• Spezi@feddit.org
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      8 hours ago

      If they never expire, they would have been an amazing investment opportunity to stock. Imagine paying fifty cent today and still beeing able to send them to all the remaining 4 countries left worldwide when prices go up to 253.72 Trumpjuniordollars in 2056. Or you can trade them for bread.

        • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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          3 hours ago

          i make the doctor waste his time and watch me put one on my heel every time i have surgery. i’ve got a few jokes to go with (my favorite is that i plan on living forever and no one’s killed me yet. I also like the one about mailing me to my mother in law for one last prank if they fuck up) but like, it’s a good use of… i think this roll was 42 cents a stamp that’s worth a chuckle) but like, we’ve all got our little rituals. And they haven’t killed me yet.

  • Janx@piefed.social
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    13 hours ago

    “Hey, can you place my vote, please? My taxes have already paid for the postage.”

    Current administration:
    “Nah. The wanna-be dictator says no, and our top guy is corrupt as fuck…”

    • Spezi@feddit.org
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      8 hours ago

      My wifes vote was held up in “customs” when she voted from abroad. It never arrived and it was also to late to send a new vote. Why a letter would even go to customs is beyond me.

      • MinnesotaGoddam@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        i’m from the bay area in california. i went to college in utah (please don’t start i know i was an idiot. i still am an idiot (thanks mitch) that’s how i know) and my absentee ballot would reliably arrive the day after the election. i tried having it sent to my parents and having them mail it to me in a nondescript envelope and it arrived on time. HUH I WONDER WHAT WAS GOING ON AT THE POST OFFICE IN UTAH, since that didn’t happen to me when i had my california absentee ballots sent anywhere else.

  • _chris@lemmy.world
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    17 hours ago

    The post office is not supposed to be a business

    Stop treating it like a business

    It’s a government provided service (gasp, a social service!) so citizens can communicate.

    No wonder they want to take it away from us.

    • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
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      8 hours ago

      The USPS needs to take a long, hard look at their Money Order, and pivot toward basic consumer banking. They were the first widespread service for money transfers. They need to return to that core competency. They should issue checking accounts and bank cards (rivaling Visa and Mastercard) for anyone who wants one. They should provide fee-free basic consumer banking services to the general public.

      At this time, their operational model is “advertising platform” that happens to occasionally provide delivery services. Their reason for continued existence is bulk mailing. They aren’t a government service. They are a de facto business. They fund themselves, and they produce a revenue stream for their sole shareholder, the US Government. If they were actually a government service, they would be publicly funded, and junk mail would be broadly prohibited.

      The USPS is currently a garbage delivery service. Neither snow, nor rain, nor uBlock Origin stays these ad peddlers from littering “Or Current Resident” with their stamped trash. They should shift their focus to parcel delivery, and consumer banking.

      • Jtotheb@lemmy.world
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        2 hours ago

        Nobody’s really willing to have this conversation. Much like the TSA, the USPS is a jobs program. The bulk mail justifies the ongoing maintenance expenditures on the mail sorting equipment that will be unnecessary if we stop pushing so many Valpaks and predatory “I want to pay cash for your house” mailers. And a lot of people who process the mail will be out of a job, and a good chunk of people who deliver the mail will be out of a job, and the remaining carriers will have a radically different job as the load is lightened and they would have to travel much further distances on their routes to justify a full day’s wage, but the economics of traveling that far start to raise questions about whether 6 day a week delivery to every address is a reasonable burden for the USPS to shoulder… presumably management would be unaffected.

        This will all be in limbo til the nation is ready to talk about what work and life look like in a world where we’re all pretending to need to work 40 hours a week to live. And with the state of mass media as it is, the citizens don’t really get a say when it comes to what we’re talking about this week. Ironically, the USPS is well positioned to reach its customers and get the ball rolling… but taking a stance on the right to life would be deemed political.

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
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        3 hours ago

        The whole ‘run government like a business’ idea usually entails running it into the ground. It’s just a more diplomatic way to express wanting to remove social services from people.

    • dan@upvote.au
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      12 hours ago

      It’s the same with public transit. Some people think the government shouldn’t invest in it because it won’t be profitable, but… it’s not supposed to be. It’s a public service, just like libraries, firefighters, parks, public schools, road maintenance, etc. That’s literally what taxes are supposed to be for.

      • Mardukas@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        It’s crazy. I mean even if you are against taxes and everything it is a shared pool of resources. What are we supposed to with it if not pay for these things? Pay for the salaries of politicians that do not utilise these resources?

        All the time you hear from these people what the government should not be spending tax payer money on but you rarely hear anything about what the money should be spent on.

        • CH3DD4R_G0B-L1N@sh.itjust.works
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          6 hours ago

          you rarely hear anything about what the money *should* be spent on.

          You must not be listening cuz plenty of people talk about spending it on bombing more foreign children for the good of the military industrial complex.

      • FishFace@piefed.social
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        7 hours ago

        It’s because public transport isn’t always profitable that it needs subsidy, because the indirect effects of a mobile population are extremely beneficial.

