I've been wating patiently for someone else to say it
but it hasn't happened yet, so : scrapping the postal service has got to be one of the dumbest ideas I've heard floated in recent memory. It is a bit unclear but it sounds like the suggestion is that snail-mail ought better be replaced with email because a) email is somehow magically immune from spam and b) it is somehow cheaper to buffer the network from terrorist ne'er-do-wells. two words : PENIS ENLARGEMENT. Not enough? Okay, how about : power failure. It may take a while longer, but the old skool mail system doesn't fundamentally break without electricity. Beyond that, however, there is the issue that the world simply isn't ready to really live in the paper-less office. Go ask a lawyer about it. They sign photocopies, for heavens sake. Their whole world is still orchestrated around the idea that there really is a single, authoritative copy of *anything*. Finally, there is the time-honoured argument that the [insert government agency here] doesn't do things as "efficiently" as the private sector. Two more words : that's right. Sometimes they don't and often for perfectly good reasons. The government, notwithstanding the one-eyed man, is not a fucking business! It has a different set of priorities and a different set of measures. One of the functions of government is to (mostly) provide services to most of the people, most of the time and not with maximizing shareholder profits. Often, the latter is confused as somehow being synonimous with the former but it's not. The government is not just another "service provider". It is a reflection of what a society values. It is one way in which the idea of a community of individuals, bound together in mutual reliance, is given form. And if it costs a little more to make sure that a benefit is universally available then, surprise surprise, that's the price you pay.