How the USPS Killed Digital Mail 338
An anonymous reader writes "In 2013, a startup called Outbox drew a lot of attention for its ambitious goal: digitizing everybody's snail mail. It was a nice dream; no more walking down your driveway six days a week to clear out the useless junk it contained. But less than a year later, Outbox shut down. This article explains how the United States Postal Service swiftly crushed their plan to make mail better. The founders were summoned to a meeting with the Postmaster General, who told them. 'We have a misunderstanding. You disrupt my service and we will never work with you. You mentioned making the service better for our customers; but the American citizens aren't our customers—about 400 junk mailers are our customers. Your service hurts our ability to serve those customers.' The USPS's Chief of Digital Strategy said Outbox's business model 'will never work anyway. Digital is a fad.' The USPS wouldn't work with Outbox to forward customers' mail, and that eventually destroyed the business."
Incomplete (Score:5, Funny)
They left out the part where the Postmaster General had SEAL Team Six round up the executive team, waterboard them and remand them to the guantanamo detention center where they could learn the error of their ways.
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There's nothing to joke about here. I used to work next to the local Postal Police offices. Yes, they have their own cops. Yes, they have their own guns, and lots of undercover cars. They also have one of those fully-loaded mobile command centers that show up at major incidents. This vehicle is exactly the same as what any other government agency would have.
It's so loaded with gear and antennas, Google's map photos block out the whole vehicle to prevent anyone from seeing the equipment.
So go on making
Re:Incomplete (Score:5, Insightful)
OH so I guess all of that DIDN'T happen.
Thanks Ralph!
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That's not how memory works. (Score:4, Informative)
The problem you're having is that you don't understand how memory works. Your brain isn't a tape-recorder. You remember some of the ideas expressed, and then use those to reconstruct the conversation after the fact. Everything you remember is paraphrased. It's not creative license, nor is it a lie. You simply don't remember the precise details.
Re:Incomplete (Score:5, Informative)
The USPS is, in fact, a Government agency: [wikipedia.org]
"The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office and U.S. Mail, is an independent agency of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the United States. It is one of the few government agencies explicitly authorized by the United States Constitution. The USPS traces its roots to 1775 during the Second Continental Congress, where Benjamin Franklin was appointed the first postmaster general. The cabinet-level Post Office Department was created in 1792 from Franklin's operation and transformed into its current form in 1971 under the Postal Reorganization Act."
Required by the US Constitution, and a cabinet-level post back in 1792. Spun off as an independent GOVERNMENT agency in 1972.
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It is also one of the few agencies in the US government that is not funded with tax dollars.
Re:Incomplete (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet Congress gets to set their budget and give them unrealistic unfunded mandates that no business or government agency could hope to achieve (ie funding retirement for workers not yet born).
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It only seems fair since the government has already spent the wages of those not yet born.
Re:Incomplete (Score:4, Insightful)
Much closer to the truth is that the government has massively slashed taxes on the mega-wealthy without dropping its spending nearly enough to pay for the overwhelming cut. If taxes on the wealthy simply returned to the levels we had in the 1960s, the deficit would go massively negative, and the debt would be paid off in approximately two decades.
I guess you haven't heard of the Laffer curve [wikipedia.org] then, eh?
Are you really naive enough about macroeconomics to believe that you could simply switch from the current tax brackets up to 90% or whatever taxation of the wealthiest, with everything else in the economy just remaining exactly the same, so we could pay off the debt? Changing economic policy on such a huge scale simply cannot let everything else remain exactly the same.
Basic principle of the Laffer curve: If you tax at 0% interest rate, you'll get no government revenue, obviously. If you take at 100% interest rate, you'll get no tax revenue, because people will have no incentive to work and/or people will move out of the country to avoid taxes. So, at some point between 0% and 100%, there is a point where you get maximum revenue.
You see, when you decrease tax rates below 100%, you leave more money in the private economy. That additional money goes into whatever rich people do with it -- most don't simply bury all of it under their mattress. Often, a lot of it gets invested. Those investments earn more money. And that additional money then gets taxed as more income -- hence additional government revenue. If rich people invest in companies, those companies might hire more employees, and those employees earn wages, which then can be taxed, for more government revenue. So, at least in some cases, leaving more money in the pockets of the rich will ultimately result in more tax revenue, not less.
