Denmark Postal Service To Stop Delivering Letters (bbc.com) 139
Denmark's state-run postal service, PostNord, is to end all letter deliveries at the end of 2025, citing a 90% decline in letter volumes since the start of the century. From a report: The decision brings to an end 400 years of the company's letter service. Denmark's 1,500 post boxes will start to disappear from the start of June. Transport Minister Thomas Danielsen sought to reassure Danes, saying letters would still be sent and received as "there is a free market for both letters and parcels." Postal services across Europe are grappling with the decline in letter volumes. Germany's Deutsche Post said on Thursday it was axing 8,000 jobs, in what it called a "socially responsible manner."
Deutsche Post has 187,000 employees and staff representatives said they feared more cuts were to come. Denmark had a universal postal service for 400 years until the end of 2023, but as digital mail services have taken hold, the use of letters has fallen dramatically. PostNord says it will switch its focus to parcel deliveries and that any postage stamps bought this year or in 2024 can be refunded for a limited period in 2026.
Deutsche Post has 187,000 employees and staff representatives said they feared more cuts were to come. Denmark had a universal postal service for 400 years until the end of 2023, but as digital mail services have taken hold, the use of letters has fallen dramatically. PostNord says it will switch its focus to parcel deliveries and that any postage stamps bought this year or in 2024 can be refunded for a limited period in 2026.
Postcards from the Beyond (Score:5, Interesting)
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Interesting FP, so I'll contribute to your Subject even though it seem unproductive to me. Like cancelling snail mail completely?
My "solution approach" would be an alias system so that people could use email addresses for snail mail. If you want to send something, you could just write the email address on it. I think it should be opt-in, so the recipients would have to decide whether or not to register the snail mail address for a particular email address. Also, the default should be only first-class or hig
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I don't really understand how a 90% decline in letter volume equates to a 100% decline in letter delivery. I mean, I understand that people are bad with their money, and don't want to do stuff. But 10% of a very large organization is still a large organization. And post offices provide a network of last resort to everyone in the country. I think this is a mistake.
Economy of scale. When you deliver letters to almost every house, often multiple letters to the same house, it is FAR more economical to deliver them than delivering one-offs spread out across a large neighborhood.
It would take a delivery person 30 seconds to drop 5 letters in your mailbox and five in your neighbors slot, which would be more than covered by the price for 10 stamps. If it takes several minutes to hand deliver your single letter and drive two blocks to deliver another single letter to the
Re:Postcards from the Beyond (Score:5, Insightful)
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In Europe there are pretty severe consequences for draining your bank account, and the automatic payment systems have various safety features that prevent those kinds of mistakes anyway. It's extremely rare, and if it does happen they have to make it right - not just pay you back, but pay all the associated costs arising from not having the money available. In the past even bank system failures have resulted in substantial costs due to things like house purchases failing to go through and people being tempo
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they will require you to sign up with some bullshit account
Just download your least favorite browser to use exclusively for these types of accounts.
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I live in the backward country of South Africa where the postal service failed many years ago (mismanagement, money pilfered, and lack of service delivery - not due to lack of letters to deliver). I have not received a physical bill in years. My municipal bill, doctor's and dentist's statements, bank statements, university's alumni magazine - all moved to e-mailed by-and-by. In most cases I can also log on to the respective institution's web site and see the material. In case of taxes, again I can log in an
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I can add the fond anecdote of how it used to be. Somewhere around 1994 (I remember the time of that short-distance turned long-distance relationship well) a girlfriend posted a love letter (yes, how old-fashioned) in the morning in the post box on the sidewalk in front of her house in some suburb of the capital; that afternoon around end-of-business it was already in our post box in some rural town 400 km removed. That was really quick, typically it would have reached me only the next day.
The next year I
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or download an invasive app
My phone doesn't do 'apps'.
Re:Postcards from the Beyond (Score:4, Informative)
While paying bills with a bank transfer is safe, you still need to know the amount to pay for services that are not fixed cost. Where I live, utilities offer mailed bill or auto-pay, they do not offer email bill delivery. It is just not something they do.
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Where is the horrific rating? It's missing from my list.
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Authorizing auto pay is unacceptable risk to me, as there is no cap on what they can charge.
I agree. However, at least in the US, you can do online bill-pay while not authorizing automatic payments. I get a notice from my bank when a new bill comes in; then I go to their site, review the bill, and then manually enter a payment.
