I’m so old that I mail out hardcopy Christmas/New Year’s/Kwanzaa cards. Quite a few friends hadn’t received them by New Year’s, which seemed odd because I’d put nearly all into a mailbox before Christmas.
One friend sent me a picture of the card that he received in Berkeley, California on January 4. It was postmarked December 23. That’s nearly two full weeks for the check to be in the mail, admittedly minus two days on which USPS employees don’t work (Christmas and New Year’s).
Maybe because I used an OSIRIS-REx stamp rather than a Kwanzaa stamp?
I’ve seen various progressives on X expressing a combination of rage and fear regarding the possibility that Donald Trump and his hated Republican junta will attempt to privatize the USPS. To figure out how bad this would be, perhaps we should start by considering what would happen if the USPS were simply eliminated. We would then have no mail, right? This is the same logic that is applied when we arrest migrant drug dealers. As soon as we have all of the drug dealer in prison there will be no more drugs sold. There is no chance that new migrants will walk across the border and begin dealing drugs into a lucrative open market (nor that any native-born American will start a career as a drug dealer).
What actually would happen? Delivering junk mail seems to be lucrative. My guess is that some company that already visits most houses in the U.S., e.g., Amazon, FedEx, or UPS, would start up a junk mail delivery service. Maybe there would be a printer in the delivery van so that physical documents didn’t have to be transported. First class mail delivery would get way more expensive and, perhaps, faster. This would lead to a lot of restructuring. No more hardcopy bills for $5 from health care providers. Americans who live in extremely remote settlements would need to pay for the “last leg” of delivery (maybe their settlement would do this on a bulk basis and fund it via property tax).
Of course, Americans will never give up on the USPS just as we won’t give up on the penny. So the above is just a thought experiment. But maybe USPS could be privatized as post offices in some other countries have been. In that case maybe they would adopt some of the above tweaks, e.g., an amazing printer inside the vehicle so that “junk mail” didn’t get “mailed”, a much higher price for the handful of first class letters that anyone still needs to send (I would adapt by switching to all-electronic cards).
Anecdote: About 25 years ago I went to Argentina. My Argentine friend said “Don’t bother to send postcards. They’ll never get to the U.S. It can take two weeks for a first class letter to arrive domestically in Argentina. The post office is a disaster.” I ignored his advice, of course, and had some fun trying to figure out how to buy stamps and use the post office to send cards to my mom. All of the postcards arrived in the U.S. after…. about two weeks.
How about we just start with twice a week delivery?
It’s even worse than you describe. Now it’s been 5 weeks and I haven’t received your card.
Uh, Phil, I still haven’t received a Kwanzaa card from you for 2024.
As an aside, given that the reign of terror is starting to abate, do you think it is safe to discontinue capitalizing the B in black when used as an adjective? I know you were an early adopter but do you think it is now safe to stop? I mean sooner or later the capital B black will sound as dated and vaguely racist as referring to black people as “coloreds” or “negroes.” Both of which were considered liberal and progressive in their day. Might be time to lead from the front?
I will never stop with Black!