Now, there are plenty of people who will debate the effects of tax breaks for the rich, and whether that money ends up "trickling down" to help middle class and poor people or not. But we don't need to debate Reaganomics here, because that's not the question. The question is not whether tax breaks help poor people, but whether tax raises will actually bring in more government revenue in the form of taxes.
And the answer is that maximum revenue probably lies somewhere in the middle. It's definitely less than 100%, but more than 0%, obviously. It's probably greater than our current tax liability for wealthy people (though some would disagree with that). But it's probably less than the 90% tax rate or whatever it was in the 1960s.
If you did increase taxes to that rate, you might be able to maintain some sort of revenue for a couple years, but it would drop off as rich people pulled back on investments, sent money into other countries or various tax shelters, etc.
And anyways... you really don't want to just suddenly pay off all the national debt. Trust me. Again, go read a macroeconomics textbook. I know that there's a lot of the mindset out there that we need to run our country like you'd balance your home checkbook, but your home checkbook doesn't issue sovereign currency, it can't force people to use its currency as legal tender, and it can't force people to pay it back in the form of taxes.
The point is: when the government goes into deficit, it increases the base money supply [wikipedia.org] (referred to variously as M0 or MB). Basically, the government "spends" money and that money shows up in the private economy as "currency." Central banks lend out that money. Other banks lend out that money. Rich people invest that money. Credit gets built on credit, which gets built on credit -- but it's all built on top of the base money supply.
If you start a massive debt reduction, you'll suck huge amounts of base money supply out of the economy. The only way for the private econom
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Dude, they already pay 70% or more of all income tax paid in the US, depending on which level of rich you want to look at. The 1%ers everybody gripes about pay over half. 1% of the people pay half the tax. 10% pay around three-quarters of the tax. And yet people still gripe about not paying their fair share.
Exactly what percentage of the income tax receipts in any year should be paid by the top 1%, the top 10%, the top 50%, the bottom 50%?
For all the talk about how the US is not socialized, please explain h
Re: they lied. businesses have always funded retir (Score:5, Interesting)
That is an outright lie. The USPS has NEVER failed to meet retirement fund contributions and has never been in the situation you describe. The reality is Congress required the USPS to PREPAY 75 YEARS worth of retirement over 10 years. They are being forced to put retirement funds in for employees that have NOT even been born and under the assumption that they will grow employment at 3% per annum for those years. This requirement also does NOT allow the USPS to reduce hours, post offices, delivery or increase stamp prices. It's a deliberate attempt to fool idiots like you into thinking the most efficient business in the US is a failure so the people will allow congress to sell the USPS to fedex and ups for major kickbacks to the republicans. Without that utterly stupid retirement prefunding requirement the USPS was in the black almost 100 million dollars last year.
Re:Incomplete (Score:4, Interesting)
Not entirely true. While they don't collect funds collected via taxes, they also don't PAY taxes on many things, like say property taxes for their offices, sorting facilities, etc. So they indirectly are Government funded, at the state and municipality level.
Re:Incomplete (Score:5, Insightful)
While they don't collect funds collected via taxes, they also don't PAY taxes on many things
See, they aren't that different from other big corporations, after all.
Re:Incomplete (Score:5, Insightful)
Not entirely true. While they don't collect funds collected via taxes, they also don't PAY taxes on many things, like say property taxes for their offices, sorting facilities, etc. So they indirectly are Government funded, at the state and municipality level.
So they're funded in the same way religious groups and non-profit organizations are funded by the government.
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It has only been an agency since 1971 and it does occasionally receive some minor subsidies from the US government.
Re:Incomplete (Score:5, Funny)
"Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck.."
Yeah, be careful with that one. Could be a Cormorant. Buddy of mine found out the hard way and had to pay a hefty fine. Just sayin' ...
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The USPS isn't a government department.
Ah, no, and what the hell gave you that idea?
This entire story smelled so much like a classic mafia shakedown I'm still wiping the spaghetti sauce off my screen.
Hell, the only part that was missing was the horse's head.
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It absolutely is part of the US government. Just like amtrak.
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Obligatory (Score:5, Informative)
Do you like golf, Mr. Kramer?
Their business model sucked (Score:5, Insightful)
Frankly, the idea of a company opening my private mail for me, reading it, scanning it in, then making it available to me bugs the crap out of me.
