Quote:
Originally Posted by Elfwreck
The post office could be cut down quite a bit more than it is, by encouraging more use of email... but for that to be a useful change, current postal workers need to be something other than "unemployed because their jobs have become obsolete." And the current postal system would have to change quite a bit to allow it to still deliver packages if it's not delivering letters every day.
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Email is already dominant. When was the last time you sent or received an actual first class letter? What the postal service handles are bills, statements, junk mail, and parcels, with the odd greeting card and formal business letter still considered something to be sent on paper. The number of bills and statements is also declining, as businesses increasingly use electronic communication. Junk mail is not decreasing.
Part of the issue the postal service faces is a blurring over time of its original role of the government agency that delivered the mail to add "employer of last resort for people who can't get other jobs". And in doing so, it changed form: it's no longer the US Post Office Department. It's the US Postal Service, a unionized, quasi-private entity. (And arguably managed to combine all the worst aspects of civil service and unions in the process. A late friend was a long-time postal worker, and a union shop steward toward the end, till he grew tired of representing idiots on behalf of a union local whose officers were morons. He found he slept better and had less problems with asthma when no longer subjected to that stress.)
Regardless, you won't be able to simply downsize the postal service and realize savings in reducing headcount, salary, and fringe benefits. Even if you did, you would face the issue of what to do with the displaced workers.
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Dennis