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Comment by jonknee | Hacker News Reader

> The big sell of the postal service is that it costs the same amount to send a letter from San Francisco to Los Angeles as it does to send a letter from the bayou in Louisiana to Honolulu, Hawaii. In this, physical mail is the big equalizer.

That's also true of the internet. It doesn't cost anything to email someone who's right next to you or who is across the globe. There is very little demand for mail these days and that's pretty obvious from watching the linked USPS advertisement.

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To send and receive USPS mail, you need... a mailbox. To send and receive email you need an internet subscription and a computer. Internet access can be impossible to find, or very expensive, in many areas that are serviced by USPS. Saying "It doesn't cost anything to email someone... who is across the globe" is only true if you both have the infrastructure, equipment, and service necessary.

Well, to receive USPS mail you need an address. Permanent travelers, the homeless, people in the process of moving, moving- these people are difficult or impossible to reach by mail, but any time they pop into a library or internet cafe, they have an email address. I would say that /that/ is the great equalizer, more than remote people with mailboxes in this day and age.

Permanent travelers, the homeless, etc. can receive mail at the post office by general delivery. (Letters addressed to

J. Doe

GENERAL DELIVERY

Anytown, Anystate 12345

are held for pickup at the post office for 30 days.) This was once common knowledge, but seems to be less so these days.

Wow. I didn't know they still did that.

So just by writing GENERAL DELIVERY instead of a street address, it gets held? I suppose the kick here is that the person needs to know they're getting mail. Do they need an ID to pick it up?

Maybe going to the post office was a daily routine? I wouldn't know.

It's rapidly becoming that you only need a cell phone, which would potentially make the internet much more feasible than snail-mail; owning a cell phone is far easier than owning a house and staying in a single location.

I'll grant that it's not there yet - plenty of places aren't covered by cell towers. But they're diminishing, and plenty of places aren't on postal routes either. If anything, cell towers will soon cover more area, as I can get reception miles from any road, but USPS won't deliver to where I'm standing.

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