Were these guys trying to get a contract with the NSA? Or did they just want to read my stuff themselves?
Re:Their business model sucked (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Their business model sucked (Score:5, Funny)
I was BEGGING for this service a few years back when I was spending extended periods at sea. I'm sure anybody who goes on extended overseas trips would love it.
Including Mr Snowden.
Re:Their business model sucked (Score:5, Funny)
Some day, he may be able to get the scans via a FOIA request.
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Or from a dumpster around the back of one of the three-letter-agencies.
Re:Their business model sucked (Score:5, Insightful)
Google "Earth Class Mail."
These services existed before Outbox and continue to exist now that it's gone. They just don't assume that the USPS wants to facilitate their businesses for free (or at a loss), so you don't see their CEOs being interviewed for hand-wringing articles about how bad the government is.
I have no doubt that the USPS is run by incompetents, but that doesn't mean they're the only incompetents in this story.
Re:Their business model sucked (Score:5, Informative)
Yeah, the failure of Outbox is barely connected to USPS policy. "their market model needed to scale quickly to become profitable". It didn't. The end. Their big problem was paying for the fleet of vehicles? Wow, no one could ever see that coming [wikipedia.org].
Re:Their business model sucked (Score:4, Insightful)
Frankly, if I could just find a service that would burn my mail instead of delivering it to my door, I'd be happy. I have to empty the bin into my fireplace every few months and it's irritating.
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You can specify senders whose mail is to not be opened. Basically, it's $5 a month to have someone throw your junk mail away for you.
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And the article was sort of stupidly self-consciously hipster. There should be no surprise that the true customer of the Postal Service, and for that matter any delivery service, is the people who PAY them - not people who receive deliveries. "Disruption" is a word in the English languag
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Frankly, the idea of a company opening my private mail for me, reading it, scanning it in, then making it available...
You mean like the USPS?
Well, to be fair the USPS only scans the outside of every single piece of mail they handle (retaining an actual photo of the mail, not just OCR'ed contents). They only scan the inside if somebody asks them to, and only for a particular address. This is far more likely to be due to feasibility than due to some kind of concern for privacy.
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Well, to be fair the USPS only scans the outside of every single piece of mail they handle...
You mean the metadata?
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The USPS has a history of supporting OCR research, as part of its need to quickly and accurately route mail to its intended destination. That's main reason why ZIP codes and their later evolution of ZIP+4 came about.
That said, the National Security Complex has used the this system to institute the Mail Isolation Control and Tracking [wikipedia.org], which is a program to expand what used to be law enforcement surveillance technique (mail covers), as part of mass warrantless surveillance.
Re:Their business model sucked (Score:4, Interesting)
Since they are the delivery mechanism, they need to pay attention to the metadata.
There is a difference betwen your bank, your doctor, or your ISP having information about you and the NSA having this information.
...and since the USPS has performed the latter function (providing images of the exterior of literally every piece of mail to other government agencies, since the 1970's), then it seems quite obvious they have transcended their need for the metadata.
Seriously, this is called the "mail covers program", and you can read the New York Times article about it from last year. Oh, and FYI, each of those square barcodes you see on modern stamps printed by the APC (i.e. that ATM thing in the USPS lobby) has a unique serial code that is tied to your credit card and a picture of you that was taken by the APC. Obviously, that's available to other government agencies too.
Enjoy the land of the free and the home of the brave!
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All of my paper mail, thankyou. I will decide what is private and what is not.
Google wannabes can fuck off.
USPS should offer a subscription service (Score:3)
Think about it -- for $n/year, USPS would filter out your junk mail for you. People would pay for this.
Re:USPS should offer a subscription service (Score:5, Insightful)
Are you willing to pay them more than the combined members of the Direct Marketing Association, who'll crush the USPS like insects if they allow you, the product, to opt out of their service?
Direct Marketers own the USPS, lock, stock and barrel.
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Are you willing to pay them more than the combined members of the Direct Marketing Association, who'll crush the USPS like insects if they allow you, the product, to opt out of their service?
That's a good question. As a start, it would be nice to know the number that the USPS is being paid to deliver junk mail to my house. I'm sure I could beat it for my house alone, I'm sure it comes out to cents per month, but we wouldn't know that without knowing the actual amount.
