indicate you support such legislation (if you do; imho you should). Also, the postal board of governors can sign off on the USPS providing financial services without congressional approval, so I expect to see some progress as the current administration fills vacancies on the board [2]. [2] https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/24/politics/usps-board-of-governors-joe-biden-nominees/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/24/politics/usps-board-of-govern...
stjohnswarts 5y ago
The republicans have been attacking the USPS for at least 2 decades of my life. Meanwhile the dems were mostly just neutral on the whole thing so it has deteriorated. I don't think anyone is blaming the postal service. This is clearly the result of republicans attempted to slowly degrade service to make commercial services look better.
- JPKab 5y ago
  I don't think it's clearly the result of what you indicate. I'm no GOP fan at all but having done a lot of work with the federal government a very constant theme in politics is this idea that if only federal agencies are given more funding they can suddenly magically do their jobs better. This ignores the fact that most of these agencies are horrific with their spending efficiency. The VA for example does not have any shortage of money but I've never encountered an organization with so many toxically inept bureaucrats, and unnecessarily numerous layers of management who don't seem to do anything. The idea that there is this conspiracy to cause a degradation of service is not proven and that would welcome you to provide actual data from a non-political organization that backs this up.
  - Kye 5y ago
    There is an entire party that has made a mission of getting people into public services to make those services run so poorly people will support cutting and privatizing them. It's on purpose. Government so small you can drown it in a bathtub. Putting people with an ideological opposition to government into government has an obvious result.
    - rhexs 5y ago
      Wait, is there really a conspiracy out there that the reason the government performs so poorly is because people from “the opposite team” are actively joining and sabotaging it from within? Absolutely fascinating if so.
      - JPKab 5y ago
YeBanKo 5y ago
So it will all come down to money. But before everyone jumps in to say, that USPS needs more money from the federal government, it’s useful to remind where the current issue with money is: 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act requires prefunding for 75 years. https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2020/02/house-votes-end-controversial-usps-payments-future-retirees-health-care/162912/ https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2020/02/house-votes-end...
BelenusMordred 5y ago
> What's the answer? Taking a guess here that this is a US based comment? In Australia the postal service is a private company fully owned by the government. It's fairly well run by the private sector, consistently reliable and paying out annual profits to the Australian budget. It's not a burden at all on society, quite the opposite really, all that despite having strict service requirements to serve 99% of the population spread thinly across huge areas.
- MathCodeLove 5y ago
  Given that the main article is about the USPS, yes, that is a US based comment.

jollybean 5y ago

"The mail hasn't changed over the last two years in some fundamental way that makes it disruptive" COVID has very fundamentally changed the equation. Also, some institutions are more adaptive than others, some are more resilient. I suggest the USPS is very low on 'adaptiveness', but probably fairly resilient.

