After 401 years, the Danish postal service has ended letter deliveries as the country fully embraces the digital age.
I don’t know if it’s them getting worse or just I’m reading more news about them but the Danes kind of seem to suck.
Oh this is not going to end well
Letter mail still has a purpose. Email really can’t replace it. Sending bills to proprietary portals I need to sign into to see what I owe is ridiculous. Just one more app bro.
I usually get my bills in a PDF? You have to join sites to view them? I would hate that.
Email is both insecure and unreliable by design. I would never want to receive anything financially or legally important that way. As a notification option, sure, but not the only way.
Emails can be end to end encrypted.
People can be honest and forthcoming too but you don’t design a system around that assumption.
Did you just call Email unreliable ?? I live in a clown world.
Or you know nothing about email.
They still mail packages, right? Why end delivering letters? They’re just small packages.
In the year 2000, PostNord delivered nearly 1.5 billion letters. Last year, it delivered 110 million.
Makes sense when you really think about it. U.S. letter mail is mostly junk.
Canada post office has a standard letter being no more than 50g.
So 5.5 mil kg. That is a lot to carry.
I would hate it bc it makes the apps that companies make more enticing; which makes data collecting more profittable. So yeah.
Truly a bizarre and ridiculous action. Publicly owned and operated postal delivery is still very useful, especially as late stage capitalism continues getting more and more dystopic.
Europe loves to clown on the US for a lack of social services, but the postal service is where it’s reversed. In almost all of Europe, postal services are provided by private companies, with no public option. I guess the US was created at just the right time to recognize the benefit of a government postal service (thanks, Ben Franklin).
Useful for what? Wasting resources? Filling space in mail boxes that nobody checks because there’s never anything of interest in them?
Unless you mean having a postal service AT ALL, in which case you’re right but also misunderstood what they’re doing: they’re not ending ALL portal services, they’re just not wasting their resources on archaic snail mail letters anymore.
I highly doubt snail mail letters were a significant percentage of their deliveries.
They sure weren’t
Reading the article they went from 1.5b in 2000 to 110m last year. That doesn’t sound like an insignificant amount after all.
This sounds like a bad move.
While it sounds like a lot in a raw number,that’s not much for a population of 5.5million people for an entire year.
Besides, most of that was bills and correspondence from the government, things that have no reason for still being snail mail.
This sounds like a bad move.
Based on incomplete and misinterpreted data, sure. Based on the realities here in Denmark? Not really.
FYI, this is very similar to what is going on in Canada right now: the post is a crown corporation, meaning it’s a federal entity funded by the public through taxes and the carrier fees. Package delivery is their highest volume, but they have an exclusive right to letter mail. The government was debating axing the service, but the postal union pushed back hard with month long strikes.
The argument for axing the service has two flaws:
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corporations will fill in the gap: they will not. They will take over the service and monopolize it (or collude). And when it’s a necessity that people have to rely on, they will jack up prices and ask for government subsidy to keep it going. Basically all that was created was a middleman taking their cut…
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the service has to be profitable: it doesn’t. Government services don’t have to be profitable. Sure, it’s nice when they are, but that’s not the point of a service and the government can balance budget elsewhere, like selling energy for example. It’s infrastructure, not a business venture.
So yes, as the lady said, the world is watching for sure.
when it’s a necessity that people have to rely on
Which snail mail letters haven’t been for decades, making your objections hypothetical at best.
Everything that a snail mail letter can do, there’s a better and easier alternative. It’s the horse and buggy of correspondence.
the service has to be profitable: it doesn’t. Government services don’t have to be profitable
THAT you’re right about, at least.
So yes, as the lady said, the world is watching for sure.
And the reactions of those of us not stuck in the distant past range from celebration that this antediluvian system is finally considered obsolete to a complete lack of interest in whether or not something utterly superfluous that nobody has needed for decades will continue to be done.
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It’s still vital to voting by mail but I reckon it’s no use as democracies are soon obsolete
This will last as long as reliable electricity and internet access does.
Thing is, it’s going to create a historical hole in future archeological studies of this era, as the messages within digital devices are ephemral. Texts of today, unlike handwritten letters stand a slim chance of being a tangible artifact in 200 years.
Que sera…
This will last as long as reliable electricity and internet access does.
As will modern society.
Like stage coaches and telegraphs before them, snail mail letters are obsolete relics of a less convenient past.
In the US you can’t even unsubscribe from the usps according to my letter carrier and their website. I’ve tried just never getting the mail but they end up bundling it up and sticking it in front of your front door.
Here’s what you do. Dig the sidewalk down 50 feet. Just a sudden drop. 200 foot tall fence made of barbed wire and spiked metal. This reaches all the way to the 50 foot drop of the sidewalk.
The sidewalk is public property. So if he throws it down there, it’s littering.
The fence is also electrified. Your mailbox is on the front porch. Thete’s also random landmines in the yard, and swinging chainsaws being whirled around by pulleys.
Lets see him deliver those weekly savers ads now!
Clearly you aren’t familiar with the mail carrier’s oath.
When society collapses, the human population is at a historic low, and evil warlords stake claim to swathes of wasteland, The Postman can still be seen riding off into the horizon, for nothing will keep them from their assigned route.
Wait, the US doesn’t have a free service to (a) remove you from postal spam lists and (b) stop spam being delivered?
In the UK, I registered my address on a few of the things listed here ( https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/post-and-parcels/stop-getting-junk-mail/ ). And the only junk mail I now receive are political flyers & takeout menus delivered outside of the postal service (ie by people, not posties).
Do Americans really have to put up with receiving random bullshit with no easy way of stopping it?!
Not really, no, because between letter and bulk mail mailbox delivery, the USPS derives much more revenue from bulk mail.
But, because most people just trash it, most companies have also stopped sending it.
I thought I heard of a program many years back, but I haven’t been able to find it recently. I’d even pay a small fee.
Might make their own commute and other errands outside of their property SLIGHTLY more difficult, though. Just a bit.
