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What would be awesome is if instead of this we gave a fuck ton of money to the post office and tried to solve this problem for everyone and also eroded amazon's

What would be awesome is if instead of this we gave a fuck ton of money to the post office and tried to solve this problem for everyone and also eroded amazon's competitive advantage. That's the sort of infra we need, it's frankly embarrassing that we're not looking at amazon as a country and thinking "why don't we just enable remote commerce like this for everyone as a societal good". P.S. Let the post office do banking too so we can take some wall street's pie as well.

golemotron 5y ago
Please read the history of post office budgets and spending.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  They've actually done pretty well, given the amount of politics that gets played with their funding.
thepasswordis 5y ago
The post office is unfortunately vulnerable to political pressure. Both from their unions, and from the federal government. Imagine the nightmare of Pete Buttigieg sending down dictates to the post office as he tries to build political career. Look at what’s happening in CA right now: just park the ships far enough offshore that you can’t see them and then claim the problem is solved because there aren’t as many ships waiting, charge the people who are already losing money because they can’t get their containers out of the port fines, and punish them further, claiming this as a political win because it punishes the businesses. Absolutely no thank you. This is an actual problem that needs real solutions, not politicians grubbing power.
- jorblumesea 5y ago
  Those people are in theory at least, elected by the American people. Meanwhile Amazon is beholden to whom, wealthy board members and stock holders? How is that better?
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    Look at reality. Do you want packages stuck at harbor?
    - jorblumesea 5y ago
      My packages are stuck in a harbor regardless. Many major shippers, both public and private are having issues.
- newhotelowner 5y ago
  https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/18/trump-amazon-postal-service/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/18/trump-a...
- landryraccoon 5y ago
  This comment is pretty disingenuous. Your argument implies that ANY public service is not worth improving, because any government agency is vulnerable to political pressure. If you think your elected leaders are not competent and professional, then fire them and elect leaders that will improve the government. If you want a better post office, we need to FIX the post office, not destroy it. This sort of argument is the one that leads to hypocritically de-funding the post office by playing politics, then since it's too political pointing to it and saying "See? The government can't do anything right", then completely dismantling it. Other countries manage to have public services that actually work. I don't believe that the American people are somehow genetically predisposed to having a bad government.
  - bllguo 5y ago
    > I don't believe that the American people are somehow genetically predisposed to having a bad government. I sure do. Nothing is going to change until rejection of authority is no longer foundational to the culture. We literally convinced ourselves that dysfunction and gridlock are features of the system, not bugs.
    - jen20 5y ago
      That’s cultural, not genetic.
      - bllguo 5y ago
        sure, that's more accurate. I kind of assumed that's what they meant. in any case changing either significantly is a long shot
  - kortilla 5y ago
    > Other countries manage to have public services that actually work. Which countries have something competing with Amazon? > I don't believe that the American people are somehow genetically predisposed to having a bad government. All governments are bad. The American people just happen to have alternatives that have revealed how bad some of the overlapping government orgs are so they make a lot of noise about how bad government departments are. > If you think your elected leaders are not competent and professional, then fire them and elect leaders that will improve the government. If you want a better post office, we need to FIX the post office, not destroy it. The whole thing is fucked from an incentives perspective. No government employee has motivation to try hard or innovate. There is no shared bonus structure to bring that on in any branch of the government. When government is competing with an industry, it’s either going to need to run at a loss and live off of other tax revenue or it just won’t be competitive for whoever the customers are.
- spamizbad 5y ago
  The post office does things that private carriers are unable to do: deliver a high volume of units to any valid address. FedEx pushes a fraction of the volume of USPS and is buckling under the strain of the current labor shortage[1] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-04/labor-shortage-ups-union-drivers-give-delivery-service-edge-over-fedex-fdx https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-04/labor-sho...
  - lern_too_spel 5y ago
    FedEx is so bad now that I avoid buying from sellers that use FedEx for shipping. The last few times I had a FedEx delivery, the delivery status went to pending twice, and the deliveries were a week late. Looking at the Google Maps reviews of the distribution centers where the packages sat, I consider myself lucky to have received the packages at all.
  - pxeboot 5y ago
    The Post Office doesn't actually deliver to every address. There are hundreds of rural areas where residents get a free PO Box in the nearest town, without the option of home delivery.
    - tsol 5y ago
      So doesn't that mean effectively it does? Last mile shipping is difficult for everyone
- micromacrofoot 5y ago
  Amazon doesn’t really seem to have a long-term solution… they had to ease drug testing requirements at one point recently because their turnover is so high that they were running out of people. Their last mile drivers are contracted companies that treat their employees so poorly that it’s somewhat typical for them to leave their keys in the van and quit on the spot.
- wolverine876 5y ago
  The US Post Office delivered the mail on time for generations until the prior administration got its hands on it.
  - tsol 5y ago
    It's so strange how easily people can be convinced "this never worked, it's not worth even trying". Certainly that's by design
bsder 5y ago
These are really good ideas except ... Republicans specifically blocked the Post Office from doing these things with legislation.
syshum 5y ago
We do, and have in the past gave a fuck ton of money to the Post office. The idea that any government agency can solve this problem with the same amount of money defy's all documented history of all government programs
- kyletns 5y ago
  Some governments actually govern decently well, certainly way better than the US. I assume you haven't actually read much of said documented history.
  - syshum 5y ago
    "Well" is subjective, "well run" Governments by their nature have run programs to meet the needs of the "average" person which means there will be many people for which the programs simply do not work. Poorly run government are corrupted so you end up with the programs working for a very small minority, but at best the government program will work for probally 51% of population. Government programs can simply not offer the level of customization, flexibility, and variety that a private market can
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      Private markets only cater to those who can afford to pay, which can be a lot worse than only catering to the average.
    - kyletns 5y ago
      Right, but I hope you also acknowledge that the US does not have very many flexible, customizable offerings competing in healthy markets? There is barely a US industry left that isn't completely captured by 2-5 corporations. We may have the illusion of markets and choice, but we don't. We have monopolies and oligopolies extracting monopoly rents because they buy, destroy, or merge with the competition.
      - syshum 5y ago
oliv__ 5y ago
I don't know about you but from my personal experiences in dealing with the USPS, they're not exactly what I'd describe as the most efficient (or friendly for that matter) organization. Compare that to same-day or next day delivery from Amazon, it's night and day. I'd rather not dump more tax money into that mess. EDIT: I find it interesting that 90% of the responding comments in this thread are seemingly against the parent comment's ideas yet all are being heavily downvoted now with practically no answers to justify the downvotes
