Totally agree here. There is a lot of politics involved though. Many elderly folks still use snail mail and make up a large part of the voting public. Tough decisions need to be made for sure. The status quo will not last long.

While in theory you could potentially save trees and burn less fuel by removing the mail service completely you are missing a HUGE part of the mail service. The non paper based mail. Who will pick up this service, are we to pay UPS and FedEx to do this, who will bring me my netflix DVDs, my Ebay packages, my free amazon shipping, Or any other small package i don;t need in 3 days.  
 
Instead i think the USPS should apply some of the laws we have for SPAM mail in my email to the physical mail i get. TO be honest, mail man would only need to come to my house 2 times a week if he didn't drop off all the useless junk mail i get every day. 
 
My point is that the USPS is more than just paper based envelopes, this MUST be considered in the above argument of removing the delivery service completely.

I know you guys are Internet marketers, but as a direct marketer, both online and offline - your missing the boat here. 
 
Direct (snail) mail is still one of the most effective marketing methods for ANY business when executed properly.

Dear Mr. President,  
 
Don't stop at Saturday delivery. Please save US Taxpayers billions of dollars every year by ending all postal service. The private sector can pick up the slack and you will get actual competition for deliverying information at a competitive price. This is not 1860, this is 2010. Anyone who has visited their mailbox lately would not be inclined to subsidize the schlock I recieve to the tune of BILLIONS of public taxpayer money. Send it via email. Quick, simple and inexpensive. You can even include attachments! and you can save the trees. Sorry for the rant :-)

I agree that the US postal service has become an antiquated service for sending messages; however, I would hesitate to agree your vision for USPS 2.0.  
 
In my opinion, it would open doors for the government to police electronic communication even more so than they do now. Also, bureaucracies are notoriously inefficient.  
 
I'd rather see the no longer needed UPSP funds go to other government programs that are in need of help such as health care or social security, and then government contractors or private companies can take the rains on providing the network security and anti-spam measures.

I think you are missing a lot of what USPS does for business. Some of us work in the material world and send packages to customers. USPS does a much better job for me than FedEx or UPS ever did. I suspect you are just using this as a conversation starter, though. 
 
@Dave I like the idea of applying SPAM laws to physical mail.

Okay. I like the enthusiasm, and I like the vision. And I agree that rather than let snail mail rot beneath them, the USPS needs to go where the people go. But my question is this: wouldn't the intensive training required to make this vision a reality necessitate either A) increasing the price of postage or B) charging for sending digital messages? Will the USPS be charging me for sending email, in other words, in return for being a SPAM filter?

I think we'll get there, but this is going to take some time. With 20% of American adults still not even using the internet, this would be tough to implement, and I'm almost positive it wouldn't pass by Congress. 
 
Second: as a business owner, I use 100% recycled paper for direct mail-- and I include a notice asking people not to throw it in the trash, but rather recycle it when they're done with it. Adam Arnette is 100% correct that for small business, direct mail is by far one of THE MOST effective methods in marketing.

What about people that pay their bills via mail? What about people who have never used a computer before? What will we use if something goes wrong with the networks and communications infrastructure?  
 
Mail will never go away. It is always something that even though it may be used less and less as time goes on it will never go away. People thought that now with computers and tablets that the pen and paper will go away. Nope! 
 
I agree though that we should focus less on paper mail and improve our technology.

What is the human resources cost of this proposed USPS 2.0 revolution? If we thought our unemployment ranks were swollen now, imagine what they would be like with the large numbers of people you're proposing losing their jobs? This is an extreme answer -require that snail mail be printed on recycled paper, but I love our mail carrier, who has faithfully delivered our mail for the last ten years and I'm not interested in him losing his job. He's already had to increase his route to almost double the work load. We need to find solutions that don't make our employment situation worse!

It already exists, and its called Zumbox. Go go: https://www.zumbox.com/hmctrl 
 
to find out more. We have no affilation with this firm -- it is just a great idea.

How about Monday, Wed. and Friday for USPS delivery...

I agree with Dave and Lori - i think this article is really missing the point that the USPS does way more than paper mail. I run a business selling products and use the USPS for the majority of my shipping. Having to rely only on UPS or FedEx for this would eat up more of my time and hurt my bottom line.

"If we think conservatively and say every first class piece was only one piece of paper and one envelope, then as Americans we wasted more than 42.4 million sheets of paper in only 90 days." 
 
Incorrect. Many small packages are sent first class and therefore, not a waste at all. I sell goods online and use first class mail whenever possible. I don't consider it being wasteful to send packages in the mail.  
 
I would also be ok with monday, wednesday, and friday delivery and def ok with spam regulations for snail mail! That would be awesome, but they won't ever happen since the USPS makes money sending that spam mail.

