E-COM: The $40M USPS project to send email on paper

Literally paying the government to read your mail :)

It was 10CHF/month in Switzerland, I activated it during longer vacations only.

>A host of niche but u

Sorry, it was lost in the 100 pounds of spam they deliver to my house every year. If they even do what you claim (if), they undermine that with their true priority... junk mail.

>They'll never add up to the volume or economic profitability of junk mail,

That profitability comes at the expense of our privacy, irritation, costs to dispose of (in a landfill) the trash, and our ability to be reasonably notified of those same official documents you mentioned above.

You don't even know why you want the US mail to continue, but you're scared that if it stopped bad things would happen. They have virtually no value whatsoever, and whatever infinitesimal value remains is sabotaged by their obnoxious spamming enterprise.

>When Evan and Will got called in to meet with the postmaster general, they were joined by the USPS’ general counsel and chief of digital strategy. But instead, Evan recounts that Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe “looked at us” and said “we have a misunderstanding. ‘You disrupt my service and we will never work with you.'” Further, “You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren’t our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.'”

> Do you really not understand the value to a democratic government of having a direct means of sending a message

What does that have to do with the US Postal Service? I understand this problem perfectly, I've thought about it for many cumulative hours over the last 10 or 15 years. I follow the news stories.

https://www.rstreet.org/commentary/outbox-vs-usps-how-the-po...

>When Evan and Will got called in to meet with the postmaster general, they were joined by the USPS’ general counsel and chief of digital strategy. But instead, Evan recounts that Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe “looked at us” and said “we have a misunderstanding. ‘You disrupt my service and we will never work with you.'” Further, “You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren’t our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.'”

As a business that ships physical products through USPS because they have been WAY more reliable than UPS or FedEx, I wouldn't mind paying more for the service (well passing it on to customers), so long as it improved the service. But the non-government run parcel services can't compete (in my experience) with the USPS, even with the recent rate hikes that have been going on every few months.

Right now I have about a 1% lost/damaged package rate (averaged over 12 months - it's a tiny amount and it is insured), but come Christmas, that shoots up to around a 10% lost/damaged package rate through USPS - some of those packages do eventually resurface, and I let the customers keep them (I've already filed the insurance claim and shipped a replacement).

UPS was at 5% on average - never used them around Christmas - so no data for that - they might be better than USPS and the were close enough in cost just further away from my workshop.

FedEx (only used for 2 weeks) cost double and 30% of my packages were lost or damaged - can't average it out since there isn't enough data, but having to file claims for 1 in 3 packages after already paying 2x USPS rates wasn't going to fly.

More charitably, it's a cost-sharing scheme for last-mile delivery to rural communities and deep suburban sprawl – as, to be fair, is often true for other rural services with significant federal funding like healthcare and higher education.

For the USPS, it would be profitable if it wasn't required to self-fund and pre-fund all retirement benefits for current and future employees 75 years in advance, paying for retirement health care for "workers" who aren't in the workforce, or even born yet.

It was a political ploy to force the USPS into debt in 2006 with the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. No other federal agency or private sector business pre-funds its retirement benefits.

Yes, I’ve also thought postal banking could help drive down the visa/mastercard tax on nearly all small businesses must pay now. The government has run an expensive payment network (the mint) since before 1776, no real reason they should stop now that it’s cheaper to do.

Postal banking existed in the US in some form until 1967. We could (and should) bring it back just for the reasons you stated.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings...

There are places in the US where the bank drives to the town once or twice a week, since there's otherwise no way to get cash or transact.

This sounds like a “postal banking system,” some countries have done it. The US had it at one point.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Postal_Savings...

> The United States Postal Savings System was a postal savings system signed into law by President William Howard Taft and operated by the United States Post Office Department, predecessor of the United States Postal Service, from January 1, 1911, until July 1, 1967.

Bernie Sanders and Liz Warren have suggested bringing it back.

I'd argue that its passport services are a success – at this point, delivering random services at POs would have few downsides.

I'm from WV. I always figured Wal-Mart would pick it up eventually, but I think there may be laws that make that difficult.

Sure, but then when something goes severely wrong, you wind up thinking of things to better fund USPS.

This logic could be applied to literally anything, so your argument is effectively that the government should never fund anything.

If there is a war, cancer/disease research is going to be less important, so the government shouldn't fund cancer/disease research.

If suddenly a famine strikes, war is going to be less important, so the government shouldn't fund the military.

If a sudden deadly disease arises, funding for food security/research is going to be less important, so the government shouldn't be funding any of that as well.

The downstream benefits of a well functioning USPS could be worth running it at a loss. If efforts to make it profitable make the service worse, then it could be a net negative.

You obviously haven't lived in rural america.

And the perverse incentive of this direction of thinking is that when you elect people with this thought pattern they prove the point by sabotaging the service. Then they say "see, government is ineffective ", and either directly pocket the resulting money (corruption) or give it to their rich friends (oligarchy).

Maybe in some places, but in our rural area (Durham, Kansas) 95%+ of Amazon packages are delivered by UPS.