Technology

So do you think that shipping companies should charge fees to both sender and recipient? Because that’s the physical equivalent of this situation.

I mean... they do? There are fees to load and unload cargo onto boats/planes/whatever. Hell, big rig trucks also have prices. This cost is just generally masked (and pushed to the consumer...) when you order something from Amazon (because this IS Amazon we are talking about)

And shipping companies will often tend to mask this. They either eat the cost (because they are using significant parts of that shipping container themselves) or ensure they are making a significant profit on all the other packages so they can give lower traffic a better deal and so forth.

Which... is what led to the kind of shitshow where Amazon eventually ended up investing a LOT in their own internal shipping infrastructure (and the gig economy). Because UPS/USPS/FedEx realized that a very significant percentage of their packages were from a single company. And that was already one of the bigger companies on the planet by that point.

So let's continue to torture this metaphor. I am old enough to remember when you could put almost anything in a fedex envelope and they would ship it. I also am old enough to remember getting confused why they were weighing a package one time and factoring that into the cost. Because there was a general assumption that the volume of a package was strongly correlated with its weight and all that mattered was how much truck space it used. Then they learned that people ship a LOT of books (hmmm... Hey, what did Amazon start out as again?) and the flat rate packaging prices went way the hell up and there was a much bigger emphasis on weighing packages (and a lot of flat rate boxes actually do have a maximum weight in the fine print).

In theory, the price of shipping covers the repairs on the trucks and the planes and so forth. And, on average, it does. It doesn't pay for the gatorade bottles for drivers to piss in while they are driving between stops, but it does cover oil changes, repairs to suspensions, etc. Until the underlying math shifts heavily and needs to be readjusted. Now they need to repair suspensions much more frequently, do more cargo flights (oh god, that means even more chances for Tom Hanks to be stranded on an island!), buy better trucks, etc.

Which then becomes the question: Should everyone's cost of use increase to cover this? it now costs me 10% more to ship a package because fedex needs to buy new trucks this year. And, because capitalism, that is never going down and the increased profits next year will be considered a win for the new trucks. Or should the "We Have Lex Luthor at home" mother fucker stuffing trucks full of hardcover books to build his empire maybe get charged on a different tier?

And same thing with internet traffic. We are charged based on an expected "weight" of traffic. Too much traffic and hardware tends to fail more regularly or need to be upgraded. And a certain percentage of upgrades are factored in to those internet bills. But if EVERYTHING needs an upgrade, that becomes a very significant cost. Which, again, either is going to be spread out among all users or just Bex Buthor who is the main cause of it.

But you'll notice I stopped talking about USPS REAL quick during that long ramble. And that is because USPS still have flat rate packaging for dirt cheap. And it is part of the core of the organization that you could literally fill that up with tungsten (or a child) and they would deliver it, no questions asked (I think they would ask about the child these days, but it is still a story worth looking up). And that is because they are (keeping it simple) part of the US Government and are subsidized as a result. This is essential to get... essentials to people in rural and under-served communities.

Which... is what is already happening with a lot of internet infrastructure in the US. Google ain't gonna roll up and do the paperwork to lay fiber, so counties and states are doing it and hoping an ISP will use it. And a lot of us argue that internet should be treated like any other utility in that regard, but there are a lot of issues with that approach that I won't get into.

As for Korea? I genuinely have no idea how their internet (or shipping) businesses breakdown. So I have no idea if the above is at all relevant or if this is just a case of politicians being assholes or what. But... any time Amazon is involved, I tend to assume they are at least 30% at fault.

But... kudos on picking the absolute best possible metaphor to explain this. Like, genuinely. Because we all know the "internet is tubes" metaphors don't work. But, when you are thinking in terms of an ISP, the Internet kind of IS shipping packages.