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Usually, when I'm in Paris and someone warns me that he's sending a package, I mentally consign that unfortunate parcel to the Great Lost & Found in the Sky. If the package actually arrives — anytime in the following six years — I assign the windfall to sheer, dumb luck.
Theoretically, the French post office resembles the US Postal Service. It's committed to delivering every letter or package sent to or from every address in France, come Hell or high water. However, in practice, La Poste is a sort of daily maelstrom into which tons of innocent mail are dumped unceremoniously. This roaring vortex randomly spits out a pitiful few shreds of mail and swallows the rest. Some items that it coughs up land, coincidentally, where they were intended to go.
The rest of the mail? Who knows. Your Parisian mail carrier, preoccupied with the chore of shoving letters down the sewer drain, doesn't know. Or care.
I ponder this because my wife, Hotlips, and I are preparing to spend more time in Paris, which requires me to bid adieu to my Brooklyn mail carrier, Wendy. Like most of the USPS workers I've known over the years, Wendy's a peach. She and I stop and talk whenever we meet on the street or at the mailbox. Hotlips and I travel often, but Wendy has never complained about holding our mail and delivering it — in a back-breaking 40-pound block wrapped in rubber bands — when we get home. Sometimes I try to compensate for her labors by bringing a souvenir — chocolate from Paris, cheese from Wisconsin.
For a while last year, I worried about Wendy's job, because the US Mail (founded in 1792 by Ben Franklin) was in dire fiscal straits. It ended up losing $16 billion and making painful cutbacks. Luckily, Wendy was too valuable to lay off.
The USPS's troubles are ironic. Among the world's postal services, it is the absolute cheapest. Americans bridle at 45 cents to send a first-class letter, but this is about half the first-class rate in France, Japan, Germany, and most other countries. Moreover, the USPS is the rare national post that pays its own way, requiring no taxpayer subsidies.
So, why the big deficit?
Fact is, the USPS would be at least solvent and very likely using a surplus to expand into new services (like the postal bank that sustains Japan's P.O.), if not for a law passed by a lame-duck Republican Congress in 2006. This weird measure mandated funding of the USPS employee pension plan for 75 years forward. Suffice to say that no pension fund anywhere — public or private — requires a nest-egg good for three quarters of a century.
But that's not all. The mandate imposed a 10-year deadline — at a cost of $5 billion per year in postal revenue — for fully funding the pension plan. As these annual outlays have piled up, the postal service has gone artificially and unnecessarily into the red.
Meanwhile, House Republicans, back in the majority and led by anti-government zealot Darrell Issa (R-Cal.), chairman of the House Oversight & Government Reform Committee, are pushing new legislation to further gut the good old P.O. and land Wendy on the unemployment line (but with a really nice pension).
Theoretically, the right wing's animus toward the US Postal Service is a rigid free-market belief that all services are better performed by private outfits than by public bureaucracies. However, there are ample examples to contradict this philosophy. Take, for instance, the Post Office.
A few months ago I was reading a report that stated that with the amount of money used for public education, the government could pay private schools to every child on the public education system (that's not in the US, btw).
That simply illustrates the inneficiency of the government, when it comes to management.
Charge companies more than normal users for mail, that's one step forward. But when will those companies change to email only?
“Reading a report?” That's it? You read a report? Whose report? With information that's groundless, patently absurd and only credible to a mouth-breather who watches nothing but Fox News? What report, Mr. Roques? Written by whom? Funded by whom? For what purpose? Come on, Roques! You need to a) name your source and b) qualify that source as objective, disinterested and reliable. It's nonsense like this that gives the Internet a bad name.
Benjamin
Yeah. Privatization will eliminate all government inefficiencies. Let's outsource even the military and defense. Who needs governments when private firms can do it all?
I think that India Post is doing a fine job in this regard. I usually prefer it over the various private courier services because i have found the services reliable, efficient, cheap and omnipresent. I think that PO as bank has also help them keep afloat as the interest rates are usually higher. Although India post is as old but whether they will pass the test of time or not is highly depend on technology upgrade and services.
There's been a lot of criticism of Intel for its “failure” to break into and be the biggest supplier of chips to smartphone OEMs. That's fair criticism but it doesn't represent the entire picture. Intel's future hinges on more than PCs and smartphones as the company laid out during its conference call.
Intel has very good enginnering human resources and prudent management. Intel will not have troubel migrating to new pasture.
I don't know.
Sometimes what seems to be a simple pivot mght not be. Especially when you factor in the resource costs involved with the move.
@pocharle: I agree, after all we are assisting to unpredictable events which are impacting, in a such way, this market; for instance, Mozilla smartphone advent, is another event probably ever been considered only a few months ago for most of us.
We'll see how that goes. I don't predict much success with it.
It will be presented in a few weeks, in Europe at GSM event in Madrid. Quite curious to assist to what will happen in terms of market's reactions, competitors' reactions and endusers feeling.
While Intel is a dominant player in computer chips, but when it comes to smartphones I guess they are not there. Smartphone is a tough consumer market, it may be not be vey easy to bring from prduct design to market and production the chips for smartphones..
I don't blame Intel entirely for their slowness in terms of going for the smartphone market. It shows that they're careful of what they do. I think the biggest issue here is the fact that Intel doesn't want to lose focus on it's core strength which is manufacturing processors and chips for the laptops and PCs and entering into the smartphone market may cause them to lose focus on this.
“Smartphone is a tough consumer market, it may be not be vey easy to bring from prduct design to market and production the chips for smartphones..”
@SP: I agree. While it may seem easy on paper, entering into the smartphone business may involve a great change in the entire supply chain and operating procedures for Intel. What has worked for them in the PCs and laptop market may not necessarily work in the Smartphones market.
” Intel's future hinges on more than PCs and smartphones as the company laid out during its conference call.”
@Bolaji: Apart from PCs and Smartphones, what is Intel trying to get into? Are they looking to enter into chips for gaming consoles etc? It would be interesting if they do try to shift their focus away from PCs and Laptops.
Taimoorz,
You have noted that you think Intel wants to focus on its core business which is PCs and laptops. Let me remind you that Intel made a previous attempt to be more successful in the mobile handset market when it had a communications and application chip business for the mobile handhelds and cellphone market. As it turned out, that business flopped and Intel had to sell it to Marvell Technology Group. When Intel sold the business it said it wanted to focus on its core business, and as we know the PC business has slumped significantly. I think companies have to be thinking ahead of the curve, and currently I'm not sure Intel is doing a good job of reacting to the shifts that are currently occurring in the marketplace.
Thanks for your comments.
_hm
You've noted that you think Intel has what it takes to expand its smartphone chip business. I hope you are correct. I'm a bit more apprehensive, though, because Intel made a previous attempt to expand into this area and ended up having to sell its chip business for mobile handhelds and the cellphone market to Marvell Technology Group. My question is what is going to make Intel succeed this time around? In fact the market has now changed significantly with Qualcomm's chips dominating this market. I think Intel recognizes that it has to get into the smartphone market because it needs to crack open that revenue stream, and it may increase its chip business in this market because it barely has any market share to begin with. I look forward to the next two years to see if Intel can succeed in getting more of its chips inside smartphones.
Thanks for your comments.
Eh. ANother competitor to Google and the others. I guess we'll see if there's any real 'new' innovation there.
I am with you, even coming back to Mozilla, they could count on a very strong advantage do to the adoption of their browser abroad and several versions produced exactly for fitting smartphone technology.
Yes, Intel is bumbling about in the mobile processor market currently but I wouldn't write it off. It is going to be a long fight and one Intel cannot afford to walk away from so let's avoid predicting it will fail here yet. That conclusion may be premature.
Dear Bolaji,
There is something unsettling about Intel being so far behind in the wireless chip market, especially when the company already had a communications and application processor business which developed and sold processors for handheld devices including smart phones . That business was sold to Marvell Technology Group in 2006. This means Intel took the initiative to get into the market and things did not work out.
Yes, I understand that Intel has deep pockets, it has strong relationships with OEMs that make smartphones and Intel will be offering new products from its Infineon division. The company completed the purchase of Infineon Technologies AG Wireless Solutions in 2011. I believe that Intel is going to have a rough time competing in this market, and it will still be at least two more years before we can gauge whether Intel can aggressively compete in this market. Two years is a lifetime in technology, and frankly nothing is certain.
Thanks for your comment.
Taimoorz,
You said: “I think the biggest issue here is the fact that Intel doesn't want to lose focus on it's core strength which is manufacturing processors and chips for the laptops and PCs and entering into the smartphone market may cause them to lose focus on this. “
It seems you think that Intel cannot develop its smartphone business and its laptop and PC chips at the same time? Interestingly, when Intel sold its communications and application processor business, which developed processors for handheld devices including smart phones to Marvell Technology Group, Intel said it wanted to focus on its core business. I s it not possible for Intel to walk and chew gum at the same time? Hmmmm. That's a thought.
Intel has said it expects products from its Infineon wireless acquisition to reach mass scale in 2014. So, I expect it will start making a splash here by then. My point, though, is that Intel can't just be about PC processors or smartphone/tablet processors otherwise it will find itself in the same position in a few years.
Don't underestimate Intel's ability to design processors and also to (eventually) act as a foundry with its world beating technology. If it can crank out designs with more MIPS per current consumption then it might regain some of what it has lost.
@The Source: I don't deny that companies don't have to be thinking about the shifts in the market and possible expansion, but that move shouldn't involve a shift from the core strategy or competence. I fear this might happen in Intel's case.
“I s it not possible for Intel to walk and chew gum at the same time?”
@The Source: Intel can surely do that as long as chewing gum doesn't make you walk slowly or walk on the wrong path. It can step into mobile processors but will it continue to innovate on the laptop and desktop side at the same pace and be able to maintain the market share there? That's something questionable.
We have heard about Intel entering mobile since last year and maybe the year before..unless Apple switch iPhones to using Intel chipset.