While reading this morning, I noticed that President-elect Trump is considering privatizing the Post Office. When I was in college I worked at the Post Office over Christmas breaks, and thus as a former P.O. employee, I think that I should be allowed to have an opinion on this matter. (To be clear,when I worked at the Post Office, it was before zip-codes. Back then before zip-codes, ‘zones’ were in vogue … recall the lyrics of the Elvis hit, ‘Return to Sender’…
“Return to sender, address unknown
No such number, no such zone”)
Be that as it may, I think that the concept of a mailman delivering daily mail to each individual household mailbox, is a stone-aged concept. There is no reason that any individual needs a daily mail delivery. If my mail as well as my neighbor’s mail were delivered three times per week instead of six days a week, no one would be adversely affected … the ads, the requests for charitable donations, the political statements could all easily wait an extra day before being thrown in the trash. The practical consequence of this simple maneuver would be that those delivering the mail six days a week could be cut by 50%.
Similarly, the mailman who delivers the mail to my house, walks up-down innumerable local different streets and sidewalks for about seven hours a day. Again an outmoded concept! If each city block had one or perhaps two central mailboxes to serve twenty or forty houses on each block, then the long hours that my mailman spends walking up and down individual sidewalks could be dramatically decreased … perhaps decreased so much that one individual mailman could easily do one route in the morning and a different route in the afternoon, thus again potentially decreasing the number of necessary daily mailmen by another fifty percent.
Note that each of the above simple ideas would not decrease the amount of the revenue coming into the Post Office, as the same number of letters, ads, requests for contributions, etc. would still stay the same.
By paying attention to my suggestions on this topic, DOGE will be able to focus on more important cost saving measures.
No need to thank me, Elon!
No need to thank me, Vivek!
12/18/24