Rethinking The Postal System

The post office already offers a lot of the services you described:<p>"You could specify the to and return adress, you could pay with a credit card, and you could add whatever options you want."<p>What would the point of obfuscating your address with a 16 digit ID number be? You'd be adding another layer of complexity to an already simple system of names and addresses on a designed letter carrier's route. If you want obscurity you can always register a PO box.<p>Your solution also relies on other businesses easily and quickly adopting your idea, which in reality is never quick and easy unfortunately.<p>Truth be told, the mail system isn't perfect, but USPS has done a lot in the last 3-4 years to innovate their own business. I don't have to wait in line anymore because I can print out postage and tape it to my package and leave that at the post office.<p>Unfortunately a lot of post office customers don't seem to realize the online system exists.

IMO it would be pretty easy to change the USPS to be profitable or sustainable, but politically difficult. Preserving universal service (expensive rural routes and facilities) should be done via direct government subsidy, vs. commercial cross subsidization.<p>Reducing or contractorizing staff (to cut medical and retirement costs) would have been done already by a really private company, but would have political and economic consequences given the size of USPS and government affiliation. It is probably easier to cut facilities and routes, lower delivery frequency, vs change employment terms.<p>The USPS is increasingly b2c and spam delivery service; used a lot less for b2b and c2c, so reducing frequency to even twice a week would be fine.

I think there's already a system where you pre-pay postage online, print a barcoded label, and then drop it off. The label contains routing information.<p>There's no anonymity. Rather, there's redundancy because they print the destination address. If you need to hide you address, you can buy a PO Box at the post office or a private box seller.<p>I wish they'd innovate by having the post office retail windows open on Sundays, rather than these current cutbacks. (The cutbacks are due to overfunding their pensions, and that a 2006 law is forcing that.)

Once again someone is trying to engineer a fix to a political problem.

They've raised the postal rates for first-class mail (that normal humans all use) many, many times. Not a complaint, just an observation.<p>Why not raise the rates for junk-mail?<p>Sure, megacorps will scream and cry that it'll put them out of business, but it won't. They'll continue sending out junk-mail as it draws in far more in customers than they spend on it. If some don't, that much better for the environment, since I'd guess &#62;99% of junk-mail goes straight into the garbage (with a small percentage of that being recycled).<p>Seeing as the vast majority of mail I've received over the decades has been junk-mail, it should be an easy way to increase revenue.

Why do they need giant, expensive buildings in the center of every town, rather than partnering with convenience stores like in Europe?

You can already do most of this. The bigger issue with the post office is even if you do everything right (delivery confirmation , insurance) they still lose your packages and have customer service a bit south of what's depicted in the movie Brazil. The perception of the USPS as incompetent and surly is not unwarranted.

I suspect the poster is neglecting the cost to switch over from the current system of scanning packages to the new one.<p>Either you need to add the ability for reading a 16 digit code to the existing system, or build a second, new, system to handle 'the new codes'. Either solution ain't gonna be cheap.

You can get a bar code that pretty much handles the automation when you order postage online.<p>What the author is missing is that somebody has to physically deliver the package or letter, and that's why you need the destination printed on the package.<p>Doing that with IDs alone is needlessly complex.

That's smart! But if you get the number wrong, there might just be no way to link the package to whoever was sending or tracking it. Well, then at least the problem will be on the end of users other than what we currently have.

It's not fair to think that everyone has an internet connection though, should be posed as an alternate solution, then I think it makes a lot of sense.

USPS is an institution that provides a low margin business to the masses. The majority of mail is not the glamorous packages that can demand shipping rates in the $20-$50 range. It's the letter-sized envelopes and mailers that ensure that a postman stops at every residential &#38; business address on a daily basis. That basic service the federal government guarantees ensures the USPS can't bring itself out of this rut until this changes. One solution would be to spin off the profitable portion to compete head-on and finance the low-margin side.

SilkRoad customers and merchants would <i>love</i> this!

"But the truth is, the USPS needs to innovate."<p>Tell your congressional representative, not USPS. FedEx and UPS have spent large amounts of lobbying money ensuring that USPS does not innovate. Congressional legislation is what prevents USPS from innovating.