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> 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

> 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
    Wouldn't costs also go down since they're delivering less junk and only stopping at houses that have letters/bills/etc to deliver ?
    - asoneth 5y ago
      Good point -- I don't know how to estimate the marginal cost of delivering marketing mail but it's certainly not zero. Looking at the same USPS FY2020 financials [1] it looks like marketing mail constitutes a little more than half of the pieces they deliver. That about matches my experience. My guess is that several times a month I have a mailbox that contains solely marketing mail. I'm not sure how much money it would save the USPS if the mail carrier passes by my house without stopping on those days, but I suspect the bigger impact would be dealing with half the physical volume of mail for our household. I still hope we can find a more sustainable path for the USPS than forcing them to stay alive by delivering something no one wants to receive. [1] https://about.usps.com/what/financials/integrated-financial-plans/fy2020.pdf https://about.usps.com/what/financials/integrated-financial-...
      - c22 5y ago
        I am almost 100% paperless with my affairs and nearly every single day I receive a mailbox solely filled with marketing mail.
    - josephmosby 5y ago
      No. USPS still has to stop by all of the houses anyway to pick up mail as well. So junk mail subsidizes the cost of going to all of those remote homes.
  - vageli 5y ago
    Sounds a solution, if one is already willing to pay to avoid receiving junk mail, would be to use a mail forwarding service and instruct them to discard junk mail if they do not already do so.
    - 5y ago
- rhexs 5y ago
  Why should you have to pay a national service to NOT deliver you junk mail? If your government isn’t serving you, why would you double down and assume additional funding will address the issue?
  - seanp2k2 5y ago
    Totally agree, just for some reason it’s unfathomable in this country that there could be a government-provided service that runs at a loss because it’s something that everyone benefits from that needs to be a government service precisely because it couldn’t realistically run at a profit without, say, doing something really backwards, like physically spamming people with no way to opt out. I’ll also point out that without junk mail, they could reduce OpEx quite a bit, and that should be factored into the equation as well. Package delivery services don’t stop at each address each day, and without junk mail, most households wouldn’t receive something in the mail each day. Same with trash collection — literally 95% of the mail we receive goes directly into bin, and I’m sure landfills are composed of a not-insignificant amount of junk mail. Excessive traffic and road wear from more mail delivery vehicles is probably less significant, but still caused by this. So, in addition to the environmental harm and annoyance of junk mail, the ridiculous situation we find in costs more than just the apparent “lost revenue” we’d have without it. It’s not like the government doesn’t spend way more per household per year on far lower value things than guaranteed physical mail delivery. Imagine if politicians got national parks in their crosshairs, they were deemed not profitable enough, and the proposed solution was to start selling ad space in prominent outdoor locations, like Yosemite. Just picture Half Dome, with a nice fat “BROUGHT TO YOU BY XFINITY, HOME OF THE PACKAGE”.
    - Symbiote 5y ago
      Do you really receive junk every day? In the UK, the cheap junk mailing rate allows Royal Mail to delay delivery for several days, to suit their schedule. They naturally batch it up. This is also appropriate for a lot of commercial non-junk mail. In Denmark, it is delivered around once a week, probably with a similar system. In both countries, I opted out of all junk mail. I receive a paper letter every 6 weeks or so.
mcshicks 5y ago
There is a bill making its way (slowly) through congress on digital identity. But I don't think it has any provisions on USPS, but I think it mostly funds making recommendations. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8215/text?r=20&s=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8215...
throwaway_kufu 5y ago
It may not be fully digital, but I believe I ordered my last passport in person at a local post office. Obviously they also took on a much greater role in this past presidential election with the increase in mail in ballots.
xkeysc0re 5y ago
In a similar vein, Bernie Sanders and others have backed proposals for postal banking.
- filoeleven 5y ago
  Lots of countries do or have done it, including the US from 1911 to 1967. Restoring it would destroy the payday lending industry, which IMO would be a good thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system
  - canadianfella 5y ago
    Why would it destroy payday lending?
  - truth_ 5y ago
    India has very reliable Post Office banks. Although the interest rate is low, the money there is safe. It serves a huge amount of people, especially in rural areas and underprivileged people. Speed Post is very reliable as well. > India has the largest Postal Network in the world with 154,965 Post Offices (as on 31.03.2017) of which 139,067 are in the rural areas. At the time of independence, there were 23,344 Post Offices, which were primarily in urban areas. Thus, the network has registered a seven-fold growth since Independence, with the focus of this expansion primarily in rural areas. On an average, a Post Office serves an area of 21.56 Sq. Km and population of 7753 people. It also provides safe, steady jobs to a lot of people.