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  > EDIT: I find it interesting that 90% of the responding comments in this thread are seemingly against the parent comment's ideas yet all are being heavily downvoted now with practically no answers to justify the downvotes I think that's because many of the comments are posting regularly debunked misinformation. Personally, I like the USPS more than Amazon. Because while Amazon frequently gives me great service, they can terminate that relationship at any time and then I'm completely stuck. Because the USPS is quasi-governmental, they can't just decide I'm no longer allowed to be a customer.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    > I think that's because many of the comments are posting regularly debunked misinformation. Such as? Most of these faded out comments are talking about how the USPS is a government org so it has no incentives to efficiently fix things regardless of money. How do you debunk that? It’s true of the incentives of every government agency.
    - nicoburns 5y ago
      Why does the CEO of a private company have incentive to fix things? Presumably because they’ll be fired if they don’t. How is that any different for the head of a governmental organisation?
      - twblalock 5y ago
ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
Dude the post office would squander that money. I have no idea why people think these public entities can execute like Amazon does. Its the same with SpaceX and NASA, very clear at this point that NASA was a huge waste of money and completely incompetent.
- ceejayoz 5y ago
  Why doesn’t NASA get any credit for creating and funding the Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew programs? SpaceX looks like a very savvy, competent investment made by NASA to me.
  - ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
    Because if a private company had worked on that same thing, the results would have been 10x.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
      Yeah, sure. Go look up what those programs involve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2005%E2%80%932009:_Falcon_1_and_first_orbital_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2005%E2%80%932009:_Falc... > The first two Falcon 1 launches were purchased by the United States Department of Defense under a program that evaluates new US launch vehicles suitable for use by DARPA. The first three launches of the rocket, between 2006 and 2008, all resulted in failures. These failures almost ended the company as Musk had planned and financing to cover the costs of three launches; Tesla, SolarCity, and Musk personally were all nearly bankrupt at the same time as well; Musk was reportedly "waking from nightmares, screaming and in physical pain" because of the stress. > However, things started to turn around when the first successful launch was achieved shortly after with the fourth attempt on 28 September 2008. Musk split his remaining $30 million between SpaceX and Tesla, and NASA awarded the first Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract to SpaceX in December, thus financially saving the company. Based on these factors and the further business operations they enabled, the Falcon 1 was soon after retired following its second successful, and fifth total, launch in July 2009; this allowed SpaceX to focus company resources on the development of a larger orbital rocket, the Falcon 9. Gwynne Shotwell was also promoted to company president at this time, for her role in successfully negotiating the CRS contract with NASA.
dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago
> What would be awesome is if instead of this we gave a fuck ton of money to the post office and tried to solve this problem for everyone and also eroded amazon's competitive advantage. Why hasn't this happened already? What makes you think it would actually happen?
- kyletns 5y ago
  Takes political courage and public pressure. There is a little bit of that being exhibited by the current administration, but it's also pretty clear that another potential administration would have had a lot more potential to fix these problems.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    What? The current admin spearheaded some 3-6T in spending bills presumably for “infrastructure”. It seems like all of the support is there. The problem is that nobody gets political credit for improving existing systems. That money will instead be pissed away on other political gifts and novelties.
    - KittenInABox 5y ago
      What do you mean "infrastructure" in quotes? The infrastructure bill is almost entirely infrastructure like roads, bridges, waterways, electricity, and broadband internet. (It's also only 1T. Not 3-6.)
    - kyletns 5y ago
      Thanks KittenInABox. Politicians absolutely do get credit when they improve actual systems and improve people's lives. People like it, and will vote those politicians back into office. But it has to be actual, felt, day-by-day changes in their lives (such as fixed roads, the USPS offering free check cashing, or even a friggin relief check in the mail with the president's signature on it). The current infrastructure bill(s) promise that real support, but they didn't fund it enough imo and it's far from clear that they'll be able to use the money they did get to make meaningful changes in people's daily lives.
ozzythecat 5y ago
Unless the Post office has some strong incentive to compete, such as a private company, there’s no reason to believe the Post office would be even half as effective as Amazon. Amazons incentive, whether you agree with it or not, is to grow their company and show value to stakeholders. It’s quantitative numbers. They can certainly lie, but at the end of the day the market will punish them. The USPS is driven by what incentives? Politics? Future pension obligations? In reality, government ends up being a bloated mess, waste of tax payer dollar. Don’t believe me? How many campaigns have we seen just in our own lifetimes of candidates promising “change”, “making America great”, fixing healthcare, infrastructure, reforming education. One of the two parties does win every election. Fundamentally, what has changed? Regulating private companies might be the answer. But government has proven itself to NOT be the answer.
- pbhjpbhj 5y ago
  >there’s no reason to believe the Post office would be even half as effective as Amazon.// I never understand this argument, take Amazon now. Pay everyone the same to do the same job, but don't pay dividends, reinvest profits (or pay them as if taxes). How does it suddenly become everyone is incompetent and can't do their job? Why is it capitalists think people can only work if there's a rich person creaming off a profit? Explain, please.
  - stale2002 5y ago
    > but don't pay dividends, reinvest profits (or pay them as if taxes) This is literally what Amazon is already doing, right? They don't pay dividends, and are just re-investing all the profits already, with no profits being skimmed off at all.
  - whiddershins 5y ago
    Because logistics is mind boggling difficult. I would say the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks they could fund or create an org that can match Amazon’s.
  - kevinventullo 5y ago
    Pay everyone the same to do the same job… The federal pay ceiling in 2021 is $172,500 per year. That’s about what a SWE new grad at Amazon makes in their first year out of college.
newhotelowner 5y ago
Amazon uses USPS for small and rural cities. Only USPS delivers my Amazon packages at my business. Amazon vans delivers at my home. My business & my home is 20 miles apart.
- structural 5y ago
  Amazon uses USPS for large cities as well (where package theft is a very big issue) - most homes have a secondary lock with access to the foyer, and postal carriers have the key. This functions just like blocks of lockable mailboxes that are found in condo/apartment complexes, but for packages. Needless to say, the overnight/next day delivery options that you'll see for suburban neighborhoods are nonexistent in many other places.
rubyist5eva 5y ago
Because if there’s one thing that makes the government run well is more spending!
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  That is quite possibly true. The primary goal of government is not efficiency. We need to quit making that some kind of top priority. The first thing government should be is effective. This is fundamentally why mixing for-profit businesses into government functions always ends up a clusterfck.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    > We need to quit making that some kind of top priority. Then how do we pay for it? You’re either making the customers pay the true cost or you’re just stealing it from the entire tax base. If you do the latter then it’s unfair to any business competing in the same category and they will all eventually go out of business because they have to be sustainable. So we end up with less efficiency and absolutely no other options.
