Companies are now allowed to produce quasi-advertisement stamps, courtesy of Zazzle.com, among others. (My fiancee and I made custom stamps for our wedding invitations. Aww...) Big deal? Well, the U.S. Postal Service is hoping to increase mail use and increase revenue. "Thanks to ubiquitous e-mail and more efficient modes of correspondence, first-class mail has waned from 100 billion pieces sent in 1998 to 98 billion last year." Isn't that a good thing - less paper waste, less gas and storage costs? Shouldn't the USPS be spending time considering how to phase out the entire mail service completely? Please excuse the libertarian portions of my neo-liberal political beliefs, but the USPS is over 200 years old, an archaic system with arcane policies. The service will never and should never make a profit. The USPS shouldn't compete with FedEx, UPS or DHL; they should contract with them. Small business is the answer to solving our postal service needs. (It could be done; it will be done.)

Archived: Back in August 2003, I blogged about the inefficiencies of the U.S. Postal Service and proposed a means of phasing the service out.