[OT] Postal services (was: better Internet)

Tom Buskey tom at buskey.name
Wed Apr 7 12:14:19 EDT 2010


On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 12:00 PM, Benjamin Scott <dragonhawk at gmail.com>wrote:

> On Wed, Apr 7, 2010 at 9:58 AM, Seth Cohn <sethcohn at gnuhampshire.org>
> wrote:
> > USPS is a disaster too.  When you really want a package delivered
> > cheap and fast and accurate, you go FedEx or UPS.
>
>  Fast and accurate, yes.  Cheap?  No.  For that people bitch about
> the rising price of stamps, First Class Mail is still an order of
> magnitude cheaper than everybody else.  You can argue that's because
> the USPS has an economy of scale that the others don't, due to their
> "special position", but that doesn't change the fact that they're
> cheaper.
>
>
The USPS delivers a letter from here to CA for under 50 cents.  You couldn't
hire someone to lick the stamp for that.

  FWIW, I think independent companies should be allowed to deliver to
> US Mail boxes, and nation-wide government subsidies for the USPS
> should be phased out.  I think granting special privilege to the USPS
> made sense in the past, but times have changed.  I think independent
> post is viable with today's technology and infrastructure.  Let the
>

I think the law is setup that your mailbox (or the inside?) is federal
property.  Anything delivered to that mailbox is subject to federal laws and
the US Govt can prosecute mail fraud, stealing your paycheck or someone
blowing up your mailbox, etc.

I'm ok with that.  My newspaper has its own box supplied by my
subscription.  If someone wants to put something in there, there's no law
against it.  If someone steals the paper or blows it up, I only have local
laws.

Tech is changing some of the needs of mailbox.  My paycheck are direct
deposit.  Social Security prefers it too.  Some of my bills are emailed
which doesn't have the federal protections a physical letter does.

-- 
If it's fixed, don't break it
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/private/gnhlug-discuss/attachments/20100407/f730a296/attachment.html 


More information about the gnhlug-discuss mailing list