Netflix Buys U.S.P.S. (If Only)

Katherine Mangu-Ward | August 11, 2009

Somewhere in a parallel universe right now, Netflix is in talks to purchase the U.S. Postal Service from the federal government. Here on our Earth, it's never going to happen. But what a beautiful idea to contemplate:

How would this look? Here are my suggestions: First all, all mail would be one size and have to be sent in those familiar red mailers. That would mean that anything larger would have to use some other carrier, such as Fedex or UPS. International mail? Same thing. Magazines? Well, this is hard for an old magazine editor like myself, but they will have to change to the Netflix form factor if they still want to be mailed. Junk mail? Same deal. Standardization is key. No more post cards. If it doesn’t fit in a mailer, you can’t mail it.

Next, we eliminate postage stamps. Since we all will be using the standard mailers, we have standard postage. You buy the mailer and pay for the postage right then and there. Forget about metering based on weight: whatever you can cram into one of those envelopes is what you get to send. This obviates the need to run local post offices: if you need to mail something bigger, you can go on down to Kinkos or the local UPS store. They give better customer service there anyway....

Netflix is a good choice to run the USPS for one other reason: it has an amazing employee base. You couldn’t pick something that was more the polar opposite of the feather-bedded, anti-customer oriented, highly unmotivated, hyper regulated postal system if you tried.

Read the whole thing here, and Fast Company's take on it here. I wrote about the end of the "Privatize the Post Office!" dream here.

Comments

Xeones|8.11.09 @ 3:34PM|#

Aw, poor Ezra Klein.

|8.11.09 @ 3:47PM|#

If it weren't for the silly postal monopoly, we'd have a giant network of pneumatic tubes through which the post, cargo, and people could be shipped from one place to another. . .as I've proposed here before.

|8.11.09 @ 3:55PM|#

Yrah cuz the problem with the US mail is that it has to much customized service and what we need is a big for profit corperation to standardize it....that make a shit load of sense.

T|8.11.09 @ 4:06PM|#

Somebody doesn't quite get that the mail sorting isn't necessarily the hard part. The part where an actual live human trucks around to your neighborhood/building/physical location is the bitch. In other words, the part Netflix contracted out to the USPS. Why would they want to take that burden on?

|8.11.09 @ 4:07PM|#

. . .which is why we should have pneumatic tubes linking every American home.

<strike>strike through</strike|8.11.09 @ 4:08PM|#

Maybe Netflix should run our healthcare system.

Craig|8.11.09 @ 4:26PM|#

Why sing the praises of a doomed corporation, one which relies on a government spin-off monopoly to ship physical copies of data that could (and will) be sent faster and cheaper, electronically, in the very near future, if not today but for the vestiges of the once government-created monopoly telecommunications system.

Craig|8.11.09 @ 4:27PM|#

And aren't magazines obsolete anyway?

Space Fiend|8.11.09 @ 4:27PM|#

I spent a summer working graveyard at a Post Office distribution center. Needless to say, it sucked, but what I did learn is that first class mail doesn't cost more because of the sorting process- that's really pretty simple, they have machines that can read all but the worst zip-code printing, and most of the addresses. If an item is allowed to be sent first class, they already have machinery that can sort it easily, and it even puts it into house order for an individal carrier. The problem with the post office isn't a lack of standardization.

Waggoneer|8.11.09 @ 4:30PM|#

T is correct.

Netflix works because they use the government subsidized mail distribution system. If they had to pay the actual cost of shipping, their business-model would be economically unfeasible too.

Craig|8.11.09 @ 4:30PM|#

And if Netflix really ran the US Post Office, you wouldn't be able to send your Mom the birthday you wanted to on time, because they wouldn't have bought enough of them, resulting in a "Long Wait" and in your Mom getting your eighth choice card, some two-star made-for-cardboard knockoff of a hit card. And when it got to your Mom's house, the envelope would be all wrinkled and the card scratched so she couldn't read the second half anyway.

|8.11.09 @ 4:33PM|#

"You buy the mailer and pay for the postage right then and there. Forget about metering based on weight: whatever you can cram into one of those envelopes is what you get to send."

The USPS is sort of doing that now.

Space Fiend|8.11.09 @ 4:47PM|#

Oh and for the record, Netflix gives the Post Office a hell of a time shipping DVDs first class, for the machines to work they need to be able to bend the card (for a fraction of a second) in order to move it on and off different "tracks" (think of train switches).

So if Netflix bought the USPS, they would end up with a whole bunch of equipment that can't handle their stupid DVD-in-paper concept.

|8.11.09 @ 4:59PM|#

I've used Netflix for a while, but these days most of the stuff I watch is streaming over the internets rather than going through the mail system.

If Netflix did take over the postal system, they'd probably obsolete it in a couple years... that would be interesting.

|8.11.09 @ 5:11PM|#

The USPS is a freaking marvel, much like the US military - the possible they do right away, the impossible they do within the week. (Although for the crazily impossible you might be better off with UPS or FedEx). That doesn't mean that it doesn't require a comically ponderous bureaucracy, but that's part and parcel of gov't services.

About the only things I want the government to do for me are the two things they've shown a mind-bending ability to do well: military (kill people, destroy things) and postal service (deliver mail of all shapes and sizes to bizarre places, no matter how rural).

