Postal Service Starting To Use Mobile Point of Sale Tech

An anonymous reader writes "The U.S. Postal Service is conducting a pilot test of mobile point of sale technology in 50 facilities, using a modified iPod device and printers. During the holiday season, the 50 facilities testing mPOS processed more than 102,000 transactions using the technology."

Competition

[roman_mir]

As labour becomes more and more expensive due to all of the resource mis-allocation, inflation, taxes, regulations the capital comes to the rescue and saves the day once again. Competition is pushing USPS to reduce costs and in our times the result is obvious - automation. This may be good news actually, of-course it's a government program, so there has to be a level of inefficiency somewhere there, the procurement process, somewhere is getting a nice piece of the pie, but as long as it works out at the end, it should in principle save money and this is due to the competitive pressure from the free market.

This makes perfect sense to any postal worker

[Ukab the Great]

Because you can't Instagram your rampage with a mere cash register.

Re:Competition

[organgtool]

of-course it's a government program, so there has to be a level of inefficiency somewhere there

Yes, since it's the government, it just has to be inefficient! We need to have FedEx and UPS show USPS how to send letters from Florida to Alaska for 46 cents.

Re:Competition

[tchdab1]

I too am sick of and disappointed in the inaccurate and unsourced assumptions that presume government processes are less efficient that for-profit processes. My unsourced opinion is they're both about equally inefficient, but the for-profit solutions cost more.

Re:Competition

[AmiMoJo]

There is evidence that government run out heavily regulated operations can be more efficient. It depends on your definition of efficient though.

For example national energy production was a lot cheaper before it was privatised. It is now not efficient at making profit but worse if you need electricity, which everyone does. We end up paying for new infrastructure through our bills that is then privately owned and used to extract even more money from us. It's horribly inefficient.

Companies like British Telecom used to build new infrastructure when it was needed. Now they are nationalised they do so only when they can make money, so our broadband is slow and crap. Here in Japan my phone has 150mb up and down, while the absolute best the UK has to offer to your home is 120/10 (with shitty traffic management to make it pointless).

Government run operations are far more efficient for consumers and the country/economy as a whole when any kind of essential service or infrastructure is involved.