The United States Postal Service: "Non oficialis motto!"

October 27, 2021 10:03 PM

That's right... the USPS has no official motto! But it does host an official website full of Postal Facts—Fun facts! Facts and Figures! Postal History! STAMPS STAMPS STAMPS! Sustainability, size and scope, diversity facts, and more!
As an added bonus, here's a twitterbot that posts a picture of a different post office every thirty minutes.
posted by not_on_display (18 comments total)

[VIA]
posted by not_on_display at 10:16 PM on October 27, 2021

The National Postal Museum in D.C. is way fun. somewhat kid-oriented, but all the better for us adults.
posted by diekhans at 10:51 PM on October 27, 2021 [5 favorites]

potential: "inefficacia ad suum apicem"
posted by Nanukthedog at 3:19 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

The inefficiency of the US postal service is legendary - it's long been the no-brainer go-to for those keen to make rhetorical points about the allegedly self-evident inability of governments to run anything - but I would be very interested to learn by what metrics that legend is supported.

In my experience, the publicly owned services most often accused of inefficiency and waste are exactly those that either offer excellent value for money or are being deliberately run down in order to garner support for a push to privatization or both.

Also in my experience, privatized services consistently offer worse and less accessible service at higher prices than they did while still in public hands, once all their economic inputs and outputs are properly and fairly accounted for.

So where would I find a fairly conducted comparison between the USPS and a range of private competitors with similar scope and reach?
posted by flabdablet at 4:53 AM on October 28, 2021 [20 favorites]

flabdablet - this isn't exactly what you've asked for, but I've heard from many sources that the US stacks up very favorably (or at least used to) compared to other governments' mail services. Here is one assessment of that:

Researchers Alberto Chong, Rafael La Porta, Florencio Lopez-de-Silanes, and Andrei Shleifer sent letters to 10 fake addresses in 159 countries. The whole idea was to test government efficiency, by seeing how long it took to return the letters to the senders.

All these countries, the researchers note, subscribe to an international postal convention (the Universal Postal Union, coordinated by the United Nations), which requires them to return letters they cannot deliver.

Not all are that great at it: Only 60 percent of the letters actually came back to the researchers.

Among the countries that returned all 10 letters, the USPS was far and away the fastest to do so.

Here is another:

The USPS was declared number one for efficiency among the Group of Twenty major global economies, according to findings from England's Oxford Strategic Consulting.
...
The U.S. Postal Service scored the highest for efficiency, even as it delivers far more letters per employee -- 268,894 in 2010 -- than other services in the G20. Japan Post, which came in second, delivers 103,149 letters per employee, and Australia Post, which placed third, delivers 166,776.

posted by mosst at 6:08 AM on October 28, 2021 [8 favorites]

[I will note that all letters in the first study were mailed from the US, which seems like some questionable methodology, or at least not an apples-to-apples comparison...]
posted by mosst at 7:07 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Also in my experience, privatized services consistently offer worse and less accessible service at higher prices than they did while still in public hands, once all their economic inputs and outputs are properly and fairly accounted for.

The definition of government waste is when more money goes into the government service provider than the cost of service provided.

The definition of private industry profit is when more money goes into the private industry service provider than the cost of service provided.

Privatizing government functions is the absolute most wasteful possible action.
posted by FatherDagon at 7:23 AM on October 28, 2021 [14 favorites]

Every time I go to mail a package, I get the price from USPS and my knee-jerk reaction is “That seems high,” but then I check UPS and FedEx and the prices are always 20%ish higher, and usually for slower service.

Sometimes using your own box is the only option, but man if you can make your stuff fit a USPS flat rate package, it’s worth it.
posted by xedrik at 7:51 AM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

USPS is so cheap that FedEx and UPS cost more to ship things even after the very generous employee discount. It's almost shocking how they manage to make an operational profit the vast majority of the time. For whatever reason they are seen as inefficient, but in reality USPS is far more efficient than the private carriers could ever hope to be.
posted by wierdo at 8:40 AM on October 28, 2021 [2 favorites]

I have to remind myself of some of these good things about the USPS, when a package for my spouse has been stuck at the regional post office not moving for the past 10 days. And I am waiting on that was last updated four days ago as "USPS in possesion of item" 2000 miles away, which still claims it's on time to arrive tomorrow.
posted by Foosnark at 8:50 AM on October 28, 2021

when a package for my spouse has been stuck at the regional post office not moving for the past 10 days

And that, I think, is the nub of the thing.

When an organization moves as many items as a national postage service does, even the tiny percentage of stuff it handles annoyingly slowly is a large enough absolute number of deliveries that almost everybody either remembers an irritating delay or has recently been grumbled to about one by somebody else. Almost nobody thinks or talks much about the huge majority of deliveries that happen in a timely way, because that's the usual case and therefore not notable. So the postal service's reputation drifts inexorably toward slow, inefficient and annoying on the strength of what people do remember about their dealings with it.

