[PLUG-TALK] OT: [PLUG] Spam law update

Russ Johnson russj at dimstar.net
Mon Oct 21 20:08:10 UTC 2002


In the interest of topicness, any future responses to this thread will 
be on plug-talk. This message is sent to both lists.

Dylan Reinhardt wrote:

>
>> Less volume makes the system less efficient, and, in turn, cost more.
>
>
> Perhaps.  Or the inefficiency might come from the other business 
> ventures they're plodding in to.  USPS, a *federal agency*, is one of 
> the largest advertisers in the US.  Why is it necessary to advertise a 
> service that you hold a legally granted monopoly for?  Because they 
> are actively branching out into other domains, and that is simply not 
> what they are good at, nor what they have been created to do.

It's necessary in this day and age because they have to build up their 
image in the general publics eye.

Right, wrong or indifferent, if the USPS doesn't toot it's own horn, 
then it will suffer from the negative campaigns put on by the profit 
motivated competitors. And don't get me wrong, they ARE competitors.

> Yes, the USPS is funded through our postage.  Bulk rates are 
> significantly cheaper than other kinds of delivery.  There may be 
> *some* efficiency to bulk mail, in that it sorts faster or is 
> pre-sorted.  But the real expense, delivery, presents few economies of 
> scale.  Every time we pay postage, we're paying not only for the 
> delivery of *our* mail but for the delivery of *junk* mail. 

No we're not. We're paying for delivery of our first class letter to 
it's destination. At about 40 cents, it's a hell of a lot cheaper than 
any other country in the world, and we have better service.

The reason bulk is cheaper is exactly that. It's bulk, it's presorted. 
That deserves a break in price. Yes, the junk mail senders abuse the 
system, just like spammers abuse the email system. Personally, I don't 
think junk mail should qualify as bulk mail, but that adds another layer 
to the system.

>> The only monopoly the USPS "enjoys" is sending first class mail. UPS, 
>> FedEx, Airborne, all of them, are able to move anything else. Even 
>> then, you can send correspondence through FedEx, they even call it a 
>> letter.
>
>
> That little, insignificant monopoly is a $60+ billion business.

And it would cost another entity much more to do a comparable job.

>> You want FedEx et al to pick up at your doorstep daily?
>
>
> Why not?  Seems like they're here daily anyway.   :-)

They visit the business I work at daily. I doubt they visit my 
neighborhood daily. Not to mention the fact that small towns would be 
lucky to get service once a month. Part of the economy of scale is that 
every town has a post office. If it's privatized, then where to towns 
like Banks end up?

> More to the point, who says that a competitor would try to do exactly 
> the same thing?  The value of competitors is that they will try 
> *different* things.   Seems to me that one of the big cost factors in 
> the USPS model is that they are burdened with the expectation of daily 
> home visits to every address in the country.  Talk about 
> inefficiency!  Eliminate the bulk mail and the daily at-home pick-up 
> and you've got a far cheaper model to work with.

First, if you don't have any inbound mail, they aren't required to pick 
up outgoing. So that's a half arguement. If you absolutely have to have 
it go out, you have to put it in an outbound box. (Definition of 
outbound box includes mailboxes with flags to indicate outbound mail.) 
Even back in the 70's and 80's, I remember plenty of days where the 
mailman would just drive by 3 or 4 houses because he didn't have any 
mail to deliver. Many times, we DID have outbound mail on those days.

> Would it really be such a bad thing if first class delivery happened 
> only three times a week or if you had to put your mail in the box at 
> the corner if you needed same-day pickup?  There's *lots* of room for 
> innovation, but the USPS won't be able to make it fly... only a 
> private competitor will.

And we can watch yet another great American institution go to hell. We 
did it to the telephone system, so why not the postal system too.

> The problem here is not that all government agencies or monopolies are 
> evil or inefficient.  It's that when you ask customers to declare 
> their requirements up front, they usually over-specify... when you 
> offer a range of services at varying prices, *then* they show what 
> they'll really pay for.

The problem I have with this theory is that the USPS is, by and large, a 
very efficient organization. The move billions of peices of mail and 
lose a very small percentage of it. For about 40 cents, you can sent a 
letter from anywhere in the country to anywhere else in the country, and 
have it arrive in about 3 days.

I do not believe the money making entities could do that.

> We constantly tell the USPS that daily home visits are at the very 
> heart of our most basic expectations.  We endow that expectation with 
> the force of a legal mandate. But I suspect that if daily visits were 
> put side-by-side with a service offered a different model, we would 
> see what people are actually willing to pay for pretty quickly.

Only delivery is certain. Many families and businesses depend on daily 
delivery.

Russ






More information about the PLUG-talk mailing list