Re:USPS should offer a subscription service (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2010 the USPS brought in $17,300 [npr.org] million dollars from standard mail, there were 117.5 [wikipedia.org] million households in 2010 which means the USPS was paid roughly $147 per household to deliver bulk mailings.
Re:USPS should offer a subscription service (Score:4, Funny)
That's a good question. As a start, it would be nice to know the number that the USPS is being paid to deliver junk mail to my house. I'm sure I could beat it for my house alone, I'm sure it comes out to cents per month, but we wouldn't know that without knowing the actual amount.
In 2010 the USPS brought in $17,300 [npr.org] million dollars from standard mail, there were 117.5 [wikipedia.org] million households in 2010 which means the USPS was paid roughly $147 per household to deliver bulk mailings
So if the above is correnct and I haven't screwed up the math, that would be about 1225 cents per month?
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Yes, $12.27 per month according to my calculator, or only 41c per day =)
Re:USPS should offer a subscription service (Score:5, Informative)
The postmaster General is right, those 400 junk mailers are paying for the entire system. That letter you send once a year for $.50 doesn't even come close to paying the billions those junk mailers pay that provides the money the USPS needs to have 100K employees and a fleet of vehicles and planes that would dwarf some governments.
Contrary to what some small government people claim, the USPS is the envy of the world. The overhead is near non-existent and the delivery network is world class in efficiency. Private companies can't come near the efficiency of the post office. The reason we have a system so efficient is that the natural monopoly was recognized and non-profit corporation beholden to government was created. It's a good thing that the post office recognizes that the customers paying the bills are the junk mailers. It's also a good thing that the USPS is overseen by government regulators (except of course congresses attempt to kill the USPS by mandating that they contribute 75 years worth of retirement in 10 years). That government regulations guarantees that it's a crime for anyone to open my mail, and that the courts have precedence putting searching the mail as equivalent to breaking into your house and reading your diary. This "service" would be a field day for the NSA because the digital records would not have the same protection that he physical envelope does.
If private run companies like UPS were doing first class mail the delivery charge for a first class letter would be several dollars.
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I send quite a few letters per year, since I don't do automatic bill pay and try to send actual checks to charities instead of a credit card, and I receive a lot more since I want bank statements to be physical instead of electronic delivery.
I know I'm not the only one as I see a lot of neighbors checking their mail and pulling out actual envelopes instead of the weekly pennysaver.
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As soon as you are sending mail by the truckload let me know. I did a one day temp job at a local junk mailer. This local very small junk mailer sent mail several times a day with a 40' semi truck and unloaded directly into the post office in presorted containers with the zipcode on the container. The larger junk mailers send mail via full size semi's with pup's in a near constant stream, literally billions of pounds of paper every year. Even if you are spending $50 a year on stamps you aren't even in the b
Great to have a government outlet... (Score:2)
That government regulations guarantees that it's a crime for anyone to open my mail
And you are so sure the postal workers have never been asked to take an hour break while steam of men in suits come in with steamers while they are gone...
Surrrreeee. That it's a government agency makes that way more likely to happen than a company like FedEx.
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The postmaster General is right, those 400 junk mailers are paying for the entire system. That letter you send once a year for $.50 doesn't even come close to paying the billions those junk mailers pay that provides the money the USPS needs to have 100K employees and a fleet of vehicles and planes that would dwarf some governments.
Yep, this. Look at this way: I can send a letter first class for what, .50cents (with forever stamps I don't remember what they cost now) clear across the country for less than the price of a candy bar. If the junk mailers effectively subsidize that...more power to them. I have a recycle bin to toss their shit into. Like spam and tv commercials there's some appeal to someone (just not to me).
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In 2010 first class mail brought in $34B, standard mail (ie junk mail) brought in $17B, not sure what 2013 numbers looked like but I know they've taken on a LOT of final delivery services for Fedex and UPS so the numbers are likely similar or perhaps even a lower percentage for bulk mail.
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Re:USPS should offer a subscription service (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know what USPS service you have, but in my experience:
1. USPS is rarely less expensive sending packages than FedEx or UPS.
2. USPS has slower delivery times than FedEx or UPS.
3. USPS has a much higher rate of package damage than FedEx or UPS.
4. USPS has a generally less helpful and less polite staff in the offices than FedEx or UPS.
It is inferior in every way. We can talk about delivery of letters to mailboxes, but I'm sure you know that the mailboxes on the side of the road are considered to be property of USPS. It is illegal for anyone other than USPS to deliver a letter, package, or anything else to that mailbox.