  - rubyist5eva 5y ago
    Spending more creates more bureaucracy and makes government less effective, which was the point of my sarcastic quip.
bloqs 5y ago
One of the few certainties in life, along with death and taxes, is that a Government body/or institution (any government) will be less efficient, the more money it has.
kyletns 5y ago
Great write up on the USPS banking pilot: https://prospect.org/economy/postal-banking-test-in-the-bronx-yields-no-customers/ https://prospect.org/economy/postal-banking-test-in-the-bron... Not a fun outcome but the fight isn't over, yet.
adolph 5y ago
> instead of this we gave a fuck ton of money to the post office Or the post office could find a sustainable and growth economic model . . . at which point it might be indistinguishable from Amazon/Walmart/Safeway/etc.
cronix 5y ago
Amazon doesn't send me shit I don't order and don't want. More than 95% of my mail is junk mail and there's nothing I can do about it. Circulating what the vast majority of people would consider as junk is the only thing really keeping the USPS in operation. Well that and they don't have to turn a profit and also have the protection of law to keep them going.
- pixl97 5y ago
  >Amazon doesn't send me shit I don't order and don't want Give it 10 years when Amazon is looking for new ways to increase profitability and shit's shipped to your door that you have to schedule a ship back or you'll end up being charged for it.
  - kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
    They already do it by hiding the "add to cart" button in favor of periodic shipments for certain consumables.
- alpha_squared 5y ago
  USPS would be, and historically has been, profitable if it weren't for the politicians actively trying to drag it down with arbitrary, arcane rules to protect their donors.
  - gruez 5y ago
    > arbitrary, arcane rules to protect their donors. like what? The ones I heard of were prefunding the pension plans, but I’m not sure how that benefits any of “their donors”
    - pzduniak 5y ago
      USPS being weak (AFAIK primarily because of this law) benefits their competition, who are lobbying against "fixing" it.
    - ceejayoz 5y ago
throwaway894345 5y ago
I'd much rather we disincentivized intercontinental transport to incentivize domestic production and reduce carbon emissions due to transit. I don't necessarily mind that Amazon is successful so long as they aren't simply the best at deriving profits from Chinese slave labor, IP theft, and pollution. I don't think the solution is to make the Post Office better at those things.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > reduce carbon emissions due to transit. Bulk and container ships are extremely efficient. Most of the carbon emissions are from the last few miles.
  - derefr 5y ago
    That's like saying that spaceships are extremely efficient, because "all they have to do is accelerate at the beginning and decelerate at the end." It's not the trip that gets you; it's the delta-V (or in this case, delta-p). Also, cargo shipping voluntarily uses fuel ("bunker fuel" — the dregs of the petroleum distillation process) that's absolutely awful for the environment per watt generated compared to any other fuel (including any other petroleum distillate.) They do this because it's the cheapest [liquid] fuel to buy per watt generated, and because they "can" — cargo-ship engines are designed to deal with the low quality of bunker fuel, and ships at sea under most of the common charters [e.g. Bermuda] aren't subject to any ecological regulations restricting them from burning it. Bunker fuel shouldn't be marketable for sale as a fuel at all. We (= OPEC, in this case) could still sell it to chemical companies, but the rest, we should just be sticking back in the ground. This would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by such an extent it's not even funny. This would naturally make shipping more expensive, since their next-cheapest fuel would be slightly more expensive. (Probably not for long, though; some capital investment into ship engine design, using modern engine technologies like Cylinder Deactivation, could probably claw most of this cheapness back.)
    - tomarr 5y ago
      >Bunker fuel shouldn't be marketable for sale as a fuel at all. We (= OPEC, in this case) could still sell it to chemical companies, but the rest, we should just be sticking back in the ground. This would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by such an extent it's not even funny. Bunker fuel is responsible for ~3% of CO2e emissions? OK it may have a greater impact on air quality, but in terms of carbon it is not exactly a stand-out item.
kwhitefoot 5y ago
Post offices in Europe did banking for many years. Most of them have been broken up now though. I think there should be an even more general effort made to remove the competitive advantage that comes from simply being big. Small enterprises suffer from the lack of economy of scale. As a private individual or sole trader it is more expensive for me to send a parcel than it is for a large company, this gives the incumbent an advantage.
- kortilla 5y ago
  > I think there should be an even more general effort made to remove the competitive advantage that comes from simply being big. That’s ridiculous because you completely disincentivize automation and efficiency with those types of rules. There is no reason to ensure that two guys spending 5 years to hand build one car need to be subsidized to continue that way.
  - kwhitefoot 5y ago
    > There is no reason to ensure that two guys spending 5 years to hand build one car need to be subsidized to continue that way. Of course not. But it might be wise to subsidize them so that they can get started and disrupt the existing players that have become lazy and inefficient.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      That’s exactly what venture capital is for.
- Kalium 5y ago
  The USPS is also an example of a postal system that formerly provided banking services.
justinator 5y ago
The USPS is getting into banking: https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/10/postal-service-launches-banking-pilot-hopes-expand-early-2022/185824/ https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/10/postal-service-la...
whiddershins 5y ago
Why do you favor paying via taxes over paying via purchases for the same service?
systemvoltage 5y ago
I completely disagree. Funding a government mandated monopoly is a terrible idea. I would vote so hard against Post Office handling banking. It is incalculable that this kind of stuff gets upvoted by the intellectual diaspora of HN.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  This is obviously not universally true. Do you really want to have privately owned roads? Privately owned courts?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    Let's ban all bakeries, should bread be federalized?
    - kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
      No because then everyone would just…loaf.
- CrazyCatDog 5y ago
  two words: visit Switzerland Also, absolutely agree with anyone suggesting that we eliminate “bulk rate”—unsolicited mail should cost as much as first class—both to avoid real world spam, and to save trees. I pay extra for my carrier to block spam calls—I world gladly pay the post office to do the same—like PaperKarma.com but last mile…
  - systemvoltage 5y ago
    If you expect USPS to turn into Swiss-like government agency, sure. But it is not. And it can never be. The culture inside government agencies in USA is rotten.
- 5y ago
kortilla 5y ago
Because the post office doesn’t care about doing it efficiently or with a profit. Government employees don’t (and can’t legally) get bonuses for doing well or beating expectations. The entire post office org gets no bonus (or punishment for that matter) by impacting the cost to revenue ratio. Both of these are the reasons it never works to throw a pile of money at a government org and expect something sustainable monetarily and good to come out of it.
- kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
  The post office should be run efficiently. But I don’t require it to make a profit. It is a service, for our collective benefit. Just like the Army. I don’t expect the Army to make a profit.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    As long as it’s not operating at a loss or using taxpayer money, then that’s fine. Otherwise it’s using taxpayer money to destroy competing businesses. We don’t really care about businesses operating private militaries so the army isn’t a good comparison.
- morpheos137 5y ago
