Take registered mail, for example. Why did they raise the rates to $9.50, an exorbitant rip-off? Well, my guess is that they've lost a lot of that business, over the years, to Fed-Ex and other overnighters, because those company's two-day and three-day services are quite competitive and very safe. But they're not bonded, with federal liability for stealing or losing your mail, so really, how can those services compete with a service that has to deliver to everyone everyday anyway, for mailing important documents?
The answer is: The post office helps Fed-Ex, UPS, and all the other carriers steal the most efficient and lucrative business from the post office!
That leaves the post office holding the (registered mail) bag.
When postal rates are up for review, big business can send hundreds of lawyers to "prove" to the post office toadies that it costs vastly less to mail in bulk, and therefore, bulk mailers should only pay that "fair share." Never mind that the whole institution was built on the backs of the individual's penny-postcards. And the individual has no opportunity to send even one lawyer in, to explain that by law, it's NOT just the raw, calculated efficiency of mailing any specific piece that should determine the postal rate.
You bet junk mail should pay for first class mail. Especially right now, when new robotic eyes and sorters are making it easier and easier to sort what was previously impossible to sort except by hand.
The post office undoubtedly knows that new technology will make it quite irrelevant if the writing is upside down on a square envelope. Computer vision and robotic arms can straighten it out effortlessly and cheaply.
But right now, the equipment they have isn't so good at that (because they didn't insist on better equipment from the equipment manufacturers) and so the rate structures are being set to reflect that, even though it's the post office's problem, and not the consumer's fault. CD-ROMs, for example, will never efficiently pack into a rectangular envelope!
But it's even worse.
The post office is actively trying to get rid of its service as a tool of subversives.
The post office was created as a "tool of subversives," so they could communicate without the fear of "Big Brother" (he wasn't called that, back then) watching them. That's why Big Brother is still not allowed to open your first class mail.
But the Postmaster General considers the ideal situation to be where a bar code on every letter will tell where it came from, who it's going to, what service it's traveling by, when it entered the system, and so on. Total control, supposedly so they'll get immediate feedback about lost or delayed mail.
But that way, they'll also know who your friends are.
Welcome to the biggest rip-off in history. The Post Office operates under fundamental principles set out by the founding fathers. With this latest postal increase, many of those principles are being trampled right before our eyes.
This generation will be the one when they'll say "the Internet destroyed the post office." But it won't really be the Internet's fault at all. It will be Porter's. He should be fired, and the notification should be sent via email so it gets there quickly and cheaply!
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