and the money given back to the taxpayers.
Seriously, think about it. The rates for stamps keep jumping, and Congress keeps giving over yet more money to them.
They’ve lobbied (though they can’t call it lobbying, since they aren’t allowed to actually do so) to keep the potential “Do Not Mail” lists at bay, because they simply want to keep the status quo - they also do their best to fight any notion that direct mail marketing needs to use targeting to reduce the amount of materials sent out. The USPS uses every possible legal method to maintain their bottom line, the status quo.
While FedEx and UPS have long offered very accurate tracking for international and domestic packages, the USPS has done the bare minimum - or not even that much. A tracking/label number merely tells you that the shipper has a label, and that it may or may not have been shipped. The only other info you’ll get is that it was delivered, but it’s so slow that you’ll see that info appear long after you’ve received and opened the package. That’s pretty much useless. This is a case where the private companies do much, much better than the clueless, inept subsidized USPS.
The United States Postal Service is a waste of taxpayer money - and I’m being forced to pay for it against my will, and it’s useless to most people for day-to-day communications. Think about it: what we used to do for casual letters has moved to email (faster and cheaper), official or signature-required materials can use fax (faster and safer), print magazines are losing out to the Internet because of timliness (even being killed by their own magazine’s online edition), and for packages, FedEx and UPS can be cheaper, faster, and offer better execution of the same services.
There are arguments for protecting its legal monopoly over mail delivery, but these are all weak - and if we can inact the earlier mentioned “Do Not Mail” list (which I would be a huge fan of), then that will kill much of the mail generated in the US regardless. The service’s primary argument in favor of junk mail was that it creates jobs. But the USPS is one of the biggest employers in the US, and they require a large amount of cash from the government to help them fit their budget each year. Wouldn’t it be better to simply cut the junk mail, which cuts the required workforce, and as a result cuts the amount of money required to run the service? Makes sense to me.
If FedEx or UPS could efficiently deliver mail with cheaper rates than the USPS, then they could offer these services to companies like Netflix (which would make my Netflix costs cheaper). Sounds good to me. Actually, if Netflix’s new live-streaming box takes off (and they offer the entire library on it), then shipping the DVDs by mail wouldn’t be necessary.
But the younger generations like mine aren’t using the USPS, so the service is being forced to raise rates, and there’s just no outstanding use for them. It’s time, at the very least, to offer a little room for competition, and to clean up and lean up the service - it really doesn’t need to cost as much as it does. It just reeks of pork and government waste.
Update: Various members of the USPS seem to find my blog post fairly quickly, and like to rebut with childish responses, so I’m forced to delete them (you’d think they’d at least try to mask/spoof their IP first).