I also manually set up the payment info for repeat billers who still send out snail-mail bills (such as my county with its bi-yearly property taxes, or my old doctor's office). You could do the same for one-off bills as well, although in that case you'd have to decide whethe
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In Switzerland there's a system called eBill where you can authorize bill providers, manually greenlight individual bills or set arbitrary caps under which bills are automatically authorized. It works very well. The first time I paid my electricity bill, my banking app offered to add that provider to my eBill account (without that I had to scan a physical QR code that came in the mail to pay the bill).
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except for having to use banking app
For me, they key issue with having a bank app is that in a hostile situation I can be coerced to transfer funds out of my account. I don't have emergency phone wipe setup and I my bank does not offer for me a way to limit app only to checking account - it is all or nothing. So I picked nothing.
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Authorizing auto pay is unacceptable risk to me, as there is no cap on what they can charge. Whoever has such authorization can empty your bank account and your bank will not help you get these funds back. In practice, this means that a billing mistake can result in serious damage to your credit score.
There have been literally two stories from Citigroup in the last *couple of weeks.* Hell no, I don't allow auto pay for *anything.*
Re: Postcards from the Beyond (Score:4, Informative)
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So contact your rep and have him fix the law.
Because in Europe auto-pay is a totally common way and no-one is suffering.
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Authorizing auto pay is unacceptable risk to me, as there is no cap on what they can charge.
It sounds like you live in the USA. If I did I too would consider it an unacceptable risk. On the other hand I live in a country with consumer protection laws and rights that very much make me wish someone would try and drain my bank account. The resulting payout I would get for the inconvenience would be like winning a lottery without even buying a ticket.
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Bills are paid via ACH bank transfers or CC charge. You log into an account and set up auto pay.
Or initiate the ACH payments manually from your bank account online. I do this for most of my bills with only a very few auto-paid via a CC and none auto-debited from my bank account.
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If your rural company can't do online payments, I'd argue that it isn't the city that is 'shitty' in this case.
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The Internet is Down (Score:2)
An organization I am forced to deal with has a broken website and e-mail to them bounces. There is no telephone number. Their domain name is secured behind an anonymizing registrar.
If you have a mailing address (even a PO box) the US Postal service will make sure there is a physical person and location on file for it. That can be subpoenaed and dragged into court. And they have mail fraud statutes to back that up.
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So if its "self funded" than going private should be OK right? Right, it will die off within a few years of privitization buddy. It wont survive based on fees vs cost to delivery services. Its a burden on the tax payer.
By definition, if it's self-funded it's not a "burden" on the tax payer.
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I'm not a proponent of USPS in particular, but I will say they are held to a much higher standard than other areas of government and private firms, in particular to their employee pension funds. Can argue back and forth about pensions being to rich, etc but that's the big gap in GAAP. (Ha!)
Certainly the only issue with USPS. A few reports have shown that the labor productivity has fallen, basically as a consequence of the same number-ish of staff delivering far less revenue generating mail/deliveries.
Re:Postcards from the Beyond (Score:4, Insightful)
It's literally the only service the government is required to provide per the constitution. Even defense was left to ad hoc militias, but the government has to provide postal service.
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So if its "self funded" than going private should be OK right? Right, it will die off within a few years of privitization buddy. It wont survive based on fees vs cost to delivery services. Its a burden on the tax payer.
It's not a burden on the taxpayer, because it's self funded. It already survives based on fees vs delivery cost, even while feeding a mandated vast surplus in their retirement fund.
The USPS *is* a burden on all the people who don't live out in the boondocks, because with nationwide flat rates, their postage subsidizes deliveries of MAGA hats to the sticks.
What privatization would actually do is cause the postal service to reallocate costs in a quest for "profitability". Basically, boondock service would be
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Re:Postcards from the Beyond (Score:4, Insightful)
So if its "self funded" than going private should be OK right? Right, it will die off within a few years of privatization buddy. It wont survive based on fees vs cost to delivery services. Its a burden on the tax payer.
Privatization would probably make things worse as it would add a profit motive. The USPS isn't suppose to be profitable, it's suppose to be universal and reliable. A lot of their financial insufficiency stems from the (stupid) Congressional requirement, passed in 2006, to pre-fund their pension 75 years into the future. This was finally rescinded in 2022, but I'm not sure they've recovered yet.
The USPS Fairness Act [apwu.org]
Congress passes $50 bln U.S. Postal Service relief bill [reuters.com]
One reason for the large losses is 2006 legislation mandating USPS pre-fund more than $120 billion in retiree healthcare and pension liabilities.