jermaustin1 5y ago
What does the Patent Office have to do with the Post Office?
- ptaipale 5y ago
  I suppose it is obvious that the previous writer just used wrong abbreviation, and meant the postal service. Snail-mail is in trouble in most parts of the developed world, because online services have replaced so many processes that were running on paper. Providing an example from my country and neighbours, i.e. the Nordics. Look at the graph that has numbers of delivered letters in different countries - it has roughly halved in 10 years, and the trend continues: https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11236284 https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-11236284 Parcel deliveries are growing, but there the postal services have competition. As the volume of letters decreases - particularly in businesses and offices but also in private lives - it becomes increasingly difficult to run the service without financial loss.
  - soco 5y ago
    Halving the number of envelopes does not imply increasing their transit time. If anything, it could actually speed them up... As for financial loss, it's a state-provided service. They are not created to make profits, but to provide a level of basic service. Just like primary schools, or local roads.
    - cipher_system 5y ago
      Assuming price stays the same that means half the revenue, almost the same fixed costs and probably slightly lower marginal costs. There is always a limit on how much money you can get from the government so they would have to save on expenditure with the decline. It's nice to have but it can't be considered critical anymore. Bills, paychecks and other important mail needs to be delivered digitally, there's no turning back. edit: parcels and legacy papers still need to work everywhere though and that is worth some public spending, but if you live in the middle of nowhere you have to accept longer deliveries on fewer days of the week.
    - ptaipale 5y ago
      Halving the number of envelopes implies halving the revenue. As much of the cost is fixed (dependent on the size of infrastructure such as premises and vehicles, and number of delivery people required to cover a geographical area with sufficient service), this creates a rather impossible equation to solve without any deterioration of service. A natural way in this situation is to make deliveries less often; we no longer need official letters urgently, except in quite rare exception cases that can probably be covered by parcel delivery services, with tracking (and much higher cost for the small number of deliveries). Over here, the postal service tries to solve this by arranging deliveries only three times a week, and in future perhaps once a week. I find that quite acceptable. If information needs to reach me faster, it'll come on-line anyway. A week's wait is OK for legacy services where someone wants a piece of physical paper with my signature, written on a pen, on it.
igorkraw 5y ago
The USPS has been legally blocked from adapting by anti-infrastructure ideologues (source https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLyU1WCQQ8A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLyU1WCQQ8A ) in order to set them up to fail. In addition to this, recent administrations have been actively dismantling their infrastructure. Any discussion of adaptivity or resilience is incomplete without considering these facts.
- fortran77 5y ago
  Why are you posting this same thing multiple times?
  - igorkraw 5y ago
    Because I originally wrote it on level 2 in a thread, then felt it was serviceable as a reply to the thread OP, as well as a top level reply.
dagmx 5y ago
Republicans changed the equation in their attempts to sabotage it. From requiring pre-funding retirements years ago, to DeJoy dismantling sorting machines just a few months ago. It's hard to know how adaptable a system is, when it's actively being torn down at every opportunity.
- AuryGlenz 5y ago
  The Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act was both put forward by Democrats and a Republicans and passed with broad bipartisan support.
  - blaser-waffle 5y ago
    The Democrats are pretty good at taking bribes, too. As long as it's not a wedge issue, the Dems are fine siding with the Republicans.
- JPKab 5y ago
  The politicized nature of discussing the post office in its funding has contaminated the brains of many people. The load that is distributed by the postal service has changed in nature dramatically to be far more packaged intensive and far far less letter-intensive than it used to be. The sorting machines that were being removed were letter sorting machines because nobody sends letters anymore except for junk mail. Room has to be made for more package sorting machines. That was the explanation for the moves but the timing made people suspicious and the suspicions were jumped upon by political actors in an election year. Nobody bother to ask themselves why the GOP would remove sorting machines in states that are definitely going blue if it was part of some grand scheme. Again I really don't like the GOP and have never even voted for a GOP candidate but I get fed up with politics bleeding over into reality via misinformation designed to create an emotional and stressful feeling in potential voters to ensure they cast their ballots because that's what this is.
  - bananabreakfast 5y ago
    "The timing made people suspicious" If they were not planning on dismantling and damaging the way the system functioned, then it would be overwhelmingly obvious that simply the optics of literally dismantling infrastructure in an election year that would be the most widely dependent on mail are atrocious. People were not "suspicious" of the timing. People refused to believe someone could be so stupid as to think they could do what DeJoy did in good faith, after being appointed by someone openly demanding the shutdown of the system, and not look like they were blatantly performing a political hit job. No good faith actor would possibly act that way.

Consultant32452 5y ago

>What's the answer? Commit to do the work necessary to turn it around. No. I'm going to commit to dismantling an outdated and unnecessary burden on society that serves mostly to deliver literal garbage to a box in my yard. Since it's easier to destroy than to build, I predict I will win in the long run. I don't know what world you live in but the Postal System has been a running joke for at least the last 50 years. I mean there's even a meme called "going postal" where someone commits mass murder. When was this time you're imagining when it worked well?

viro 5y ago
Are you stupid? Have ever used another service to mail a fucking letter? The USPS is one of the most advanced logistics networks in the world that is price capped by law and are literally required by the constitution. So kindly STFU and go back to ur open delivery network crack pipe.
- philwelch 5y ago
  > literally required by the constitution I don’t think this is true. The Constitution provides Congress the power to “establish post offices and post roads” in Article I, Section 8, but the list of enumerated powers begins with the phrase “The Congress shall have Power”, which does not seem to establish a positive mandate to exercise such powers. For instance, other enumerated powers include: > To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; There hasn’t been a declaration of war since 1941, and it’s been even longer since Congress issued any letters of marque and reprisal. The postal service had the same constitutional status as pirates: Congress certainly could commission them if they want to, but it’s not strictly required.
- Consultant32452 5y ago
  Maybe. Yes. Price caps are immoral. I don't care about the Constitution any more than our PATRIOT Act passing, right to bear arms infringing, throw you in a cage over growing your own food government does. The Constitution is the right's "gun free zone" signs. It means nothing.

nieksand 5y ago

Honest question... why not kill it off instead and push legacy users into the digital world? The USPS claims to have 230,000 vehicles. How much of that environmental footprint could be eradicated? https://facts.usps.com/postal-service-has-more-than-200000-vehicles/ https://facts.usps.com/postal-service-has-more-than-200000-v...

reom_tobit 5y ago
Even if everyone went fully digital, and letters became a thing of the past, you would still need a functional postal service. Packages obviously will still be sent for one, but also from a national security perspective it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire delivery logistics network. Lastly, if you see the government as enabling an economy for free markets, a state run postal service is a great backbone for that.
- kingsuper20 5y ago
  >it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire delivery logistics network. When you consider how much of US logistics is done by private companies, I'd say we're pretty much there and always were. Even if you dig into the USPS by itself, how much is done by private contractors? ..especially upstream from the local office. That last mile of to-the-house delivery is a non-trivial thing but I'm not sure how essential it is. Restated: it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire electricity generation and delivery network. Yet here we are.
  - reom_tobit 5y ago
    > Restated: it makes no sense to have private businesses running the entire electricity generation and delivery network. Yet here we are. I suppose this was a restatement to point out a flaw in my previous point, but I do agree with the notion that critical national infrastructure should not involve private businesses. Just because “here we are”, doesn’t mean it’s where we should be. There are different points of view on this so I don’t expect everyone to agree with this (market efficiencies, etc etc), but I just see it as a solution looking for a problem in many cases. Downsizing the USPS, putting increasingly more onerous rules on it, then turning around and saying “well look, the private market is already doing so much, let’s just go with that”, seems shortsighted to me.