This means that if FedEx or UPS wanted to enter that business they would forced to set up secondary post boxes or deliver directly to the house by foot. I don't know how much this enters into the economics, but god dammit, that's my fucking mailbox.
I paid for it. I dug the hold. I set the post. I poured the concrete. It's my mailbox. Their dictatorial annexation of the mailbox that came from me is exceptionally douchey and for that alone USPS should be smacked upside the head.
If you have USPS service so exceptional that you find it to be truly better than all other alternatives, well, great, good for you. It just doesn't seem to mirror the experience that I and everyone else I know has.
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That was true a few years ago, but no longer. They've updated their antiquated parcel rates, and now they're faster and cheaper. Or look at a cheap retailer like Amazon, who uses USPS extensively.
Cheap services from FedEx / UPS (like "Smart Post") are just piggybacking on the USPS, anyhow, and will be delivered by your postal carrier.
Not true anymore. Their "Express Mail" service is usu
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"the USPS is the envy of the world"..
Australia Post made a post-tax profit of AUD$311.9 million (USD$289.6 million) in 2013 (http://auspost.com.au/annualreport2013/financial-report.html) in a country with a population of 20 million people scattered across an area close to the size of the continental US. This despite making more than 90% of income from activities where it competes on the open market (ie without government monopoly) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australia_Post).
By contrast, USPS made a loss
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which ignores what we pay the USPS in taxes.
Which amounts to a grand total of $0. The USPS is entirely self-funded.
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The USPS doesn't pay taxes. That means that we are paying their taxes.
Do postal service employees work for free? No. They pay taxes on the income that USPS pays them. Even if USPS doesn't generate a profit (and therefore doesn't pay an tax on its profit), it's still generating economic activity which is taxed. No different to any other company that is not making a profit.
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Re:USPS should offer a subscription service (Score:5, Informative)
The USPS has not received a dime in Tax dollars while I've been alive and that's a long fucking time. That $5 billion dollar loss you heard about last year and trumpeted by the small government pinheads was in fact a fake loss created by congress that had no material affect on their operations. It was a failure to deposit $5 billion into a retirement fund for USPS employees that haven't been born yet.
Get your facts straight.
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which ignores what we pay the USPS in taxes.
No it doesn't, because that number is nearly $0. Aside from minor subsidies on special costs associated with serving the disabled and overseas voters, it is $0. There is no tax money going towards the majority of USPS operations.
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They don't run mail, they just pay USPS for advertising to you, just like OTA free TV and radio. Do advertisers own TV and radio stations?
Effectively. Unless someone provides private funding, a radio or TV station won't stay on the air long without advertising.
Public TV and NPR weren't "owned" by advertisers originally, but the post-Nixon years have removed almost all government funding, donors rarely suffice, and the net result is that these days even most public-service broadcasts have advertisers.
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And for $n/year, the Mafia will not burn down your business.
Paying for people to not perform a "service" you don't want performed to begin with is called extortion.
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If mail spam in particular is a problem, this [paperkarma.com] is a fairly efficient solution.
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Think about it -- for $n/year, USPS would filter out your junk mail for you. People would pay for this.
True, but the reason there's so much junk mail is that the USPS is "required" (I put it in quotes because they don't exactly need a gun to their head) to deliver it, so the junk mailers are effectively able to force it down people's throats. If people could pay to opt out, the junk mail would be much less lucrative, so the USPS would lose most of it. And then they'd lose the money for opting out, too, since most people wouldn't get enough junk mail to bother anymore.
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Think about it -- for $n/year, USPS would filter out your junk mail for you. People would pay for this.
Wow. That's almost as logical as finding a random assassin and paying them not to kill you.
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You don't have to pay for it. Per 39 CFR 3008 'Prohibition of pandering advertisements' (http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/39/3008), you can tell the USPS that you find mailers from any sender to be offensive and the USPS is required to issue an order that no more mailings be sent to you by that mailer. The form you need is PS1500, available at http://about.usps.com/forms/ps... [usps.com]
Bummer. (Score:2)
When I first heard of Outbox (here?), I quickly submitted my email address to them to be notified when it hit my city.