I frankly can't think of anything else that couldn't be done better by unleashed capitalist endeavors. Having said that...

Craig is right that Netflix is as doomed as Pompei unless they go "all digital" when the technology to do so becomes just another box connected to your TV. However, they're moving to that model already and are actually ahead of the curve, but for now most people have DVD players that require a hard copy disc just like most people drive cars that run on gasoline. But it's unlikely that the USPS is going to go the way of Netflix, as long as Amazon/UPS/FedEx still has to deliver what you ordered to your door.

So while Netflix probably isn't doomed, they're not a good example for who should deliver mail.

Singing the praises of government agencies... I never thought I'd see the day. I think I need a drink!

Spartacus|8.11.09 @ 5:34PM|#

Hey rob-

get me one while you're at it. Don Julio anejo, straight up, skip the salt and lime crap.

Thanks.

T|8.11.09 @ 6:08PM|#

Craig is right that Netflix is as doomed as Pompei unless they go "all digital" when the technology to do so becomes just another box connected to your TV. However, they're moving to that model already and are actually ahead of the curve, but for now most people have DVD players that require a hard copy disc just like most people drive cars that run on gasoline.

Netflix needs to step up the frakking bandwidth for their online settop service before it really takes off. I have a nice big TV with a blu-ray player and Netflix streaming has this tendency to look like pickled ass in comparison. I'll put up with stuttering and pixellation when I'm watching some moron hurt himself on Youtube. When I sit down in the living room to watch a film, screw that. I have higher standards than Netflix can consistently deliver online.

The Libertarian Guy|8.11.09 @ 6:34PM|#

I actually had to stand in line at a local post office a while back (in the third-largest city in Missouri, not some podunk backwater where the post office doubles as the local jail/grocery store/lube'n'oil/DVD rental outlet), and I was there for five minutes, with five people ahead of me... and it was TWENTY minutes before I got my turn at the counter.

I voiced my displeasure by saying - while still in line - "This is what government health care will look like. Good thing people rarely bleed to death at the post office", so that might have slowed things down a little.

Try it next time you're queued up waiting for these public servants to do their jobs... the people in line will either appreciate it, or call you a "rotten effing tea-bagger anarchist", as one fool opined. It's still worth it.

squarooticus|8.11.09 @ 7:05PM|#

Netflix needs to step up the frakking bandwidth for their online settop service before it really takes off.

This is one of the reasons why one of the sayings in my line of work is, "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of magnetic tape." With existing technology, you can move a lot more data in the same amount of time via magnetic tape than you can via optical cable, though the latency and time to first bit transferred suffer a bit. :-)

Netflix's business model of mailing DVD's---which re-encoded in h.264 would be 1.5-2 Gigs---still makes sense. With the advent of HD movies (Blu-ray), each of which takes at least 8 Gigs in h.264 for a good encoding, the advantage of transferring the data via post will still be there for a while longer. Eventually, fiber will be able to handle all consumer data traffic, but it isn't there yet, neither from a capacity nor price standpoint.

|8.11.09 @ 7:05PM|#

The post office will wither away.

Hugh Akston|8.11.09 @ 7:05PM|#

Ayn Rand wrote an interesting column about why she loves stamp collecting, connecting it to the wonder of being able to send a letter across the world in a week or so for only a few cents. She didn't even mention the government monopoly on postal service.

Whatever the criticisms of her fiction, her work in the LA Times was one of the finest parts of her career, and one of the strangest chapters for the paper.

LarryA|8.11.09 @ 7:31PM|#

(deliver mail of all shapes and sizes to bizarre places, no matter how rural)

There's the story about the guy who bought a piece of property in wayoutback Alaska somewhere. The cheapest way he could find to have the concrete blocks he needed for his house delivered was to mail them, individually.

Can't find a link. I think USPS probably changed the rules after that.

robc|8.11.09 @ 8:45PM|#

squarooticus

I always use the 747 full of tape as the bandwidth example. Maybe because I had a client in Australia and the truck analogy didnt quite work.

<strike>strike through</strike|8.12.09 @ 8:03AM|#

I was there for five minutes, with five people ahead of me... and it was TWENTY minutes before I got my turn at the counter.

Sounds like the prescription pickup line at Walmart.

D-FENS|8.12.09 @ 6:44PM|#

Wait wait wait. I love this place, but first we're getting articles on how important it is to have choices (specific article was about the "tyranny of too much choice" at the supermarket; Consumer Vertigo, June 2005), and now we're espousing on how great it would be to have one size of mail at the most common vendor?

Is the USPS really subsidized? I thought they were required to be self-supporting, but I do recall reading that they were in the red. And, as Das Leben der Anderen pointed out, they already have some standardized services. I've managed to send some pretty heavy materials for cheap with their flat-rate Priority Mail boxes, and you can print postage at home through their website, so you don't always have to wait at the PO. I've had one bad experience with Parcel Post delivery (two weeks to get to the next town over), but everything else has been pretty darn good...

On the downside, as other posters have pointed out, the lines in the offices can be interminably long, usually because one person has some whacked-out problem that the clerk can't explain to them. I'm lucky because I can go to a local college post office, which has minimal lines, if any. I was also tweaked at the USPS TV ads regarding how much cheaper Priority Mail was for delivery in a "2-3 days," when they significantly omitted that FedEx guarantees that your package will be there in x days for the extra cost.