Reply #30: Postal Service Concerns [View All]

[Born Free]

In the never ending battle to privatize the postal service, the postmaster general is proposing to change delivery service. Not only closing post offices but also the amount of time expected for delivery. Netflix has to be prepared to see their DVD by mail dry up if people can no longer get dvds twice a week because many people will think it is not worth the wait.


H.R. 1351 , introduced by Rep. Steven Lynch (D-MA), would prevent the financial collapse of the USPS — without closing thousands of post offices, eliminating hundreds of mail processing facilities, delaying mail delivery, laying off 120,000 workers, cutting postal workers’ pay, or ending collective bargaining rights, but first it must be passed and it has a long way to go. The legislation would allow the Postal Service to apply billions of dollars in pension overpayments to the congressional mandate that requires the USPS to pre-fund the healthcare benefits of future retirees. No other government agency or private company bears this burden, which forces the Postal Service to fund a 75-year liability in 10 years — at a cost of more than $5 billion annually. Without the mandate, the USPS would have shown a surplus of $611 million over the past four fiscal years.

The irony of it all is the USPS has the capability to take in dvds, sort and send them out the same day, by using the Netflix database much like the currently do for change of address. This would eliminate the need for Netflix to pick up and sort the dvds and return them to the USPS distribution plant. USPS could do this with any interested company, Blockbuster, library books etc. ( every piece of mail going through the mail gets an id tag which every processing machine thereafter reads, once tagged the computers can track it, including what machines process it - with a few modifications the dvd could get an id tag as it comes in the computer systems would reroute the dvd to the next person while applying a temporary label - it would require a more durable envelope going through the machine so many times.) Of course, no one is interested in creating new business for the USPS, the goal is to make them provide less service which makes it easier to break them up.