The new bill eliminates requirements USPS pre-fund retiree health benefits for current and retired employees for 75 years, a requirement no business or other federal entity faces. USPS projects it would sharply reduce its pre-funding liability and save it roughly $27 billion over 10 years.
It requires future retirees to enroll in Medicare. About 25% of postal retirees do not enroll in Medicare even though they are eligible, which results in USPS paying higher premiums than other employers. USPS estimates the change could save it about $22.6 billion over 10 years.
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The USPS isn't suppose to be profitable, it's suppose to be universal and reliable.
Thank you.
Re: Postcards from the Beyond (Score:2)
Privatization would probably make things worse as it would add a profit motive.
That's not a bad thing. Particularly if there is competition in the marketplace. We used to have contract post offices. Our local one was in a general store. Pick up a bottle of whiskey, a handgun and some ammunition and mail a few letters. We had (maybe still do) contract rural deliveries. And general delivery. Post office would hold your mail until you rode your horse into town. Nobody knew where the hell your ranch was to run mail out to it.
Contract delivery came under pressure from the postal workers u
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There is a huge legal problem with turning the USPS private. It is actually mandated by the constitution.
I know Trump likes to wipe his bum with the document, but I prefer following the established method of chage - constitutional amendment.
What can be done is things like shifting more towards package delivery, maybe not having 6 day delivery in all places, etc...
Even the EV thing. Cost saving in the long run even though more expensive initially. The post office going with a military contractor and a cus
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There is a huge legal problem with turning the USPS private. It is actually mandated by the constitution.
No it isn't. Article I, Section 8, Clause 7: "To establish Post Offices and post Roads;" (https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/articles/article-i#article-section-8)
The US Constitution grants the right to establish a postal service (office and roads,) but doesn't say they have to.
I personally do like having a Federal Postal System. But I don't feel like we should have it both ways. It should either be free for everyone to use for personal purposes such as letters, non-commercial packages, etc.
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You may be correct there but if the USPS were abolished no one else could start their own postal service delivering letters. It's a federal monopoly.
Incidentally, I have an interest the continued existence of the USPS because I do write letters to people, stuff them in an envelope, and put a stamp on the thing. It's a much more rewarding of communicating with someone when the message is not time sensitive.
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Also not quite sure if Postal Service is called out in Denmark's founding document the way it is in the US [wikipedia.org]
It's not just the last mile services USPS provides but even in todays age a lot of legal procedure is built around paper mail because of that fact that it is a guaranteed service (if you want to show someone got something in court the baseline standard is still USPS Certified/Return Receipt), changing that status upends a lot of things.
And this is a case of where the USA geographic size does really make
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Yup and thusly why most people who want it to disappear or privatize either are ignorant of the history, why the Founders put it in the Constitution (it's not like they listed a ton of similar things with mandates) and what greater function it serves.
People who put it to simply "it loses money" is a real missing the forest for the trees and again, not aware of the history of it going semi-private [wikipedia.org] when it historically was a Cabinet Office or the pension mandate which is a primarily reason for all those bad g
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Article I, Section 8, Clause 7?
It appears from a little research that this was written before the 2nd Amendment.
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And yet the Founding Fathers as well all talk about how smart they were and how we should respect them decided to create the Federal Post Office in 1775 (!) before America had even won the Revolutionary War and once they did the first "real" Post Office was created back in 1792. If those same folks and document who lean on so much for the 2nd also have this history with the Post Office why is the former so valid and we can discard the latter? Especially when there is far more and older case law around the
Parcels (Score:3)
Unless you were born 100 years ago, there is this thing called e-mail.
Which is great for sending information but less so for sending parcels. As you note you could stop letter service but if you have to maintain a parcel service because commercial companies do not serve everywhere then are you really saving that much?
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It's a significant saving because you no longer need post boxes and associated collections, a giant letter sorting apparatus, and the volume of deliveries is reduced, leaving only the more profitable ones.
In the UK they also photograph every letter for "security" reasons, so there is a massive amount of data that can be discarded as well.
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It's a significant saving because you no longer need post boxes and associated collections, a giant letter sorting apparatus, and the volume of deliveries is reduced
Canada has merged postboxes and letterboxes into one communal unit for a neighbourhood so the same person who delivers your letters and packages also pick up the letters. You still need the sorting apparatus to sort parcels and modern sorting machines don't have to be that huge. In the UK at least the ratio of letters to parcels for the Royal Mail in 2022 was 8 billion letters to 1.5 billion parcels so with ~20 houses per communcal unit (if you adopted the Canadian style delivery) on average you'd still b
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Maybe it's different in Denmark, but in the UK you usually have to take your parcel somewhere for collection. Last year Royal Mail started doing a collection service from your door as well.