crispyambulance 5y ago

> Commit to do the work necessary to turn it around. Someone once wrote, years ago, a speculative piece about having the USPS take on a digital role as a kind of nationalized 3rd party identity authentication service. That seemed like a good idea to me. We could certainly use that and it's probably a better and more interesting business model than what currently provides them a huge amount of their revenue-- junk mail.

elliekelly 5y ago
Whatever USPS is paid to deliver me junk mail I would gladly pay a premium to USPS for them to not deliver me junk mail. Of course as I say that I wonder just how much money USPS is paid to deliver junk mail to one person for a month? It's probably a lot more than I'd expect.
- thrill 5y ago
  Nice "pursuit of happiness" you have going there. It'd be a shame if anything happened to bury it in junk mail unless you paid me a monthly fee.
- asoneth 5y ago
  In FY2019 the USPS earned $16.4 billion from marketing mail [1]. Estimating 121 million households that's ~$136 per household per year. The households that might choose to spend $136 per year to avoid junk mail are probably wealthier than average and therefore more valuable to advertisers. So letting those households opt-out would also probably reduce the value of those that remain. As a wild guess I suspect they might might need to charge closer to ~$200/yr to be revenue neutral to the USPS. Having said that there are cheaper options [2] and I don't think the USPS should have to resort to delivering ~41 pounds of unwanted junk to every citizen every year just to stay afloat. [1] https://about.usps.com/what/financials/integrated-financial-plans/fy2020.pdf https://about.usps.com/what/financials/integrated-financial-... [2] https://www.paperkarma.com/ https://www.paperkarma.com/
  - AH4oFVbPT4f8 5y ago

zikduruqe 5y ago

It would be nice to re-implement the Savings System that used to be in place. It would help the "under banked". Hell, even go radical and support USDC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_System https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings_S...

toomuchtodo 5y ago
https://fortune.com/2020/03/04/post-office-banks-sanders-warren-bloomberg/ https://fortune.com/2020/03/04/post-office-banks-sanders-war... ("Bloomberg, Sanders, and Warren want to use post offices as banks") As always, call your congressperson and indicate you support such legislation (if you do; imho you should). Also, the postal board of governors can sign off on the USPS providing financial services without congressional approval, so I expect to see some progress as the current administration fills vacancies on the board [2]. [2] https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/24/politics/usps-board-of-governors-joe-biden-nominees/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2021/02/24/politics/usps-board-of-govern...

stjohnswarts 5y ago

The republicans have been attacking the USPS for at least 2 decades of my life. Meanwhile the dems were mostly just neutral on the whole thing so it has deteriorated. I don't think anyone is blaming the postal service. This is clearly the result of republicans attempted to slowly degrade service to make commercial services look better.

JPKab 5y ago
I don't think it's clearly the result of what you indicate. I'm no GOP fan at all but having done a lot of work with the federal government a very constant theme in politics is this idea that if only federal agencies are given more funding they can suddenly magically do their jobs better. This ignores the fact that most of these agencies are horrific with their spending efficiency. The VA for example does not have any shortage of money but I've never encountered an organization with so many toxically inept bureaucrats, and unnecessarily numerous layers of management who don't seem to do anything. The idea that there is this conspiracy to cause a degradation of service is not proven and that would welcome you to provide actual data from a non-political organization that backs this up.
- Kye 5y ago
  There is an entire party that has made a mission of getting people into public services to make those services run so poorly people will support cutting and privatizing them. It's on purpose. Government so small you can drown it in a bathtub. Putting people with an ideological opposition to government into government has an obvious result.
  - rhexs 5y ago
    Wait, is there really a conspiracy out there that the reason the government performs so poorly is because people from “the opposite team” are actively joining and sabotaging it from within? Absolutely fascinating if so.
    - JPKab 5y ago

YeBanKo 5y ago

So it will all come down to money. But before everyone jumps in to say, that USPS needs more money from the federal government, it’s useful to remind where the current issue with money is: 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act requires prefunding for 75 years. https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2020/02/house-votes-end-controversial-usps-payments-future-retirees-health-care/162912/ https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2020/02/house-votes-end...

BelenusMordred 5y ago

> What's the answer? Taking a guess here that this is a US based comment? In Australia the postal service is a private company fully owned by the government. It's fairly well run by the private sector, consistently reliable and paying out annual profits to the Australian budget. It's not a burden at all on society, quite the opposite really, all that despite having strict service requirements to serve 99% of the population spread thinly across huge areas.

MathCodeLove 5y ago
Given that the main article is about the USPS, yes, that is a US based comment.