I need to hurry up and start stockpiling 35mm film. Plenty of small shops catering to professional film afficianodos can still develope it even if big box retail development disappears.
The brilliant man who should have been our first black president writes the simple truth again.
Kodak failed to adapt to a changing technology and will soon be gone.
The USPS also failed to adapt to a changing technology and should also go away as their services are obsolete.
Pass a constitutional amendment and Abolish the USPS!
Who said UPS or Fed EX is cheap(er)? UPS has just raised their prices by 5% and adds a fuel sur chorge on top of that.
Isn’t the post office established by the Constitution? That’s why we have it and why we should continue it. Now let’s take a look at their retirement plan. That’s the problem.
The lesson in the Kodak case is that at least twenty years ago senior management at Kodak was talking about “digital” being the future. Ironically, they began the transition then when most people had no idea what the concept of “digital” meant. They currently possess patents on several thousand “digital” inventions they are currently trying to market just to stay afloat. The culture that drove them to the brink of bankruptcy was the belief that they could not possibly fail. They were too fat then and too slow to make the hard cuts when they were necessary.
If they develop solar powered devices and get a government loan, the sky is the limit.
The difference is that, although the Postal Service is technically a private business, its income doesn't cover all its costs — and taxpayers are on the hook for the difference.
I am as great an admirer of Dr Sowell as anyone else, and I agree that he, or one of many exceptional men should have been our first Black president. That special label has been stained irretrievably.
But I am surprised that prof. Sowell is unaware that the U.S. Postal Service was intended as a political privilege since its inception, cost no object. That includes franking propaganda as well as eternal reelection campaigns. That other "deserving" non-government entities jumped on the freebie wagon is no great surprise, such that the "constituency" is now gigantic.
Bottom line, its original purpose of essential communications for a huge new dynamic expanding country is even more obsolete than its contemporary, the buggy whip.
The history of the USPS is open for all to become informed. Just buy and read this small book...
The USPS is not the biggest drain on the US treasury, but a significant and unnecessary one.
It should be abolished.
Imagine a world without junk mail. Imagine the magnitude of the reduced waste.
Thanks to “media mail”, I was able to send all my record albums from Seattle to Kentucky via the USPS. Other than that, they seem kind of expensive.
I also can not remember the last time I use the USPS to send something in letter form.
Meanwhile, when we lived in Seattle we would collect our mail just once a week. We’d get a one foot pile of junk mail and MAYBE something in it we needed. In rural Kentucky we get no junk mail, which means we often check our mailbox weekly to find an empty mailbox.
A friend of mine, who is a letter carrier for the USPS, told me back in 1997 that if it were not for junk mail he wouldn’t have a job. I wonder if he still has a job with the USPS.
This is the 1% of the time I disagree with Dr. Sowell.
The founders, in establishing a postal service with uniform rates, recognized that there were certain benefits in encouraging its citizens to live in remote areas and, as such, minor subsidies (such as mail service) were not only permissible, but necessary.
People who live in remote areas provide valuable public benefits such as promoting road and infrastructure maintenance, services to travelers, a first alert system against invading armies or natural disasters and economic enterprises which provide food, fiber and natural resources to population centers. As such, minor subsidies such as a universal postal system, is necessary to tie them to the rest of the country.
This isn't to say that certain modifications to keep up with modernity aren't necessary. For example, ownership of motor vehicles is almost universal today and, as such, people living in remote ranches could be provided with post office boxes in a contract substation which they normally visit rather than right to their driveway.
FedEx, UPS or even a new startup company could bid for delivery sublicenses in a given area where it was profitable with subsidies to support delivery in other areas where it was not.
This way, the standard nationwide rate and universal service can be achieved with competition putting a downward pressure on rising costs rather than having a labor cartel (the postal union) working hand-in-glove with a government mandated monopoly to increase costs and resist reforms.
At present, nobody in the public wants to yield anything because the government monopoly-union labor cartel alliance won't yield anything to get the process started.
What may be needed is to reinstate the Postmaster General position as a cabinet level post and abolish or merge some of the money sucking minimally beneficial newer cabinet posts such as education, energy and homeland security theater.
Adapt or die.
FEDEX and UPS would never deliver mail to ALL residents on a regular basis, its not profitable.. they would cherry pick the profitable routes and leave those unprofitable to rot.
Comparing the Mail service, which our legal system is based around existing and functioning, to a purely private industry is nonsense.
Of all the issues with government waste, ensuring that everyone in American can recieve mail is not spending that really bothers me or the budget.
If anything, the fact the USPS exists has been a net boon for our nation, throughout its history. The reason its failing financially right now has to do with poor congressional oversight than anything else. Mandating huge retirement contributions well above anything in private industry in a downturn.
However even if the USPS needed subsidised, I have no issues with that, if my tax dollars are going to be spent on something spending it on making sure folks can receiveng and send mail is a function of government that doesn’t bother me.
“It was Kodak’s humble and affordable box Brownie that put photography on the map for millions of people, who just wanted to take simple pictures of family, friends and places they visited.”
My parents owned more than one of the Kodak “Brownie” cameras when I as a small child. I think the “Brownie” cameras took most of our family pictures in the late 1940s and 1950s.
Against the changes that came with the “PC age”, IBM reinvented itself by building on its intellectual strengths - looking at how could it redirect the knowledge resources of its human and intellectual (patents) capital. It’s still among the largest “mainframe” computer companies in the world, but other lines of business now overshadow that legacy business-line (once its largest), in terms of annual revenue and profits.
Kodak attempted to adapt to the “digital” age in photography and photo-printing, but not soon enough, not quickly enough and with a lack of vision.
It’s too bad. It could have reinvented itself, as IBM did, building on redirecting where and how to apply its intellectual strengths, and preserving capital by scaling back and dumping diminishing business lines faster. I guess the one word that identifies the strength that IBM had and Kodak has not had is “nimble”.
I had one my very own self!
“So would people who live in remote areas, where the cost of delivering all mail is higher. But if people who decide to live in remote areas don’t pay the costs that their decision imposes on the Postal Service, electric utilities and others, why should other people be forced to pay those costs?
A society in which some people make decisions, and other people are forced to pay the costs created by those decisions, is a society where a lot of decisions can be made despite their costs being greater than their benefits.”
I’m gonna miss you all, but I cannot WAIT to be off the grid...where I won’t be a BURDEN to any of my fellow Freepers. :) *SMOOCH*