  These comments threads are fascinating for their display of confidently proclaimed ignorance. Postal supervisors, including local supervisors at your local office can and do get performance bonuses. Mailmen and clerks can not due to their union contracts.
  - 1123581321 5y ago
    What goes wrong at those branches, then? Are the supervisors prevented from making drastic changes?
    - morpheos137 5y ago
      Yeah basically by the union and dysfunction at higher levels like sorting plants. If supervisors could hire and fire mail carriers for performance and pay them market rate wages then the service would be drastically different. How it is now supervisors have very little control over local branches. They can not control who to hire, in my district interviews for hourly workers were not even a thing, they can not control what to pay staff or what staffing level they need. They can not control the volume of mail they receive. While FedEx or UPS can refuse work if they lack capacity USPS has to accept the over flow. Almost all new hire mailmen are hired "part time" with no set schedule for a low nationally uniform annual wage. The entry level wage for a mailman is the same in both small towns and big cities. The union contract sets a certain percentage quota for "part time" workforce so under-staffing is the norm. The senior mailman gets a solid middle class wage, while the entry level barely makes enough to live on in some cases or in others gets absurd mandatory overtime.
maxerickson 5y ago
The replies to this that slag the post office would make more sense if Amazon didn't rely on the post office for last mile in so many places.
mdgrech23 5y ago
The government would find a way to fuck it up - most likely through forced diversity hiring. Look at truly innovative companies - every year they can can 10% or so of the lower performers - if you're not doing your job your fired - doing that in a gov ran business? good luck. everyone would claim wrongful termination so it becomes cheaper to keep the lower performers which leads to our current situation w/ the post office.
- KittenInABox 5y ago
  > Look at truly innovative companies - every year they can can 10% or so of the lower performers Name the truly innovative companies that have this as a policy right now.
- jbm 5y ago
  Your 10% example was used by Jack Welsh GE and Enron right? Do you consider them innovative / forward looking?
  - spiderice 5y ago
    So because Enron is bad, everything they did is bad? I’m not arguing in favor of firing the bottom 10% each year, but your logic here is ridiculous.
    - jbm 5y ago
      It is commonly speculated that the Darwinian "10% off the bottom" layoffs were one of the reasons why Enron had so many failings as a company (fear of getting laid off led to dishonest dealing and creative accounting) and that is supposedly one reason why it fell apart. By arguing that effective, innovative companies get rid of dead weight, anyone making the argument needs to confront that there are obvious cases where this isn't true, and that it creates perverse incentives. As for the topic in general, I'm of a mixed opinion about similar government services. The mail service in Canada is overpriced and feels poorly run (like most everything that is Federally run in Canada), but Japan Post was excellent the whole time I lived in Tokyo. Finding what works and reproducing them makes a lot of sense to me.
derefr 5y ago
Counterargument: as someone who doesn't live in the US, I personally benefit from the international logistics infrastructure built by private US companies fed mostly by demand from US private citizens. But I don't benefit at all from well-funded US public domestic logistics services. International logistics can't really be solved at the national level, because the interests involved aren't national/unilateral — they're international/multilateral. (You could maybe make an argument for treatied multilateral investment into public logistics infrastructure tied to said treaties, maybe led by the Universal Postal Union — something similar to the Paris Agreement, but with global-economic goals rather than global-ecological ones. But that's a very different thing from just saying that one country's citizens should demand their own government nationalize a particular service.)
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  US citizens don’t benefit from forced spam, or bad service from from USPS either. They could go paperless for most official documents but they need to give these spammers a reason to stay afloat: “official documents”.
  - AngryData 5y ago
    Many parts of the US still do not have reliable internet or anything other than degraded phone lines that barely service 56k with cell service that gives 1 bar part of the time, which is a huge barrier to paperless service. Also they still need a way to send government documents, jury and court summons, ect. My own internet is wireless microwave transceiver which only works because I live on a hill, the people around me in the bowls and swamps barely have workable cell service even outside their house. And that is all on top of the fact that internet and devices to connect to the internet cost a significant amount of money to maintain, and paying private companies should not be a requirement to live your life on your own property.
    - GhettoComputers 5y ago
      The USPS doesn’t serve all households, you of all people should know that. Degraded phone lines can fax. They’re lucky they don’t get spammed.
mgaunard 5y ago
Vertical integration is what makes the service that Amazon provides so good. Splitting things into different siloed entities just leads to inefficiencies.
deleted 5y ago
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bogota 5y ago
It’s great wishful thinking but I really dont think our government can pull it off at this point. Maybe 30 years ago but not in today’s environment of everyone trying to screw the other side over at all costs. Personally im happy we at least have one company who can get me stuff in a decent amount of time. But i gets it’s fun to throw out f the big company the government should do that. It’s not like it took thousands of well paid people years and years of work to develop that supply chain so im sure it’s as simple as “let the government do it”. It’s the same in every Uber/Lyft comment thread. “It’s just a simple backend app why do they need so many people”. “I could do that in a year with a small team”. Yeah have fun dealing with every single state, city, country’s different regulations and requirements. “It’s JUST an app”. I realize a lot of engineers have this problem. They oversimplify everything except the code they are working on and dismiss it as easy or unnecessary. I did early in my career as well but im surprised how prevent it is here.
- akiselev 5y ago
  > fuck ton of money > tried to solve this problem for everyone It doesn't sound like the GP was oversimplifying the problem, quite the opposite - wanting to spend a "fuck ton of money" to try to solve something implies that it is a complex problem that may not be solved with a "fuck ton of money".
- adventured 5y ago
  > I did early in my career as well but im surprised how prevent it is here. Most of the people here have never run or attempted to create a business. That's true about the general population as well. As you hint at, it comes from lack of life experience at doing a thing. You get a similar naivety from the average consumer that fantasizes about starting a restaurant because they have strong opinions about food; they've eaten at many restaurants, they've made food at home thousands of times, how hard could it be.
- roughly 5y ago
  > I really dont think our government can pull it off at this point That's not, to be clear, for reasons of technical capacity. The vaccine drive that started in ~February or so of this year was pretty good evidence that the government is still capable of doing big things.
JackFr 5y ago
> What would be awesome is if instead of this we gave a fuck ton of money to the post office and tried to solve this problem for everyone and also eroded amazon's competitive advantage. Amazon solved a problem and reaped a reward. Your response to that is to take everyone’s money, and give it to someone else in the hopes that they can solve the problem. Sure, I suppose, no reason for it not to work. On the other hand “why don’t we just enable remote commerce like this for everyone as a societal good” is beyond simplistic and naive. Amazon is very good at what they do and what they do is not easy.
Kalium 5y ago
> P.S. Let the post office do banking too so we can take some wall street's pie as well. They did that for a while. Wall Street ate the Post Office's pie, rather than the other way around. Which is why the US postal system's banking service shut down. Which is not to say postal banking is a bad idea, but that perhaps we should be careful with our expectations.

