I’m one of the few people in this country who still pays bills by mail and sends actual letters and cards. Call me old fashioned, but I am wary of identity theft with automatic bill paying and there are some situations where handwritten communications are more proper than email.
That said, I think the cost of a postage stamp is way too low for the money expended in getting mail from point A to point B. Sure,:huge wages and benefits, plus waste and inefficiency are the big problems, but even if those issues were resolved, the expenses of delivery (fuel costs, for example) won’t be covered by 49 cents a letter.
Identity theft still occurs at the mailbox, bud. If you don’t remove your name and address from your mail and shred those labels before discarding or recycling the rest, you are leaving your name and address out in the trash for any dumpster diver to find. That’s over 50% of the work right there. If you have a mailbox by the road, there’s nothing to stop them from sifting through for credit card offers, medical bills, utility bills, etc. As soon as they have any of those, your identity is as good as gone.
This is coming from someone who used to think the way you do. I do everything online behind the “cloak” of encrypted transactions. If they want my data, they either have to want it enough to devote cycles to decrypting my personal information or the retailer has to be dumb enough to lose it (See: Target). At which point I vote with my wallet and stop patronizing that business. With the USPS, you don’t have a choice but to use them.