Parcel sorting is a lot easier in the UK because they use labels with barcodes. Letters are often hand written addresses. All they need is a few barcode scanners around the conveyor belt for parcels.
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This includes a photo/scan of the envelope and for me it works nicely, for example, when it is a letter from the taxman I ask a neighbour to scan it and mail it to me.
I understand not everyone has such good neighbours but my main gripe is that the Dutch tax office still sends snailmail!
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That's really good, I wish we had that.
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If you're in the USA we do. It's call Informed Delivery and it emails you a picture of the mail that's going to be delivered that day. It includes tracking info on incoming packages a few days out and lets you e-sign for some of them.
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You may have not heard, but email is not reliable. And not everybody even has it.
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So? Still not reliable.
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More than that, it's not private either. You can send private letters to anyone. Well, at the least it's a crime to mess with the letter before it's delivered. You can't send private emails without first meeting in person to exchange security keys. Further, you'd probably get blocked as spam if all your emails were encrypted. Further, email companies can keep records of your communications forever. When you send a letter, there's only ever one copy of it. Further, is much nicer for kids to get cash i
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As opposed to hand writing an address on a piece of paper, sticking it in a box on the side of a road, and (assuming it gets to the right physical location) trusting it gets to the right person at that location?
What's the failure rate of email vs. physical post?
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So people are supposed to drive a long ways and use the public computers at the library with who knows who peering over their shoulder?
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Unless you were born 100 years ago, everyone has a car. Just drive down to the local post office and mail your bills there.
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Sensitive letters like from the tax man can be done via a website as many countries do.
Most EU countries already have a system with an app to give you secure access to such sites, the EU version is called eIDAS.
Voting can be done via a similar (or the same) system.
Vehicle registration? In developed nations that's all digitised and does since years not need paper proof.
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And for those without any type of computer? I know a few older people who have no computer and only a land line. This includes my landlady who during the recent postal strike, it cost me C$40 instead of C$1.20 to send her the rent and I had to phone her and tell her to go outside and get the package before a porch pirate did. This is Canada, lots of rural areas with minimal internet access and limited options for private delivery, especially as we're boycotting anything American since Trump.
No letters (Score:2)
I can understand that there are no personal letters any more, but what about commercial mail?
How do businesses in DN send out bills? How do their clients pay bills? Not everybody is on the internet, especially old people.
I can understand that the Danish government will be needing to spend a lot more money on its military, with the end of the NATO alliance.
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I live in the UK.
I get no post for any bill, service or business except unaddressed junk mail (i.e. flyers), or anything else for that matter.
I get almost nothing through the door, maybe a replacement credit card every couple of years.
I work in a multi-million pound business. Our parcel room is full of Amazon (because it's the cheapest way to source a ton of things), our mail is largely commercial junk that goes in the bin, and anything from our actual business partners, suppliers, etc. tends to be electro
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Now there are still a few stalwarts that don't own or know how to use a computer/smartphone but they usually find a way to get what they need.
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And when a hostile nation takes out your internet? America isn't going to wage war by replacing your bottle of schnapps with some Canada Club whiskey like the recent war we waged with you.
Bullshit excuse (Score:4, Informative)
I think that the real thing that is happening here is that the Danish part of PostNord has been mismanaged for years and this move from them is just a way to cut losses.
Unfortunately for me in Sweden, PostNord had merged with what was formerly the Swedish Postal Service, and the Swedish post is also suffering because of it.
They have not announced an end to mail delivery over here, but mail does not get delivered as often as before, and mail often gets lost. I've got overdue bills and lost doctor's appointments because of them, as have a lot of people.
This is a downward spiral, as their increasingly bad reputation only leads to them being used less and less.
Canada Post (Score:3)
I suspect if they are not careful and they carry this on much longer everyone is going to notice that they really don't need
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Lots of people noticed and a lot of businesses lost out due to the strike. Much of Canada is rural with no other good options. And now, who wants to support American companies?
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At the same time, a company called Dao has said that they are interested in taking over the delivery of mail in Denmark, so it might continue. But for a higher price I assume, since this is about PostNord's deficit.
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You can already send through dao today [dao.as]. Looks like it's cheaper than Postnord.
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Wow. I thought USPS was bad. It seems like every countries have bad mail deliveries. :(
Hey Greenland! (Score:3, Funny)
Just sayin'.
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If you want mail service, it's guaranteed under the US Constitution.