golemotron 5y ago

Please read the history of post office budgets and spending.

rootusrootus 5y ago
They've actually done pretty well, given the amount of politics that gets played with their funding.

thepasswordis 5y ago

The post office is unfortunately vulnerable to political pressure. Both from their unions, and from the federal government. Imagine the nightmare of Pete Buttigieg sending down dictates to the post office as he tries to build political career. Look at what’s happening in CA right now: just park the ships far enough offshore that you can’t see them and then claim the problem is solved because there aren’t as many ships waiting, charge the people who are already losing money because they can’t get their containers out of the port fines, and punish them further, claiming this as a political win because it punishes the businesses. Absolutely no thank you. This is an actual problem that needs real solutions, not politicians grubbing power.

jorblumesea 5y ago
Those people are in theory at least, elected by the American people. Meanwhile Amazon is beholden to whom, wealthy board members and stock holders? How is that better?
- GhettoComputers 5y ago
  Look at reality. Do you want packages stuck at harbor?
  - jorblumesea 5y ago
    My packages are stuck in a harbor regardless. Many major shippers, both public and private are having issues.
newhotelowner 5y ago
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/18/trump-amazon-postal-service/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/18/trump-a...
landryraccoon 5y ago
This comment is pretty disingenuous. Your argument implies that ANY public service is not worth improving, because any government agency is vulnerable to political pressure. If you think your elected leaders are not competent and professional, then fire them and elect leaders that will improve the government. If you want a better post office, we need to FIX the post office, not destroy it. This sort of argument is the one that leads to hypocritically de-funding the post office by playing politics, then since it's too political pointing to it and saying "See? The government can't do anything right", then completely dismantling it. Other countries manage to have public services that actually work. I don't believe that the American people are somehow genetically predisposed to having a bad government.
- bllguo 5y ago
  > I don't believe that the American people are somehow genetically predisposed to having a bad government. I sure do. Nothing is going to change until rejection of authority is no longer foundational to the culture. We literally convinced ourselves that dysfunction and gridlock are features of the system, not bugs.
  - jen20 5y ago
    That’s cultural, not genetic.
    - bllguo 5y ago
      sure, that's more accurate. I kind of assumed that's what they meant. in any case changing either significantly is a long shot
- kortilla 5y ago
  > Other countries manage to have public services that actually work. Which countries have something competing with Amazon? > I don't believe that the American people are somehow genetically predisposed to having a bad government. All governments are bad. The American people just happen to have alternatives that have revealed how bad some of the overlapping government orgs are so they make a lot of noise about how bad government departments are. > If you think your elected leaders are not competent and professional, then fire them and elect leaders that will improve the government. If you want a better post office, we need to FIX the post office, not destroy it. The whole thing is fucked from an incentives perspective. No government employee has motivation to try hard or innovate. There is no shared bonus structure to bring that on in any branch of the government. When government is competing with an industry, it’s either going to need to run at a loss and live off of other tax revenue or it just won’t be competitive for whoever the customers are.
spamizbad 5y ago
The post office does things that private carriers are unable to do: deliver a high volume of units to any valid address. FedEx pushes a fraction of the volume of USPS and is buckling under the strain of the current labor shortage[1] [1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-04/labor-shortage-ups-union-drivers-give-delivery-service-edge-over-fedex-fdx https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-04/labor-sho...
- lern_too_spel 5y ago
  FedEx is so bad now that I avoid buying from sellers that use FedEx for shipping. The last few times I had a FedEx delivery, the delivery status went to pending twice, and the deliveries were a week late. Looking at the Google Maps reviews of the distribution centers where the packages sat, I consider myself lucky to have received the packages at all.
- pxeboot 5y ago
  The Post Office doesn't actually deliver to every address. There are hundreds of rural areas where residents get a free PO Box in the nearest town, without the option of home delivery.
  - tsol 5y ago
    So doesn't that mean effectively it does? Last mile shipping is difficult for everyone
micromacrofoot 5y ago
Amazon doesn’t really seem to have a long-term solution… they had to ease drug testing requirements at one point recently because their turnover is so high that they were running out of people. Their last mile drivers are contracted companies that treat their employees so poorly that it’s somewhat typical for them to leave their keys in the van and quit on the spot.
wolverine876 5y ago
The US Post Office delivered the mail on time for generations until the prior administration got its hands on it.
- tsol 5y ago
  It's so strange how easily people can be convinced "this never worked, it's not worth even trying". Certainly that's by design

bsder 5y ago

These are really good ideas except ... Republicans specifically blocked the Post Office from doing these things with legislation.

syshum 5y ago

We do, and have in the past gave a fuck ton of money to the Post office. The idea that any government agency can solve this problem with the same amount of money defy's all documented history of all government programs

kyletns 5y ago
Some governments actually govern decently well, certainly way better than the US. I assume you haven't actually read much of said documented history.
- syshum 5y ago
  "Well" is subjective, "well run" Governments by their nature have run programs to meet the needs of the "average" person which means there will be many people for which the programs simply do not work. Poorly run government are corrupted so you end up with the programs working for a very small minority, but at best the government program will work for probally 51% of population. Government programs can simply not offer the level of customization, flexibility, and variety that a private market can
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Private markets only cater to those who can afford to pay, which can be a lot worse than only catering to the average.
  - kyletns 5y ago
    Right, but I hope you also acknowledge that the US does not have very many flexible, customizable offerings competing in healthy markets? There is barely a US industry left that isn't completely captured by 2-5 corporations. We may have the illusion of markets and choice, but we don't. We have monopolies and oligopolies extracting monopoly rents because they buy, destroy, or merge with the competition.
    - syshum 5y ago

oliv__ 5y ago

I don't know about you but from my personal experiences in dealing with the USPS, they're not exactly what I'd describe as the most efficient (or friendly for that matter) organization. Compare that to same-day or next day delivery from Amazon, it's night and day. I'd rather not dump more tax money into that mess. EDIT: I find it interesting that 90% of the responding comments in this thread are seemingly against the parent comment's ideas yet all are being heavily downvoted now with practically no answers to justify the downvotes

rootusrootus 5y ago
> EDIT: I find it interesting that 90% of the responding comments in this thread are seemingly against the parent comment's ideas yet all are being heavily downvoted now with practically no answers to justify the downvotes I think that's because many of the comments are posting regularly debunked misinformation. Personally, I like the USPS more than Amazon. Because while Amazon frequently gives me great service, they can terminate that relationship at any time and then I'm completely stuck. Because the USPS is quasi-governmental, they can't just decide I'm no longer allowed to be a customer.
- kortilla 5y ago
  > I think that's because many of the comments are posting regularly debunked misinformation. Such as? Most of these faded out comments are talking about how the USPS is a government org so it has no incentives to efficiently fix things regardless of money. How do you debunk that? It’s true of the incentives of every government agency.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    Why does the CEO of a private company have incentive to fix things? Presumably because they’ll be fired if they don’t. How is that any different for the head of a governmental organisation?
    - twblalock 5y ago

ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago

Dude the post office would squander that money. I have no idea why people think these public entities can execute like Amazon does. Its the same with SpaceX and NASA, very clear at this point that NASA was a huge waste of money and completely incompetent.

ceejayoz 5y ago
Why doesn’t NASA get any credit for creating and funding the Commercial Cargo and Commercial Crew programs? SpaceX looks like a very savvy, competent investment made by NASA to me.
- ldjkfkdsjnv 5y ago
  Because if a private company had worked on that same thing, the results would have been 10x.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago
    Yeah, sure. Go look up what those programs involve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2005%E2%80%932009:_Falcon_1_and_first_orbital_launches https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX#2005%E2%80%932009:_Falc... > The first two Falcon 1 launches were purchased by the United States Department of Defense under a program that evaluates new US launch vehicles suitable for use by DARPA. The first three launches of the rocket, between 2006 and 2008, all resulted in failures. These failures almost ended the company as Musk had planned and financing to cover the costs of three launches; Tesla, SolarCity, and Musk personally were all nearly bankrupt at the same time as well; Musk was reportedly "waking from nightmares, screaming and in physical pain" because of the stress. > However, things started to turn around when the first successful launch was achieved shortly after with the fourth attempt on 28 September 2008. Musk split his remaining $30 million between SpaceX and Tesla, and NASA awarded the first Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract to SpaceX in December, thus financially saving the company. Based on these factors and the further business operations they enabled, the Falcon 1 was soon after retired following its second successful, and fifth total, launch in July 2009; this allowed SpaceX to focus company resources on the development of a larger orbital rocket, the Falcon 9. Gwynne Shotwell was also promoted to company president at this time, for her role in successfully negotiating the CRS contract with NASA.

dkjaudyeqooe 5y ago

kyletns 5y ago
Takes political courage and public pressure. There is a little bit of that being exhibited by the current administration, but it's also pretty clear that another potential administration would have had a lot more potential to fix these problems.
- kortilla 5y ago
  What? The current admin spearheaded some 3-6T in spending bills presumably for “infrastructure”. It seems like all of the support is there. The problem is that nobody gets political credit for improving existing systems. That money will instead be pissed away on other political gifts and novelties.
  - KittenInABox 5y ago
    What do you mean "infrastructure" in quotes? The infrastructure bill is almost entirely infrastructure like roads, bridges, waterways, electricity, and broadband internet. (It's also only 1T. Not 3-6.)
  - kyletns 5y ago
    Thanks KittenInABox. Politicians absolutely do get credit when they improve actual systems and improve people's lives. People like it, and will vote those politicians back into office. But it has to be actual, felt, day-by-day changes in their lives (such as fixed roads, the USPS offering free check cashing, or even a friggin relief check in the mail with the president's signature on it). The current infrastructure bill(s) promise that real support, but they didn't fund it enough imo and it's far from clear that they'll be able to use the money they did get to make meaningful changes in people's daily lives.

ozzythecat 5y ago

Unless the Post office has some strong incentive to compete, such as a private company, there’s no reason to believe the Post office would be even half as effective as Amazon. Amazons incentive, whether you agree with it or not, is to grow their company and show value to stakeholders. It’s quantitative numbers. They can certainly lie, but at the end of the day the market will punish them. The USPS is driven by what incentives? Politics? Future pension obligations? In reality, government ends up being a bloated mess, waste of tax payer dollar. Don’t believe me? How many campaigns have we seen just in our own lifetimes of candidates promising “change”, “making America great”, fixing healthcare, infrastructure, reforming education. One of the two parties does win every election. Fundamentally, what has changed? Regulating private companies might be the answer. But government has proven itself to NOT be the answer.

pbhjpbhj 5y ago
>there’s no reason to believe the Post office would be even half as effective as Amazon.// I never understand this argument, take Amazon now. Pay everyone the same to do the same job, but don't pay dividends, reinvest profits (or pay them as if taxes). How does it suddenly become everyone is incompetent and can't do their job? Why is it capitalists think people can only work if there's a rich person creaming off a profit? Explain, please.
- stale2002 5y ago
  > but don't pay dividends, reinvest profits (or pay them as if taxes) This is literally what Amazon is already doing, right? They don't pay dividends, and are just re-investing all the profits already, with no profits being skimmed off at all.
- whiddershins 5y ago
  Because logistics is mind boggling difficult. I would say the burden of proof is on anyone who thinks they could fund or create an org that can match Amazon’s.
- kevinventullo 5y ago
  Pay everyone the same to do the same job… The federal pay ceiling in 2021 is $172,500 per year. That’s about what a SWE new grad at Amazon makes in their first year out of college.

newhotelowner 5y ago

Amazon uses USPS for small and rural cities. Only USPS delivers my Amazon packages at my business. Amazon vans delivers at my home. My business & my home is 20 miles apart.

structural 5y ago
Amazon uses USPS for large cities as well (where package theft is a very big issue) - most homes have a secondary lock with access to the foyer, and postal carriers have the key. This functions just like blocks of lockable mailboxes that are found in condo/apartment complexes, but for packages. Needless to say, the overnight/next day delivery options that you'll see for suburban neighborhoods are nonexistent in many other places.

rubyist5eva 5y ago

Because if there’s one thing that makes the government run well is more spending!

rootusrootus 5y ago
That is quite possibly true. The primary goal of government is not efficiency. We need to quit making that some kind of top priority. The first thing government should be is effective. This is fundamentally why mixing for-profit businesses into government functions always ends up a clusterfck.
- kortilla 5y ago
  > We need to quit making that some kind of top priority. Then how do we pay for it? You’re either making the customers pay the true cost or you’re just stealing it from the entire tax base. If you do the latter then it’s unfair to any business competing in the same category and they will all eventually go out of business because they have to be sustainable. So we end up with less efficiency and absolutely no other options.
- rubyist5eva 5y ago
  Spending more creates more bureaucracy and makes government less effective, which was the point of my sarcastic quip.

bloqs 5y ago

One of the few certainties in life, along with death and taxes, is that a Government body/or institution (any government) will be less efficient, the more money it has.