Mike, you raised a great point about the need to be more aware of the wastefulness of direct mail. I agree that it's a waste--most of the time. However, I am a very tactile person, so I like to touch and hold and flip through physical catalogues (and I like physical books, keep a daily planner instead of using the calendar function on my Blackberry--you get the point). I also love getting personal correspondence--it wouldn't be Christmas without Christmas cards! Is privatization of mail delivery even an option when the USPS is so operationally efficient?

I hate snail mail spam as much as anyone, but get rid of the USPS completely? I can't imagine it -- and I don't want to. I still treasure a handwritten note from a loved one and, believe it or not, not everyone is online. Then there are the many packages which I send and receive via USPS.  
 
So, no, I don't think getting rid of the USPS is the solution. We should try to reduce unwanted mail instead and encourage people to use online options as appropriate.

I think you've got the problem wrong. Routes will be run and mail processed no matter how much mail is sent. The sweater I left at my Aunt's house in Oregon cannot be emailed. 
 
The USPS has it wrong too. So much of their operations are long-term assets: facilities, trucks, sorting equipment. Sweating these assets (using them more) decreases the cost per piece.  
 
Filling trucks and optimizing routes to avoid left turns and stop lights is a lot more realistic and reasonable strategy to minimize costs and environmental impact on delivery. 
 
Imagine, a truck WILL run between USPS aggregation facilities in New York and Walpole, MA whether they're filled 50% or 99%.  
 
I think this is an efficiency and process engineering problem more than anything.

I agree 100%, and actually for all you Seinfeld fans out there, Kramer was on to this idea years ago... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsS_WT9aC9g 
 

Dang Kipp, this was friggin awesome, loved it! Count me in on the UPS 2.0 bandwagon. Your points about direct mailers I thought were especially poinant...Burn the boats already!!!! :-)

What you're talking about here is DOWNSIZING a government agency. Good luck with that!

Kip: As Jim points out, USPS 2.0 is called Zumbox: a digital mailbox for every street address in the U.S. Every U.S. business and household is now digitally networked. And the closed nature of the system means that it's secure and that every sender and recipient has been verified.  
 
I'm VP of Marketing and Government Relations for the company. Feel free to reach out: rob [at] zumbox dotcom.  
 
P.S. Huge proponent of inbound (discovery) marketing. I also write www.MaxGladwell.com

I am still hoping they will bring back the pony express!!!

I thought the web was going to end paper usage for good hence my company name, future-ink. I may have been too optimistic in my hope. I find that I frequently still need to print digital documents that are emailed to me.

Unfortunately I think the author misses the point. The USPS is still incredibly useful for sending packages which is very valuable for Internet-based businesses. Not all first class mail is junk mail or letters - in fact, much of what I've sent out in the past 6 months is packages. 
 
 
 
Also, how would security be handled online? And network connections are not ubiquitous - but maiboxes are. Only about 75% of America has access to the Internet. And what about those important letters from government agencies like Social Security, the IRS, the DMV, the census etc. I can't really imagine those kinds of things being sent through email let alone a social network. 
 
 
 
This post reminds me of late 1990s era thinking that email will make the USPS unnecessary and that things like voting will all happen online. Still hasn't happened yet, and I think there's reasons why it hasn't. Some things are better when they're not connected to the Internet. I really don't want to see election results hacked into just because the government decided that the voting machines should be connected to the Internet. 
 
 
 

Wow Kipp, that was a very impactful article. I am sure that most people don't even think of the impact the USPS has on the world. I love your idea of the blue mail boxes being hubs for internet access. The only thing we would have to solve is shipping packages, but maybe that is what UPS and Fed X are for, not that I ship packages, I just do gift cards.

Your article glosses right over some important factors. That 80 billion dollars wouldn't go anywhere else. Those are NOT tax dollars. The USPS is self funded. There are real life customers out there who pay that 80 billion each year for a vital service. If it wasn't necessary people wouldn't use it period. Next point. The paper indusry is one of the greenest industries in the world. There are literally millions more trees planted than are harvested each year. Do you really think that electronic communication are more green? Think about the toxic chemicals used in your PC, monitor, keyboard, and etc. Aside from that, most power is generated by coal burning or nuclear power plants, now thats green LOL! Next point. If your going to kill an industry because it loses money for a year or two say goodbye to air trave, real estate, automobiles, and recently, most of the financial sector. You also don't seem to realize how insecure the internet actually is. Less than 3% of all identity theft has anything to do with the "snail mail". The other 97+% are all electronic. It's the fastest growing crime in the USA. Plus you would be inviting the government to take the internet over from private industry to better "regulate" it. I don't want them to be that involved in cyberspace. You don't think they will? Neither did General Motors or America's largest banks. As far as marketing goes, all of the stdies prove that direct mailing works, and internet marketing does NOT. I could go on and on with problems in this short sighted article, but I'd rather not waste any more of my time.