I unsubscribe from nearly every mailing I can manually, as well as use the Direct Marketing Associations's Mail Preference Service and a 5-year blackout from credit card companies.
You can reach all of these from: https://www.dmachoice.org/ [dmachoice.org]
---
And I still get junk. They're all assholes.
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I have a stamp that says "return to sender" for junk mail. the USPS get's to eat that.
They are not working for me, but the spammers, then screw them.
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Ahem...
http://officeofstrategicinflue... [officeofst...luence.com]
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For me, it's a matter of having to search for my real mail (I still get some) between the loose pages of this week's coupon clipper.
Too many direct marketers sending me REFINANCE NOW! junk mail (because property records are public) that comes in the same envelope as an EOB from my insurance... They might only take a few seconds to figure out, but those seconds add up week after week after week...
Probably just as well (Score:2)
Officially Government Sanctioned Spam is still Spam.
It would have died of its own accord anyway, because the junk mailers would have figured out that it was a waste of effort and money and found ways to configure their junk mail to foil scanning. And citizens don't want people opening their mail to scan it either.
I can't imagine what there wasn't a three letter agency behind this scheme anyway.
The story is remarkably DATE Free. Without the date in Leno clip you can't tell if this was 1985 or 2013.
Benjamin Franklin (Score:2)
Assuming this is accurate... (Score:2)
This is just silly (Score:2)
You don't need it (Score:5, Informative)
You don't need something like this anyway.
1) get your bills electronically, and/or set them up for automatic payments
2) use dmachoice.org and optoutprescreen.com to stop virtually all junk mail (former for 'regular' junk mail, latter for the credit card offers). Yes, they're run by the junk mail companies, but they work, and no, I don't work for them.
Call the Waaaaaaahhhhmbulance.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Rather than continuing to bitch about how your darling child idea didn't work out, maybe you should just come up with something else and move on?
This is getting a bit old...
Very poorly written article (Score:2)
I knew of Derek Khanna, but didn't know that his skill wielding English was so deficient; if that is now his day job, he should most definitely quit. That was the most poorly written article I've seen at a journalistic Web site in many years.
I slowly realized this after buying a house (Score:2)
Before I even moved in, every organization with foreknowledge of the sale apparently sold my information to whoever was paying. My mailbox was PACKED with junk mail in my name before I even moved in! And, it was all targeted (Home Depot, furniture stores, pest control, etc.). To this day, I'd estimate that 60-70% of what I get is junk mail. There's no way these companies can be paying the going rate I pay as a US citizen to mail letters.
Jerry Seinfeld said it best... (Score:3)
Sorry this really seemed like it had to be inserted in here some place...
e-mail, i like. i don't really like the use of the word mail in e-mail. using the same term that we're using for the postal service. i don't see a lot of overlap between these two systems. one of them occurring in digital fiber optic hyperspace. the other a dazed and confused distant branch of the cub scouts. [ laughter and applause ] bumbling around the street in embarrassing shorts and jackets with meaningless patches and victory medals. driving four miles an hour, 20 feet at a time on the wrong side of a mentally handicapped jeep. [ laughter ] i love how the postal system has this financial emotional meltdown every three to five years that their business model from 1630 isn't working anymore. i can't understand how a a 21st century information system based on licking, walking and a random number of pennies is struggling to compete. what is the reason? [ laughter and applause ] so, they always sent the postmaster general -- he always have to make a big speech about what a tough time that they're having. and he comes out and he's freaked out. he's got rings under the eyes, no shave, pulling all-nighters. we can't do it anymore! we've got to go up a penny on the stamps! there's no way ad ! [ laughter ] we're trying to get some breathing room. the cost and the infrastructure. and we're all like -- hey, dude, do whatever you've got to do. we don't give a damn. what is a stamp anyway? we don't even know what it costs. 43, 48, make it a buck. you're going to get there. you have some money left over, buy yourself some pants and a a real car. [ cheers and applause ] it's like, if i could talk to the post office, if i could say if you really want to be helpful to us, just open the letters. read them and e-mail us what it says! thank you very much!
View from the other side (Score:5, Informative)
http://postalnews.com/postalne... [postalnews.com]
If nothing else, TFA doesn't sound like a particularly unbiased source.