kyletns 5y ago

Great write up on the USPS banking pilot: https://prospect.org/economy/postal-banking-test-in-the-bronx-yields-no-customers/ https://prospect.org/economy/postal-banking-test-in-the-bron... Not a fun outcome but the fight isn't over, yet.

adolph 5y ago

> instead of this we gave a fuck ton of money to the post office Or the post office could find a sustainable and growth economic model . . . at which point it might be indistinguishable from Amazon/Walmart/Safeway/etc.

cronix 5y ago

Amazon doesn't send me shit I don't order and don't want. More than 95% of my mail is junk mail and there's nothing I can do about it. Circulating what the vast majority of people would consider as junk is the only thing really keeping the USPS in operation. Well that and they don't have to turn a profit and also have the protection of law to keep them going.

pixl97 5y ago
>Amazon doesn't send me shit I don't order and don't want Give it 10 years when Amazon is looking for new ways to increase profitability and shit's shipped to your door that you have to schedule a ship back or you'll end up being charged for it.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
  They already do it by hiding the "add to cart" button in favor of periodic shipments for certain consumables.
alpha_squared 5y ago
USPS would be, and historically has been, profitable if it weren't for the politicians actively trying to drag it down with arbitrary, arcane rules to protect their donors.
- gruez 5y ago
  > arbitrary, arcane rules to protect their donors. like what? The ones I heard of were prefunding the pension plans, but I’m not sure how that benefits any of “their donors”
  - pzduniak 5y ago
    USPS being weak (AFAIK primarily because of this law) benefits their competition, who are lobbying against "fixing" it.
  - ceejayoz 5y ago

throwaway894345 5y ago

I'd much rather we disincentivized intercontinental transport to incentivize domestic production and reduce carbon emissions due to transit. I don't necessarily mind that Amazon is successful so long as they aren't simply the best at deriving profits from Chinese slave labor, IP theft, and pollution. I don't think the solution is to make the Post Office better at those things.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
> reduce carbon emissions due to transit. Bulk and container ships are extremely efficient. Most of the carbon emissions are from the last few miles.
- derefr 5y ago
  That's like saying that spaceships are extremely efficient, because "all they have to do is accelerate at the beginning and decelerate at the end." It's not the trip that gets you; it's the delta-V (or in this case, delta-p). Also, cargo shipping voluntarily uses fuel ("bunker fuel" — the dregs of the petroleum distillation process) that's absolutely awful for the environment per watt generated compared to any other fuel (including any other petroleum distillate.) They do this because it's the cheapest [liquid] fuel to buy per watt generated, and because they "can" — cargo-ship engines are designed to deal with the low quality of bunker fuel, and ships at sea under most of the common charters [e.g. Bermuda] aren't subject to any ecological regulations restricting them from burning it. Bunker fuel shouldn't be marketable for sale as a fuel at all. We (= OPEC, in this case) could still sell it to chemical companies, but the rest, we should just be sticking back in the ground. This would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by such an extent it's not even funny. This would naturally make shipping more expensive, since their next-cheapest fuel would be slightly more expensive. (Probably not for long, though; some capital investment into ship engine design, using modern engine technologies like Cylinder Deactivation, could probably claw most of this cheapness back.)
  - tomarr 5y ago
    >Bunker fuel shouldn't be marketable for sale as a fuel at all. We (= OPEC, in this case) could still sell it to chemical companies, but the rest, we should just be sticking back in the ground. This would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by such an extent it's not even funny. Bunker fuel is responsible for ~3% of CO2e emissions? OK it may have a greater impact on air quality, but in terms of carbon it is not exactly a stand-out item.

kwhitefoot 5y ago

Post offices in Europe did banking for many years. Most of them have been broken up now though. I think there should be an even more general effort made to remove the competitive advantage that comes from simply being big. Small enterprises suffer from the lack of economy of scale. As a private individual or sole trader it is more expensive for me to send a parcel than it is for a large company, this gives the incumbent an advantage.

kortilla 5y ago
> I think there should be an even more general effort made to remove the competitive advantage that comes from simply being big. That’s ridiculous because you completely disincentivize automation and efficiency with those types of rules. There is no reason to ensure that two guys spending 5 years to hand build one car need to be subsidized to continue that way.
- kwhitefoot 5y ago
  > There is no reason to ensure that two guys spending 5 years to hand build one car need to be subsidized to continue that way. Of course not. But it might be wise to subsidize them so that they can get started and disrupt the existing players that have become lazy and inefficient.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    That’s exactly what venture capital is for.
Kalium 5y ago
The USPS is also an example of a postal system that formerly provided banking services.

justinator 5y ago

The USPS is getting into banking: https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/10/postal-service-launches-banking-pilot-hopes-expand-early-2022/185824/ https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/10/postal-service-la...

whiddershins 5y ago

Why do you favor paying via taxes over paying via purchases for the same service?

systemvoltage 5y ago

I completely disagree. Funding a government mandated monopoly is a terrible idea. I would vote so hard against Post Office handling banking. It is incalculable that this kind of stuff gets upvoted by the intellectual diaspora of HN.

kwhitefoot 5y ago
This is obviously not universally true. Do you really want to have privately owned roads? Privately owned courts?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  Let's ban all bakeries, should bread be federalized?
  - kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
    No because then everyone would just…loaf.
CrazyCatDog 5y ago
two words: visit Switzerland Also, absolutely agree with anyone suggesting that we eliminate “bulk rate”—unsolicited mail should cost as much as first class—both to avoid real world spam, and to save trees. I pay extra for my carrier to block spam calls—I world gladly pay the post office to do the same—like PaperKarma.com but last mile…
- systemvoltage 5y ago
  If you expect USPS to turn into Swiss-like government agency, sure. But it is not. And it can never be. The culture inside government agencies in USA is rotten.
5y ago

kortilla 5y ago

Because the post office doesn’t care about doing it efficiently or with a profit. Government employees don’t (and can’t legally) get bonuses for doing well or beating expectations. The entire post office org gets no bonus (or punishment for that matter) by impacting the cost to revenue ratio. Both of these are the reasons it never works to throw a pile of money at a government org and expect something sustainable monetarily and good to come out of it.