Personally I strongly prefer it when online vendors I deal with ship via Australia Post instead of a private courier, because the shipping usually costs a fraction of what the private couriers charge and most of my stuff does arrive about as quickly. Economies of scale really are a thing.
posted by flabdablet at 9:31 AM on October 28, 2021 [4 favorites]

I visited a post office branch this week for the first time in a while. In addition to sending a package, I had a package incorrectly delivered to my home that I wanted to return. The person at the counter took the misaddressed package and asked me to wait a moment. He came back in a minute and confirmed my zip code. "Technically your post office is the one up north and you should have taken the package there, but my manager lives that way and he said he'd drop it off for you." It's hard to imagine a UPS or FedEx employee doing me a favor like that.
posted by jomato at 11:16 AM on October 28, 2021 [3 favorites]

Louis DeJoy. Discuss.
posted by kleinsteradikaleminderheit at 11:34 AM on October 28, 2021

DeJoy!

I just want to gibber about how nice some of the new stamps are, from theRaven Story stamp to the Star Wars stamps to the Day of the Dead stamps.

I've got a rural post office and a PO Box there so I know all the postal employees and the thing that is baffling but interesting to me is that they all kinda love DeJoy (the postmaster general who by all media accounts is a monster) up to and including the postmaster. They know he's got his downsides but they've seen their working conditions improve a lot since he's been in office. They've gotten new trucks after managing for a long time with one that don't have heat or AC. Their mail sorting machines have been updated. Don't get me wrong, I still kind of think he is a monster, but I wonder somewhat about the differences between this super small sample size and most of what I've read online.
posted by jessamyn at 12:45 PM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

The inefficiency of the US postal service is legendary - it's long been the no-brainer go-to for those keen to make rhetorical points about the allegedly self-evident inability of governments to run anything - but I would be very interested to learn by what metrics that legend is supported.

Way back in the way back I worked at an tech company that was part of the initial wave of RFID work (they were large circuit boards back then). We worked on a project to track mail for Canada Post using special flexible RFID cards that could go in envelopes and be turned on an off (so they could be flown). This was because Canada Post had no definite idea where its mail was or how it got to where it was going and management wanted to know.

Like many things back then Public Services worked because the people who worked at them worked to make them work. Management? Not necessarily.
posted by srboisvert at 3:34 PM on October 28, 2021 [1 favorite]

Personally I strongly prefer it when online vendors I deal with ship via Australia Post instead of a private courier, because the shipping usually costs a fraction of what the private couriers charge and most of my stuff does arrive about as quickly. Economies of scale really are a thing.

When I lived in England I was really into the Rent, Rip and Return with unlimited DVDs via the mail. Twice daily mail delivery and pickup with quick delivery meant I could turn the DVDs around same day and I could rip between 10 to 15 DVDs in a month. I probably still have movies I haven't gotten around to watching from then on a HD somewhere.

Here in the US I on and off use Netlfix DVD to see some more obscure titles and they offer me a free month every year or so. I used to be able to get about 6 movies a month. Turnaround has declined for the last few years to the service not being a value at all. The last free trial I got two DVDs in 30 days with one going missing on delivery and one going missing on return.

I used to sell plants shipped by USPS but took this year off because there were just too many horror stories about shipping failures in all the plant selling forums. I had hoped a new administration would restore the USPS functionality but alas...
posted by srboisvert at 4:02 PM on October 28, 2021

The inefficiency of the US postal service is legendary - it's long been the no-brainer go-to for those keen to make rhetorical points about the allegedly self-evident inability of governments to run anything - but I would be very interested to learn by what metrics that legend is supported.

It’s important to remember that the USPS is an independent government agency, with a legal monopoly on letter (not package) delivery. What this means is that it’s run like a business with almost zero tax dollars, but is mandated to provide service to any address in the USA. You can mail a letter from the busiest street in the nation, sending it to the most remote address and the USPS has to deliver it, by law.

That’s inefficient, so the system has become very efficient to deal with that. I’ve been working as a letter carrier since mid July, but have to leave service soon (personal stuff), and it’s been eye opening to see how efficient the system is, despite many problems in these rapidly changing times.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 10:06 PM on October 28, 2021 [3 favorites]

I had hoped a new administration would restore the USPS functionality but alas...

Trump and DeJoy did serious damage to the functionality of the USPS. Unfortunately, the President has their hands tied when it comes to both the Postmaster General as well as the board of governors...

To oversee USPS’s activities, Congress established a nine-member board of governors who are nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. No more than five members of the board may belong to the same political party. Once confirmed to the board, governors can only be removed by the president “for cause”; that means their jobs are safe unless the president can show that they engaged in malfeasance or extreme neglect of duty. The board of governors, in turn, selects the postmaster general, who is not subject to Senate approval. And once appointed, the postmaster general can only be removed by the board, though it need not justify its decision.

Quite ironically, Congress created this mess in order to stop the PG position from being a plum political-patronage position.
posted by Thorzdad at 4:32 AM on October 29, 2021