So is Birthright Citizenship, for that matter (14th amendment) - and the same clown who wants to end that is the one who wants to take over Greenland.
Birthright citizenship not so simple (Score:2)
As this lawyer says in the LA Times, Trump's position may be legally sound!
https://www.latimes.com/opinio... [latimes.com]
Yes, I was surprised too.
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Hammer is a white nationalist asshole, and most of that op-ed is whining that all the cases before were wrongly decided, without saying why.
The only legal argument he makes is about the language in the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which is only tangentially related to the 14th Amendment.
The 14th is absolutely clear: "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" has no asterisk. If someone here illegally was not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, the US would not be able to arrest them.
Trump is wrong (an
'Subject to the jurisdiction' is not so simple (Score:2)
I know you want to believe that it is, but we'll have to wait for the Supreme court to decide what it actually means!
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The Supreme Court has decided what "subject to the jurisdiction" means:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
I will not be surprised if *this* Supreme Court tries to invent a way to get around the plain language of the amendment, but that will be a political decision, not one based the 14th's history and meaning.
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If you want mail service, it's guaranteed under the US Constitution.
So is Birthright Citizenship, for that matter (14th amendment) - and the same clown who wants to end that is the one who wants to take over Greenland.
Isn't Greenland part of Denmark? So, if Trump takes over Greenland, they will get their postal service back?
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There is a dispute about " and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, " Does that apply to people in the US illegally? It is established that it does NOT apply to any offspring of a diplomat that is born here. Does it apply to tourists on a visa? Business women visiting and the kid shows up early?
Adding to the confusion a law passed in 1866 does not contain that phrase, and the 14th was ratified in 1868, it should take precedence as laws can not contradict the Constitution.
It's not as clear it as either side
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The litmus test should be pretty simple: can the person be arrested and charged with a crime? If so, they are subject to the jurisdiction of the US. Diplomats are an obvious exception.
In this case that upheld birthright citizenship, the parents were essentially here illegally thanks to the abhorrent Chinese Exclusion Act, but the child was still a US citizen:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
The current court has invented plenty of ways to ignore obviously clear legal language they do not like; they'll prob
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If you want mail service, it's guaranteed under the US Constitution.
It is not guaranteed by the Constitution. Congress is given the power to establish them, but the postal service can be any size congress legislates; even if that size is zero.
The US still has a constitution? (Score:2)
Re:Hey Greenland! Not quite accurate... (Score:2)
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And as a Territory, how much of the Constitution applies?
It is called PostNord and is Swedish owned (Score:2)
In Denmark they are infamous for being terribly slow and very expensive.
We've for a few years send our Christmas cards from Germany because that saved a lot of money compared to using Danish mail which makes me wonder, what happens with letters from outside the country?
There have been times that due to regulations some packages were easier to send than letters so I see a return to sending a brick with a letter attached
Now I do agree th
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If they drop off the "postal network" then I guess it would just get returned as undeliverable, same as if I tried to mail a letter to Haiti or Sudan.
It's will be pretty funny, though, when I can send a letter to Burundi but not Denmark.
Math Problem (Score:3)
> 187,000 employees
> volumes down 90%
Does that mean they had almost two million employees at peak?
Their total population is only 6 million. With children and retirees that would mean half the population worked for the post office.
What the hell is going on?
Were they unable to downsize at all so their only political option is to wipe it out?
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A 90% decline in letters doesn't mean a 90% decline in employment.
I assume you need a minimum about of employees to go around collecting and delivering letters everywhere. You could make that more efficient by reducing mail days, having electronic notifications for when mail is available for pickup/dropoff, and stuff like that. I assume they don't want to bother with that stuff.
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How do you mail property tax notices? (Score:2)
A big value of postal services is the ability to bill land owners for property taxes. If you don't have a mail system, how are you planning on keeping a legal record of where land owners can be contacted. Perhaps you can opt out of getting property tax notifications in the mail but if they don't have an email address are you going to bar them from buying land?
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6 million (Score:2)
The population of Denmark is 6 million. Less than NYC.
You can do all sorts of crazy stuff in such a small place.
However, one day when the internet is broken for a long time, or backups don't work, they will regret their choice.
Here, in the slightly larger and more "diverse" USA, where people are exceedingly litigious, there is no proof better in court than a piece of paper.
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Panic? They're all too rich in Denmark to bother with moving small pieces of paper around. This is akin to international wealth signaling.
"Look at us, we're all so well-sorted-out that we don't need mail anymore! Keep your dirty pieces of paper out of our country!" /s... maybe...