Death of a Mailman (as a Career)

Recently, the United States Postal Service has begun to air commercials calling for us (and by us I mean government) to save the Postal Service!  We have to save the jobs! We have to save this company because it's useful and all that!

Actually, friends, there are lots of industries that have gone the wayside in history.  The classic example is the buggy whip industry. In the early 1900s when Henry Ford began to mass produce the Model T and that vehicle became widely used and owned, hundreds of thousands of Americans if not millions of Americans stopped using the horse and buggy as their means of transportation.  The buggy whip was the preffered way to let one's horse(s) know it was time to go.  It was essentially the gas pedal equivalent of the horse and buggy. 

When the Model T became prevalent, the buggy whip industry eventually died, simply because it was an obsolete industry. Other industries have also died or become much, much smaller. For example, the candle making industry exists, but it is a fraction of it's size prior to the widespread availability of electricity.  This is the way of the Free Market and of progress.

The United States Postal Service (henceforth noted as USPS) is quickly becoming similarly obsolete. There are better choices for shipping packages (namely the United Parcel Service aka UPS and Federal Express aka FedEx). As far as bills, the majority of bills can be paid online. (I personally have to mail only one bill each month of all my bills.  The rest have automated bill pay setup or I can pay them online.) Sending letters as a means of communication is essentially dead with the advent of email, not to mention the fact that telephones of both the cellular and traditional land line variety offer long distance calling at a very reasonable rate so it is easy to call your friends and loved ones rather than writing a letter.

All that is really required is for FedEx and/or UPS to step up and offer letter delivery for the USPS to die quietly as the Buggy Whip industry did. At the very least, the USPS is about to drop off, similarly to the candle making industry as primarily a letter delivering service.

Yes, this does mean the USPS will move slower, but honestly, that just means I need to remember to mail birthday cards a little bit earlier to family and friends out of town. This is not a crisis. This is not the end of the world. Many of those who work in the USPS are going to have to find new employment (may I suggest applying to UPS or FedEx?) but my friends, this is the way of the world! Products and services become obsolete regularly throughout history!

The fact is no amount of government subsidy is going to keep the USPS in demand. It is simply has become barely needed in our modern world. Eventually it won't be needed at all. Actually, if the ability to teleport objects ever becomes possible, FedEx and UPS will become obsolete. If the ability to teleport living beings becomes possible, the auto industry will also be obsolete.  That's what ALWAYS happens.

This is called progress, friends. Free Market progress to be exact. Time to live in the real world. The U.S. Postal Service going the way of the buggy whip industry isn't the end of the world. It's simply a continuation of industrial progress.