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Brilliant. If I was looking to hire an ideas guy I would have you.

by nicky0 4y ago

londons_explore 4y ago
I suspect part of the downfall of postal mail services worldwide is lack of them having an ideas guy on staff... Postal mail services have a massive advantage when expanding into so many fields of business - (eg. ecommerce, anything that involves having a network of people who travel every street every day). Yet none have capitalized on it.
- elsjaako 4y ago
  Now I think about it, there's a bunch of ideas there that don't involve delivering stuff. If you have 1000 pieces of installed hardware spread around the country in urban areas, you should be able to pay the postal company to take a picture every week so you know nothing's been vandalized.
- Tangurena2 4y ago
  In America, much of the downfall is due to Congress prohibiting innovation. Or fouling things up, such as requiring USPS to fund all retirement expenses 75 years into the future. Which is why - on paper - it looks like the USPS is bleeding money; it has to pre-fund pensions for people who have not been born yet. My theory is that there will be an attempt to privatize the post office (selling it to some campaign contributor for $1) while carefully ignoring the $56B pension fund that Congress required.
  - addicted 4y ago
    The U.S. also has an additional problem where it doesn’t really agree on what USPS is supposed to be. Half the country believes it should be a public service and therefore it should serve everyone even if they’re unprofitable subsidized by government money. The remaining half believes it should be a self sustaining service that can compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx. However, they’re unwilling to accept the necessary destruction of mailing routes this would require (its hard to see how shipping letters to any non urban core would be profitable and/or how shipping prices wouldn’t rise to far above what FedEx/UPS charge today, for all the services, because of the next group). The final, but probably most powerful, group are private logistics companies that absolutely love the fact that they can offload their unprofitable routes and services onto USPS. USPS becoming a self sustaining service would mean that all the end-user costs would rise for FedEx/UPS as well, since they will no longer be able to offload the most expensive parts of their service to USPS anymore.

Brilliant. If I was looking to hire an ideas guy I would have you.

by nicky0 4y ago

Brilliant. If I was looking to hire an ideas guy I would have you.

I suspect part of the downfall of postal mail services worldwide is lack of them having an ideas guy on staff... Postal mail services have a massive advantage when expanding into so many fields of business - (eg. ecommerce, anything that involves having a network of people who travel every street every day). Yet none have capitalized on it.

elsjaako 4y ago
Now I think about it, there's a bunch of ideas there that don't involve delivering stuff. If you have 1000 pieces of installed hardware spread around the country in urban areas, you should be able to pay the postal company to take a picture every week so you know nothing's been vandalized.
Tangurena2 4y ago
In America, much of the downfall is due to Congress prohibiting innovation. Or fouling things up, such as requiring USPS to fund all retirement expenses 75 years into the future. Which is why - on paper - it looks like the USPS is bleeding money; it has to pre-fund pensions for people who have not been born yet. My theory is that there will be an attempt to privatize the post office (selling it to some campaign contributor for $1) while carefully ignoring the $56B pension fund that Congress required.
- addicted 4y ago
  The U.S. also has an additional problem where it doesn’t really agree on what USPS is supposed to be. Half the country believes it should be a public service and therefore it should serve everyone even if they’re unprofitable subsidized by government money. The remaining half believes it should be a self sustaining service that can compete with the likes of UPS and FedEx. However, they’re unwilling to accept the necessary destruction of mailing routes this would require (its hard to see how shipping letters to any non urban core would be profitable and/or how shipping prices wouldn’t rise to far above what FedEx/UPS charge today, for all the services, because of the next group). The final, but probably most powerful, group are private logistics companies that absolutely love the fact that they can offload their unprofitable routes and services onto USPS. USPS becoming a self sustaining service would mean that all the end-user costs would rise for FedEx/UPS as well, since they will no longer be able to offload the most expensive parts of their service to USPS anymore.