        • Pat_Riot@lemmy.today
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          3 hours ago

          Public transport should not be profitable. It should be public . Paying for a public service with money from taxes is not subsidy, it’s a provided public service.

    • /home/pineapplelover@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      5 hours ago

      My dad (a conservative) works in usps and thinks that there’s no way they’ll go after them.

      He gets fed up saying how DMV workers are so slow and disrespectful and them glazes up his work in the usps saying that their agency is the one that gets overworked the most.

      • explodicle@sh.itjust.works
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        14 hours ago

        There’s a potential future where we could get rid of the DMV. Like we could simply require insurance through AAA or whatever. If you can’t get insured by any branch, then you shouldn’t drive.

        Cops should have to get malpractice insurance too. Insurance is a good solution to a lot of stuff.

        • turtlesareneat@piefed.ca
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          13 hours ago

          AAA is a nonprofit, if they privatize the DMV it’ll damn well be a corporation with a CEO that can make kickbacks to all the right people and keep the poors below him at bay.

    • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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      10 hours ago

      I bet many will downvote me. They don’t know… No, they actually don’t care.

      City life is so nice, they don’t care.

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        10 hours ago

        “How could people vote for Trump?!”

        This is how.

        I’ve never done it… But I get it now. You people don’t fucking care. USPS fucks us over, and they tell everyone they always deliver. They don’t.

        THEY FUCKING DON’T.

        • boonhet@sopuli.xyz
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          9 hours ago

          It was Trump’s postmaster general that enacted the recent cuts to USPS in 2020. Bush did plenty too.

          • Lucidlethargy@sh.itjust.works
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            9 hours ago

            Ah, go ahead. Bury us. Then wonder why the world is lost.

            Your people in the trenches are fucking suffering and you don’t give a fuck. We fight against this shit. We say “fuck Trump” while agreeing that the usps is fucking us. Why? Because THEY FUCK US. We’re real here, and your guys don’t care. You don’t even ask.

            We lose. And you lose. And everyone loses.

            Fucking join the democrats you fucking worthless pieces of fucking dog EXCRAMENT.

            Yeah, I’m using BIG words so you know I’m not a fucking republican.

            • BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world
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              5 hours ago

              Firstly, please take your meds, your schizoposting is getting out of hand here.

              Second, saying “Fucking join the democrats you fucking worthless pieces of fucking dog EXCRAMENT.” is a fantastic way to recruit to the party, it’ll definitely work.

              Third, USPS delivers to nearly every zip code, there may be a few towns now that have lost a PO due to lease issues but almost every mailbox in the country is covered. It’s a much better coverage area than any other courier. Does UPS go down a 30 mile road to deliver to 1 house? No, they give it to us to deliver.

              You’re getting way too worked up dude

  • BonsaiBoo@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    Easy, it’s the difference between a service and a business. War is a business, run by profiteers who charge $1000 to produce and deliver a hammer or a toilet seat, whereas historically the postal service was a pure need met by the government and subsidized by the people, but seen previously as such a critical means of transferring critical information, news, it was necessary to prop up the entire economic system by transferring contracts, documents for business, government, personal dealings, so it had to function and the cost was not a consideration, gouging wasn’t dreams of, and it piggybacked on all the major and newest modes of transportation. Today greed and political malfeasance has intentionally spread the idea that the postal service should be profitable, for some to kill it off or raise prices to enrich their own investments in competition, for some to damage voting by mail, for some to further sow distrust in reliable government services to convince the masses that the government is entirely incompetence and untrustworthy to run such programs to further privatize various industries.

    It was cheap because capitalists relied on it to enrich themselves. Now they can do their business in other ways cheaper, so they can do what they always do - raise prices, enshittify it, strip the parts and sell them off once people lose faith in it, then use their corporate monopolies that provide the same services to gouge the populace that previously paid pennies for the same services.

  • TouchMacaque@lemmy.ca
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    19 hours ago

    The cool thing about the postal service is that they will deliver anything no questions asked.

    Top bun from a McDonald’s hamburger? no problem!

    Asbestos condoms? You got it!

    Several slices of 9 year old moldy balogna? Hell yeah buddy!

  • HappyCatLuvs_U@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    USPS is one of the many things that still makes me feel a large rush of civic pride in these dark times, among museums and libraries, firefighters, and good community spaces(parks, bike trails, hiking areas, etc).

  • architect@thelemmy.club
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    15 hours ago

    There have raised prices 3 times this year ands shipping has nearly doubled in a year. Not usps fault, but they are not the cheapest option anymore. For regular people you are all going to start paying $12 a package soon.

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      14 hours ago

      In order to hire someone. They have to fund that person’s entire pension. The next 75 years of income has to be available because Republicans think this will gut the post office. NO other organization has this requirement in the entire world.

      It’s honestly still astounding you can ship something almost anywhere even if it is “$12”

      • VindictiveJudge@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        They actually repealed that in 2022. I’d guess the problem has to do with the destruction of mail sorting machines during Trump’s first term and a decline in people mailing letters.