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Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by sixstringtheory on Sunday August 02, 2020 @03:29PM (#24030963)
The simplest counterpoint to this is that government allows accountability.

You will have those same people you don’t like running private enterprise, but CEOs have much longer terms than postmasters general.

Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by Simulacra on Sunday August 02, 2020 @05:11PM (#24031783)
I disagree that government allows accountability, exhibit one: TSA.
Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by missedthecue on Sunday August 02, 2020 @07:17PM (#24032639)
As a matter of fact, I cannot think of one organization in the country that has less accountability than the Federal Government
Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by luckylion on Sunday August 02, 2020 @03:41PM (#24031045)
You can usually switch to a different company when you're not happy with the work they do, it's much harder to switch to a different state.
Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by sixstringtheory on Sunday August 02, 2020 @03:47PM (#24031102)
As long as you have term limits, you don’t have to move states/countries to get different leaders, you vote.
Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by missedthecue on Sunday August 02, 2020 @04:47PM (#24031595)
Voting is not a good way to get what you want. Your vote will have essentially no impact on the outcome of the election.

My choice to go with this provider or that one has 100% of an impact on me. There is no creative destruction going on with the USPS.

Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by youareostriches on Sunday August 02, 2020 @07:21PM (#24032656)
>Voting is not a good way to get what you want. Your vote will have essentially no impact on the outcome of the election.

Voting is the most minimal way to participate democratically. Much more meaningful are advocating for your needs to elected representatives, speaking out publicly, and organizing/attending demonstrations.

But if you want to give up democracy to live under a dictatorship, certainly don't pretend that you actually speak for anyone other than yourself.

Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by luckylion on Sunday August 02, 2020 @11:18PM (#24033893)
> But if you want to give up democracy to live under a dictatorship, certainly don't pretend that you actually speak for anyone other than yourself.

Please don't do the Reddit thing. The argument wasn't "we need dictatorship", it was "it's easier to switch commercial providers than governments if you're unhappy".

Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by fredophile on Monday August 03, 2020 @02:32AM (#24034750)
Not all commercial providers are easy to switch. I can't easily switch the company that provides power to my condo. For people with natural gas it's usually not easy to switch that either. If I don't like the property management company my HOA uses it isn't something I can switch on my own. Tonnes of places across the US don't have options for switching high speed internet providers. Switching any of the services I mentioned could require moving, sometimes a considerable distance, for plenty of people.
Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by missedthecue on Monday August 03, 2020 @12:29PM (#24039818)
>I can't easily switch the company that provides power to my condo.

This is because they have a government protected monopoly. Cities like Chicago and Baltimore and NYC used to have dozens of competing utilities before the government began granting charters that gave one firm an exclusive right to provide power, gas, or oil.

Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by missedthecue on Sunday August 02, 2020 @03:43PM (#24031069)
Accountability to whom? The NSA is still illegally snooping on you and I, killer-cops go unpunished, and the social justice system is biased against black men, but supposedly there is accountability?

The difference here is that it's not profitable for UPS to piss off its customer base. A CEO of a privatised postal company acting in his own rational self interest would produce far different results than Donald Trump acting in his own rational self interest.

And even if the CEO didn't produce good results, I could mail my letter using another firm. With USPS, this is not possible. They have a legally protected monopoly on the delivery of letters. No one else can do it.

Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by sixstringtheory on Sunday August 02, 2020 @04:02PM (#24031241)
Every delivery service has horror stories. I’ve experienced bad deliveries with all of them. Turns out, there are still humans working at all of them.

Voting is accountability. You’ll have to find another time to discuss every other thing that’s wrong with our government, because right now we’re talking about a service being purposefully degraded in efforts to reduce the one of the only means we have for holding government accountable: voting.

Re:Mail delays hit Philadelphia residents, short staffed USP... by ghthor on Monday August 03, 2020 @01:30AM (#24034486)
Theirs 2 sides to every story. The Democrats and the press are doing there best to whip up a fear frenzy over a strong flu wave that's really only killing people who were already sick. If that wasn't happening no one would give a shit about the USPS and what's happening for the better there, in my opinion.