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
  Wouldn't costs also go down since they're delivering less junk and only stopping at houses that have letters/bills/etc to deliver ?
  - asoneth 5y ago
    Good point -- I don't know how to estimate the marginal cost of delivering marketing mail but it's certainly not zero. Looking at the same USPS FY2020 financials [1] it looks like marketing mail constitutes a little more than half of the pieces they deliver. That about matches my experience. My guess is that several times a month I have a mailbox that contains solely marketing mail. I'm not sure how much money it would save the USPS if the mail carrier passes by my house without stopping on those days, but I suspect the bigger impact would be dealing with half the physical volume of mail for our household. I still hope we can find a more sustainable path for the USPS than forcing them to stay alive by delivering something no one wants to receive. [1] https://about.usps.com/what/financials/integrated-financial-plans/fy2020.pdf https://about.usps.com/what/financials/integrated-financial-...
    - c22 5y ago
      I am almost 100% paperless with my affairs and nearly every single day I receive a mailbox solely filled with marketing mail.
  - josephmosby 5y ago
    No. USPS still has to stop by all of the houses anyway to pick up mail as well. So junk mail subsidizes the cost of going to all of those remote homes.
- vageli 5y ago
  Sounds a solution, if one is already willing to pay to avoid receiving junk mail, would be to use a mail forwarding service and instruct them to discard junk mail if they do not already do so.
  - 5y ago
rhexs 5y ago
Why should you have to pay a national service to NOT deliver you junk mail? If your government isn’t serving you, why would you double down and assume additional funding will address the issue?
- seanp2k2 5y ago
  Totally agree, just for some reason it’s unfathomable in this country that there could be a government-provided service that runs at a loss because it’s something that everyone benefits from that needs to be a government service precisely because it couldn’t realistically run at a profit without, say, doing something really backwards, like physically spamming people with no way to opt out. I’ll also point out that without junk mail, they could reduce OpEx quite a bit, and that should be factored into the equation as well. Package delivery services don’t stop at each address each day, and without junk mail, most households wouldn’t receive something in the mail each day. Same with trash collection — literally 95% of the mail we receive goes directly into bin, and I’m sure landfills are composed of a not-insignificant amount of junk mail. Excessive traffic and road wear from more mail delivery vehicles is probably less significant, but still caused by this. So, in addition to the environmental harm and annoyance of junk mail, the ridiculous situation we find in costs more than just the apparent “lost revenue” we’d have without it. It’s not like the government doesn’t spend way more per household per year on far lower value things than guaranteed physical mail delivery. Imagine if politicians got national parks in their crosshairs, they were deemed not profitable enough, and the proposed solution was to start selling ad space in prominent outdoor locations, like Yosemite. Just picture Half Dome, with a nice fat “BROUGHT TO YOU BY XFINITY, HOME OF THE PACKAGE”.
  - Symbiote 5y ago
    Do you really receive junk every day? In the UK, the cheap junk mailing rate allows Royal Mail to delay delivery for several days, to suit their schedule. They naturally batch it up. This is also appropriate for a lot of commercial non-junk mail. In Denmark, it is delivered around once a week, probably with a similar system. In both countries, I opted out of all junk mail. I receive a paper letter every 6 weeks or so.

mcshicks 5y ago

There is a bill making its way (slowly) through congress on digital identity. But I don't think it has any provisions on USPS, but I think it mostly funds making recommendations. https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8215/text?r=20&s=1 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/8215...

throwaway_kufu 5y ago

It may not be fully digital, but I believe I ordered my last passport in person at a local post office. Obviously they also took on a much greater role in this past presidential election with the increase in mail in ballots.

xkeysc0re 5y ago

In a similar vein, Bernie Sanders and others have backed proposals for postal banking.

filoeleven 5y ago
Lots of countries do or have done it, including the US from 1911 to 1967. Restoring it would destroy the payday lending industry, which IMO would be a good thing. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_savings_system
- canadianfella 5y ago
  Why would it destroy payday lending?
- truth_ 5y ago
  India has very reliable Post Office banks. Although the interest rate is low, the money there is safe. It serves a huge amount of people, especially in rural areas and underprivileged people. Speed Post is very reliable as well. > India has the largest Postal Network in the world with 154,965 Post Offices (as on 31.03.2017) of which 139,067 are in the rural areas. At the time of independence, there were 23,344 Post Offices, which were primarily in urban areas. Thus, the network has registered a seven-fold growth since Independence, with the focus of this expansion primarily in rural areas. On an average, a Post Office serves an area of 21.56 Sq. Km and population of 7753 people. It also provides safe, steady jobs to a lot of people.