More comments about potential changes in service at the US Postal Service, and my comments that it may not matter because for people under 30, the USPS offers a largely irrelevant service.
MNB user Mark Wright wrote:
I don't have a dog in this fight, but before we bury the USPS and send the red, white and blue trucks off to the junkyard, it might behoove us to think of the 40 million households in the US that don't have internet access and therefore don't pay their bills online or rely on email. While most of us in your online community live in an electronic world where smartphones, laptops, tablets and streaming video are ordinary and some know the site map of Amazon.com better than they know their own neighborhoods, there is a huge community outside our little techno-bubble that still relies on the good old US Mail to move things from here to somewhere else cheaply and mostly reliably.
No question that the USPS has problems - work rules and labor costs, poor planning and competition among them - that need addressing, but most of the country is far, far removed from the guy who dumps his mail into the trash once a month, and whether you agree or not, there is a strong continuing business case for the US Postal Service. If you asked the 40 million, they'd say we need to fix it, not kill it.
That may be true today. But that number is shrinking. And I’ll tell you something else. If the entire country does not have high-speed internet access in a few years, than we’re going to have bigger problems because we’ll be behind the competitive curve to an extent that may not be repairable.
Another MNB user wrote:
You've made the point a couple of times that no one under the age of 30 cares if the post office goes to three day a week delivery. I'm not sure what their opinion or any demographic opinion counts for in this discussion. Since your blog is primarily about business, I would think you would come at the discussion from a business angle. Areas such as how would it affect speed of business (A/P, information to Stores-many retailers still send daily mail packets to their locations, most shelf labels are delivered via mail, etc).
I have to believe that there are faster and more efficient ways to send that information other than the US Mail ... just because it always has been done one way does not mean that it always should be.
And just as a general matter of principle, I never look at anything from a purely business point of view. I’m always trying to think about the shopper ... and the broader, “big picture” implications of cultural trends.
MNB user Mark Wright wrote:
I don't have a dog in this fight, but before we bury the USPS and send the red, white and blue trucks off to the junkyard, it might behoove us to think of the 40 million households in the US that don't have internet access and therefore don't pay their bills online or rely on email. While most of us in your online community live in an electronic world where smartphones, laptops, tablets and streaming video are ordinary and some know the site map of Amazon.com better than they know their own neighborhoods, there is a huge community outside our little techno-bubble that still relies on the good old US Mail to move things from here to somewhere else cheaply and mostly reliably.
No question that the USPS has problems - work rules and labor costs, poor planning and competition among them - that need addressing, but most of the country is far, far removed from the guy who dumps his mail into the trash once a month, and whether you agree or not, there is a strong continuing business case for the US Postal Service. If you asked the 40 million, they'd say we need to fix it, not kill it.
That may be true today. But that number is shrinking. And I’ll tell you something else. If the entire country does not have high-speed internet access in a few years, than we’re going to have bigger problems because we’ll be behind the competitive curve to an extent that may not be repairable.
Another MNB user wrote:
You've made the point a couple of times that no one under the age of 30 cares if the post office goes to three day a week delivery. I'm not sure what their opinion or any demographic opinion counts for in this discussion. Since your blog is primarily about business, I would think you would come at the discussion from a business angle. Areas such as how would it affect speed of business (A/P, information to Stores-many retailers still send daily mail packets to their locations, most shelf labels are delivered via mail, etc).
I have to believe that there are faster and more efficient ways to send that information other than the US Mail ... just because it always has been done one way does not mean that it always should be.
And just as a general matter of principle, I never look at anything from a purely business point of view. I’m always trying to think about the shopper ... and the broader, “big picture” implications of cultural trends.
- KC's View:
