sa国际传媒 Post鈥檚 recent announcement of its plan to cease door-to-door mail delivery in urban areas was so badly timed that at first I wondered if it wasn鈥檛 just a holiday prank. Informing people of cuts to the postal system during the only month when the majority of us rely on mail service seems like the death bellow of a wounded caribou on the tundra, not the strategic rationalization of a healthy institution.
I think it鈥檚 fair to speculate about how far the federal government was involved in this poorly timed decision 鈥� I鈥檓 sure sa国际传媒 Post is not the primary architect of its increasing irrelevance.
For most of us, the holiday season is the only time we do much with the postal system. The flurry of Facebook messages I鈥檝e received asking for my mailing address is delightfully symptomatic of our brave new digital world: When you can instantly call or text your nearest and dearest, you don鈥檛 really need to know their postal codes or street addresses.
It鈥檚 also sweetly anachronistic that despite this, we still want to send our friends and family Christmas cards (an idea that seems great until you realize that everyone else is thinking the same thing and you don鈥檛 have any stamps and you should have done it last week only you forgot and now you have to pay for rush delivery).
The rationale, I guess, is that the Internet has made the postal service outdated to the point of obsolescence. Certainly for my generation, the concept of the post office is quaint and old-timey. We use it, but barely. Most of the mail that comes to my door is meant for the previous tenants.
Like television news, physical newspapers and land lines, the postal system has had to face the reality of the Internet. And yeah, the Internet鈥檚 great 鈥� it鈥檚 what allows me to pay my bills, do my Christmas shopping, talk to my friends and mail my column to my editor without having to change out of my pyjamas. (I live the dream, I know.)
But not everybody has the Internet.
Several weeks ago, I argued that one of the reasons libraries are still crucial is because they provide free Internet to people who wouldn鈥檛 otherwise be able to use it 鈥� people who are elderly or unable to afford a computer. But we don鈥檛 have enough of those services to assume that everyone has reliable access to the Internet, or could use it even if they did.
Why is cutting services for those who need them the answer here? What about those who have no other recourse for receiving mail? People with mobility issues, for example, or those who work long hours won鈥檛 find this pick-up-your-own-mail thing so great. And those are the people who should get more help, not less.
So I don鈥檛 buy the argument that the Internet has made mail service obsolete. It hasn鈥檛. It would be wonderful if we could look at the postal system and the Internet as complementary, rather than competing 鈥� and certainly sa国际传媒 Post has tried to do this in the past. (It鈥檚 just a shame that their attempt to establish an online presence resulted in the cumbersome e-post system.)
Sean Casey has observed that 鈥渃uts to government jobs and services ... loosen the threads that bind us together鈥� by gutting the institutions that connect us. It would have been wonderful if sa国际传媒 Post had engaged in an opt-in, opt-out initiative to move those of us who could go completely digital to online services, while retaining mail services for those who couldn鈥檛. We could have streamlined, rather than sacrificing.
Is sa国际传媒 Post perfect? No. Could it be more effective? Yes. Do I resent them for that time I was forced to buy hockey stamps because they ran out of regular ones? Of course. But mail delivery is a government service, and government services should be there for the people who need them.
I鈥檓 not disappointed because it鈥檚 going to inconvenience me (in fact, it鈥檚 going to save me some trips to the recycling bin). I鈥檓 disappointed because it鈥檚 one more way in which we are alienating people from each other, and making life harder for people who already have things hard, rather than investing in services that bring us together.
