US P.s.

Do you think the U.S. Postal Service will be around twenty years from now?

A relevant story just posted today:

http://postandparcel.info/45267/new...rk-cutbacks/

wt1 Very interesting.

This mess was caused by politicians in the first place and now they're trying to fix it with more legislation?

Not in any way recognizable, it won't be. In fact, I doubt that most mail will even exist in 20 years, it will be all electronic or private shipping firms. There won't be anything for the USPS to do.

Here's one solution offered by the inventor of E-Mail:

http://www.vashiva.com/innovation/e...ail-mail.asp

wt1 One thing for sure. If the U.S.P.S. doesn't get on the bus and very,very soon they are going to be left in the dust. Both of these articles you posted are suburb and address the problems of the P.O. They also provide some form of solutions or at least an avenue worthy of consideration. The P.O. like most businesses and most of us in this country have waited almost too late to take action. The world is moving on and especially in the field of technology and we are still stuck in the 1930's. Change is often hard and uncomfortable but it is also inevitable.

It's too late to get on the bus, the bus has already run them over. The USPS needs to go bankrupt, shed it's impossible benefits package, tighten it's belt and ride what little time it has left. Like the telegraph, I just don't see there being a significant future in daily mail delivery.

There are over 40 Million people aged 64 and over who rely on the U.S. mail and that's a lot of voters! Then you have nearly 25% of the more than 174 million people aged 19 to 64 who don't have access to email or computers or just don't use them and that's another 43 Million voters.

Do you really believe that the U.S. Government will ignore the needs of 80+ Million potential voters? Just look at what is being done for the more than 20 Million illegal residents and the laws that have been passed for their benefit!

Yes, I believe the USPS will still be here 20 years from now, still trying to make a profit and still being subsidized by the government.

Art

I wonder if there is a list of these 3600 offices to be closed somewhere? Another area of collecting being created? Last day of operations cancels from modern post offices. Or even better; get a collection of the final cover to leave each post office. Just thinking out loud.

There are many lists of closures, proposed closures, lease terminations, etc., that involve post offices, but the information is very fluid. As soon as they are announced, there are often protests, political intervention, etc., that delays a post office closing or removes it from a post office from the closure list. On the other hand, there are many lease expirations that force a post office to close (at a specific location anyway) until another site is found. I have seen no single list that is 100% updated with current information.

This web site provides a good summary outlining some of the problems in getting accurate information on this subject:

http://www.savethepostoffice.com/

I, too, have toyed about the idea of getting last day of service cancellations from various post offices slated for closing, however, the exact date of the post office closure often changes and with the tense atmosphere surrounding post office closures, I'm not sure how receptive a post office would be in providing such items to the stamp collecting public. There have also been last minute announcements that post offices have closed not allowing enough time to contact the post office for a last day postmark. There have also been last minute reprieves where a post office slated for closure has been removed from the closure list.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again. The USPS should get private insurance for all it's employees and then demand back the 80 years of pre-payment they've been forced to pay the Federal Government. That would put them in the black overnight.

It disgusts me that they have to close post offices and lay people off because the government requires they pay for all federal benefits 80 years in advance, including all potential future hires.

I believe it will be around for a long time in one form or the other.

Somewhere around 1990, I had the opportunity to interview US Postmaster General Anthony Frank, who had come to our town for a postal event. I had been a reporter and editor since my high school days (early 1970s) and was a stamp collector and wrote a stamp column for the daily newspaper, where I worked as a reporter and editor.

I remember asking Frank about electronic mail. I don't remember his exact answer, but it was something to the effect of "we certainly understand e-mail and its use, but we feel that is always likely to be follow-up with the need of documents, etc. to be sent via regular mail."
This probably wasn't a bad way of thinking, it made sense to some degree, but was not particularly forward thinking.

The vashiva article linked above is particularly interesting in that it is probably what the Frank-era Postal Service of 20 years ago should have been thinking and looking at: how can we be a part of this? instead of the well, that's a "totally different thing."
But hindsight is 20-20.

And I wonder if 20 years ago the Postal Service - which had been asked and encouraged (adn delivered) to grow throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to a behemoth to accommodate the country's mail stream - could have quickly pulled in its stakes, made radical changes, adapted and/or created an email system equal or better to what it was doing.

I am truly not sure an entity that large would have been able to pull it off in such a short time .. we're not talking about a single factory changing its wartime production of tanks back to trucks. (It was a giagantic organization; only the US Army had a bigger fleet of vehicles, for example). And could any entity that large be expected to do it all with new and ever-advancing technology (and by the way, do it all without missing a beat on the current daily deliveries ....)

Now, not that many years later I remain in an industry (the daily newspaper) that is under rapid devolvement, but has still tried to remain viable and relevent, and has tried to stay at least equal with the curve in electronic form. In the end, though, which could come at any moment, myself and many many colleagues will be out of jobs.

This is all to say that aside from the politics and crazy future finances of it all, the Postal Service will likely survive in some form as a steady reliable resource of communications, though likely with less service and less reliable service.

I think, if you would care to look at other country's mail service today, mostly modernized, reliable and profitable, albeit sometimes with a bit less service (which doesn't make that much of a difference when you get used to it), you would see that just because you are over-whelming yourselves with the hugeness of the task, it can still be done and done well.

This is not the time to sound the death knell of a service, it is time to pick yourself up by your own boot straps, so to speak, and adapt to the change and thrive.

Perhaps the definition of what it means to have communication delivered to you as a constitutional right needs to change also, to keep up with the ever-changing times? Perhaps it should be a right to have internet access also?

Perhaps also your own definition of yourselves and how you choose to live in this new world needs to change.

Perhaps...but then again...