Re:If It Prints, It Ships: 3D Printing and the Postal Servi...
by rubiquity on Thursday July 24, 2014 @10:52PM
(#8083563)
I would approve any business advancement by the USPS if, and only if, it meant less bullshit advertisements in my mailbox every afternoon.
Re:If It Prints, It Ships: 3D Printing and the Postal Servi...
by sciguy77 on Friday July 25, 2014 @01:43AM
(#8083918)
It's actually the postal worker unions that are to blame for the piles of adverts you get each day. There have been a couple bills to end junk mail, but the unions fight them tooth and nail on the grounds that junk mail counts as free speech. Of course, much (some might say most) of the mail you get is crap. Without that crap there's less mail to move, and consequently less workers to do the moving.
Re:If It Prints, It Ships: 3D Printing and the Postal Servi...
by JonnieCache on Friday July 25, 2014 @05:04AM
(#8084305)
>One that jumped out at me was 'USPS facilities could server as 3d printing hubs.'
It made me think of how the BBC (presumably youtube etc as well?) have video caches in the exchanges of larger ISPs, to get the data as close to the last mile as possible.
Re:If It Prints, It Ships: 3D Printing and the Postal Servi...
by icebraining on Friday July 25, 2014 @05:11AM
(#8084322)
presumably youtube etc as well?
Yeap. Even my ISP, which is only the fourth largest on my rather small country, has a local Youtube cache.
However, I can also see other businesses lobbying against such innovation on the grounds that it would crowd out private sector offerings, which seems to be a common objection to allowing the USPS to offer more services at post offices. In Europe and Japan, post offices don't just deal with mail but serve as a one-stop shop for many interactions with government, from welfare payments to savings accounts. The legal status of the USPS is complicated the Constitution's postal mandate, ably discussed here if you like legal technicality: http://law.justia.com/constitution/us/article-1/39-post-offi...