kwertyoowiyop 5y ago
The post office should be run efficiently. But I don’t require it to make a profit. It is a service, for our collective benefit. Just like the Army. I don’t expect the Army to make a profit.
- kortilla 5y ago
  As long as it’s not operating at a loss or using taxpayer money, then that’s fine. Otherwise it’s using taxpayer money to destroy competing businesses. We don’t really care about businesses operating private militaries so the army isn’t a good comparison.
morpheos137 5y ago
These comments threads are fascinating for their display of confidently proclaimed ignorance. Postal supervisors, including local supervisors at your local office can and do get performance bonuses. Mailmen and clerks can not due to their union contracts.
- 1123581321 5y ago
  What goes wrong at those branches, then? Are the supervisors prevented from making drastic changes?
  - morpheos137 5y ago
    Yeah basically by the union and dysfunction at higher levels like sorting plants. If supervisors could hire and fire mail carriers for performance and pay them market rate wages then the service would be drastically different. How it is now supervisors have very little control over local branches. They can not control who to hire, in my district interviews for hourly workers were not even a thing, they can not control what to pay staff or what staffing level they need. They can not control the volume of mail they receive. While FedEx or UPS can refuse work if they lack capacity USPS has to accept the over flow. Almost all new hire mailmen are hired "part time" with no set schedule for a low nationally uniform annual wage. The entry level wage for a mailman is the same in both small towns and big cities. The union contract sets a certain percentage quota for "part time" workforce so under-staffing is the norm. The senior mailman gets a solid middle class wage, while the entry level barely makes enough to live on in some cases or in others gets absurd mandatory overtime.

maxerickson 5y ago

The replies to this that slag the post office would make more sense if Amazon didn't rely on the post office for last mile in so many places.

mdgrech23 5y ago

The government would find a way to fuck it up - most likely through forced diversity hiring. Look at truly innovative companies - every year they can can 10% or so of the lower performers - if you're not doing your job your fired - doing that in a gov ran business? good luck. everyone would claim wrongful termination so it becomes cheaper to keep the lower performers which leads to our current situation w/ the post office.

KittenInABox 5y ago
> Look at truly innovative companies - every year they can can 10% or so of the lower performers Name the truly innovative companies that have this as a policy right now.
jbm 5y ago
Your 10% example was used by Jack Welsh GE and Enron right? Do you consider them innovative / forward looking?
- spiderice 5y ago
  So because Enron is bad, everything they did is bad? I’m not arguing in favor of firing the bottom 10% each year, but your logic here is ridiculous.
  - jbm 5y ago
    It is commonly speculated that the Darwinian "10% off the bottom" layoffs were one of the reasons why Enron had so many failings as a company (fear of getting laid off led to dishonest dealing and creative accounting) and that is supposedly one reason why it fell apart. By arguing that effective, innovative companies get rid of dead weight, anyone making the argument needs to confront that there are obvious cases where this isn't true, and that it creates perverse incentives. As for the topic in general, I'm of a mixed opinion about similar government services. The mail service in Canada is overpriced and feels poorly run (like most everything that is Federally run in Canada), but Japan Post was excellent the whole time I lived in Tokyo. Finding what works and reproducing them makes a lot of sense to me.

derefr 5y ago

Counterargument: as someone who doesn't live in the US, I personally benefit from the international logistics infrastructure built by private US companies fed mostly by demand from US private citizens. But I don't benefit at all from well-funded US public domestic logistics services. International logistics can't really be solved at the national level, because the interests involved aren't national/unilateral — they're international/multilateral. (You could maybe make an argument for treatied multilateral investment into public logistics infrastructure tied to said treaties, maybe led by the Universal Postal Union — something similar to the Paris Agreement, but with global-economic goals rather than global-ecological ones. But that's a very different thing from just saying that one country's citizens should demand their own government nationalize a particular service.)

GhettoComputers 5y ago
US citizens don’t benefit from forced spam, or bad service from from USPS either. They could go paperless for most official documents but they need to give these spammers a reason to stay afloat: “official documents”.
- AngryData 5y ago
  Many parts of the US still do not have reliable internet or anything other than degraded phone lines that barely service 56k with cell service that gives 1 bar part of the time, which is a huge barrier to paperless service. Also they still need a way to send government documents, jury and court summons, ect. My own internet is wireless microwave transceiver which only works because I live on a hill, the people around me in the bowls and swamps barely have workable cell service even outside their house. And that is all on top of the fact that internet and devices to connect to the internet cost a significant amount of money to maintain, and paying private companies should not be a requirement to live your life on your own property.
  - GhettoComputers 5y ago
    The USPS doesn’t serve all households, you of all people should know that. Degraded phone lines can fax. They’re lucky they don’t get spammed.

mgaunard 5y ago

Vertical integration is what makes the service that Amazon provides so good. Splitting things into different siloed entities just leads to inefficiencies.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

bogota 5y ago

It’s great wishful thinking but I really dont think our government can pull it off at this point. Maybe 30 years ago but not in today’s environment of everyone trying to screw the other side over at all costs. Personally im happy we at least have one company who can get me stuff in a decent amount of time. But i gets it’s fun to throw out f the big company the government should do that. It’s not like it took thousands of well paid people years and years of work to develop that supply chain so im sure it’s as simple as “let the government do it”. It’s the same in every Uber/Lyft comment thread. “It’s just a simple backend app why do they need so many people”. “I could do that in a year with a small team”. Yeah have fun dealing with every single state, city, country’s different regulations and requirements. “It’s JUST an app”. I realize a lot of engineers have this problem. They oversimplify everything except the code they are working on and dismiss it as easy or unnecessary. I did early in my career as well but im surprised how prevent it is here.

akiselev 5y ago
> fuck ton of money > tried to solve this problem for everyone It doesn't sound like the GP was oversimplifying the problem, quite the opposite - wanting to spend a "fuck ton of money" to try to solve something implies that it is a complex problem that may not be solved with a "fuck ton of money".
adventured 5y ago
> I did early in my career as well but im surprised how prevent it is here. Most of the people here have never run or attempted to create a business. That's true about the general population as well. As you hint at, it comes from lack of life experience at doing a thing. You get a similar naivety from the average consumer that fantasizes about starting a restaurant because they have strong opinions about food; they've eaten at many restaurants, they've made food at home thousands of times, how hard could it be.
roughly 5y ago
> I really dont think our government can pull it off at this point That's not, to be clear, for reasons of technical capacity. The vaccine drive that started in ~February or so of this year was pretty good evidence that the government is still capable of doing big things.

JackFr 5y ago

> What would be awesome is if instead of this we gave a fuck ton of money to the post office and tried to solve this problem for everyone and also eroded amazon's competitive advantage. Amazon solved a problem and reaped a reward. Your response to that is to take everyone’s money, and give it to someone else in the hopes that they can solve the problem. Sure, I suppose, no reason for it not to work. On the other hand “why don’t we just enable remote commerce like this for everyone as a societal good” is beyond simplistic and naive. Amazon is very good at what they do and what they do is not easy.

Kalium 5y ago

> P.S. Let the post office do banking too so we can take some wall street's pie as well. They did that for a while. Wall Street ate the Post Office's pie, rather than the other way around. Which is why the US postal system's banking service shut down. Which is not to say postal banking is a bad idea, but that perhaps we should be careful with our expectations.