Foaming (Score:3)
* The US Postal Service is a lifeline service provided by our government. Without a reliable source of communication, it would be hard to sustain such a large country.
* Yes, the junk-mailers have been the major profit center of the USPS for a few decades.
* Vast and long-established laws and rulings forbidding tampering with mail (e.g., opening it) protect this basic form of communication. Such legal protections do not (yet) exist for digital communications. Your email is like a postcard.
* Tons of other companies provide the same "digital mail" service. I use them when I travel. Emailed pics of all letters, they open and scan any that I request, or just send everything to me in a big envelope every week or so.
The article kind of smelled like an ad.
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USPS is still about 15 years behind in adopting the Internet.
And Thank God they are.
If the USPS hadn't killed off this whackjob scheme, the Snowden revelations would have done it for them, because
the NSA would never be able to resist cataloging every bit of it.
Re:My biggest gripe (Score:4, Informative)
WRONG.
USPS does have such a service. It's called click-n-ship.
https://www.usps.com/business/... [usps.com]
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You can't print stamps using that service. You need to actually purchase stamps, or have an account from somewhere like Stamps.com or Pitney Bowes.
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You can't print stamps using that service. You need to actually purchase stamps, or have an account from somewhere like Stamps.com or Pitney Bowes.
And stamps.com and Pitney Bowes are simply the Post Office outsourcing the collection of postage in a way that eliminates the inconvenience of having to drop by the post office.
Realistically, you can't just arbitrarily print out a stamp on your Epson printer any more than you can draw one on with crayons. The whole point of stamps or meter marks is to affirm that someone, somewhere has paid applicable postage fees. So Stamps.com provides software that certifies that the fee is (or will be) paid, and in exch
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Click-N-Ship is for priority only. Also, it's poorly named... at the very least it should be called click-click-click-create-account-click-click-some-more-etc-etc-etc-then-maybe-one-day-ship.
Click-N-Ship is also for first class parcel, media mail and express mail (among others).
You can create labels for regular first class mail in Microsoft Word.
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But if a 3rd party is doing that digitization, the only way it "could have [been] made ... in photoshop" is if there was a conspiracy between the sender and the mail scanner. You'd have to be pretty paranoid to be concerned about that.
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The only reason you ever want a snail mail, when you need a verify the senders and receivers identity. If you digitize it, it's all lost. You could have made that in photoshop.
Because nobody would ever lie on paper?
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In the real world people are less likely to lie on paper than in a digital form.
But it's still possible for them to lie if they are using paper.
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nonsense, there are legal ways to digitally represent all the documents you mentioned. the world is moving on beyond physical documents
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Faxes are also used quite a bit with legal documents because it's been ruled by the courts that sending a fax (and having it received) counts for meetin
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Re:BOO FUCKING HOO! (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree completely. Were the founders of this startup really that naive? I could have told them this was a stupid idea years ago. The USPS has two main revenue streams: 1) junk mail, and 2) small packages (they're a big fan of Ebay; they're also working with Amazon now to do Sunday deliveries in some places). They also are a fan of Netflix, and work with them to ship movies faster (the USPS scans the returned movies before Netflix gets them, so Netflix can send your next queued DVD before they get the old one back).
What ever gave them the idea that the USPS would be in favor of screwing over one of their main customers (the junk mailers)?
If you don't like junk mail, think about it this way: the junk mailers are keeping the USPS afloat, and basically subsidizing cheap First Class delivery for everyone.
Re:BOO FUCKING HOO! (Score:5, Informative)
No it's not. The problem with USPS is that they have to pre-pay pensions 70 years out. No other Government agency or private company needs to do this, that's purely USPS regulation thanks to Congress. That is their main hurdle, not the unions or employees "getting paid too much" (seriously, do you even know any postal workers?).
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The problem with USPS is that they have to pre-pay pensions 70 years out. No other Government agency or private company needs to do this, that's purely USPS regulation thanks to Congress.
You guys keep saying this but its not accurate.
The law merely required the USPS to calculate their unfunded liability and then go ahead and start funding it. They calculate that unfunded liability based on a 75 year projection (a non-arbitrary duration given by Office of Personnel Management guidelines.) They do not have to fund the retirements of anyone who isnt employed by them yet. If it was based on a 200 year projection their unfunded liability wouldnt change because it continues to be based on the