this post was submitted on 05 Mar 2025
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[–] thisphuckinguy 4 points 40 minutes ago

Someone punch him in the face, please

[–] Wispy2891 2 points 27 minutes ago

In my country since the government privatized a part of postal service, the quality of service heavily declined to the point that now is almost guaranteed that they will "lose" your letter if you send it in a place that will cost too much to deliver

[–] rageagainstmachines 3 points 1 hour ago

Privatize deez nutz, bitch

[–] [email protected] 9 points 2 hours ago

This has been a fever dream of Republicans for my entire life. Looks like they just may get it this time.

[–] CharlesDarwin 3 points 1 hour ago

This is exactly the shit that will give permanent erections to the cons.

And people should not call this shit "Trumpism" - this is who the Republicans are and what the Republican project has always been. They HATE the idea of a functioning society for all. Next up, we're going to hear how education should be handed over to the Devos family. You know, for "choice".

[–] [email protected] 16 points 3 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 hour ago

Definitely, I live in a very rural area of the country I think it might be one of the most rural places in the lower 48 states. And we heavily depend on the postal service to get things that we simply don’t have here. This will totally cripple my town and 99% of the people here will blame it on woke.

[–] SolidShake 5 points 2 hours ago

try it. no one will use it then.

[–] NatakuNox 10 points 4 hours ago (3 children)

The post office would take an act of congress.

[–] CharlesDarwin 6 points 1 hour ago

Whole lotta shit happening right now that should take an act of congress. Seems to make no difference.

[–] T00l_shed 15 points 4 hours ago

Nah, not anymore, just an XO and the little fascists will make it happen.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago

Both would, actually. They are independent quasi governmental corpirations.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

You know who wants to replace the postal service? Amazon. They have delivery vehicles, lockers, and so on. They have been building towards it for years. I'm sure an attack on the postal service would leave Amazon on top, and I bet it's a plan in the works.

As for Amtrak, maybe musk wants to swallow it up with his boring company.

[–] jj4211 19 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Actually they don't, they want to replace fedex and UPS.

No one wants the business of daily letter service.

[–] Zron 23 points 5 hours ago (3 children)

What people who want to gut the postal service don’t understand is that it’s a fucking service.

The USPS does last mile delivery for all courier agencies. FedEx and UPS won’t pay a driver to deliver your dildo out to your cabin in bumfuck Nebraska, but the USPS will, along with your tax documents, bank statements, and anything else you need.

If you get rid of USPS, you’re cutting anyone who isn’t in a major city off from not only packages, but critical documents.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago) (1 children)

It is insane to me when people complain about the failure of a public service to turn a profit as if that's some kind of bad or unexpected outcome.

Services cost money to operate for the benefit of those using them. That is literally the point.

[–] CharlesDarwin 1 points 1 hour ago

Yes, the Republican con has been to compare government to a household budget and/or corporations, and it's just so very stupid.

[–] NotMyOldRedditName 2 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 2 hours ago)

nah, they'd then require someone else who takes on the private company to do it, give them 10 billion dollars to ensure the infrastructure remains and the service is provided, and then they would still refuse to do it but somehow use all the money anyway.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

I had to ups a document recently certified delivery but the company i was doing business with refuses to receive usps mail. It cost me $50 to send a fucking letter. I was so pissed.

[–] Itdidnttrickledown 13 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

As long as they pay out the full pension to all the employee's. After every postal employee's pension is fully funded.

[–] T00l_shed 10 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Lol, you know they wouldn't

[–] Itdidnttrickledown 1 points 1 hour ago

Of course not. Its been the dream of these scumbags for decades to get their hooks in to all that pension money and screw over the postal workers. They forget the term going postal exist for a reason.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 hours ago

AmTrak is a hill I am willing to die for on.

[–] Bathilda_Bagshot 13 points 5 hours ago

They want to eliminate or control the Postal Service so that they can eliminate mail-in voting. Their added bonus is padding the pockets of fellow millionaires and billionaires.

[–] [email protected] 171 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

fuck no, nationalize spacex and starlink

[–] ivanafterall 54 points 8 hours ago (4 children)

Makes a whole lot more sense, honestly.

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[–] [email protected] 132 points 9 hours ago (5 children)

No.

Not everything should be privatized so some asshole oligarch can have another toy.

[–] Davin 17 points 7 hours ago

Everything that has been privatized, has ended up costing us more for shittier service. This will not be different.

[–] [email protected] 56 points 9 hours ago (3 children)

Exactly, we have UPS, FedEx, DHL and bunch of others.

Leave USPS the fuck alone.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

They’re all shit too. Fat lot of good privatization would do. USPS was Cool and Good until DeJoy was dropped in to throw wrenches into the cogs.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 hours ago (2 children)

UPS is actually fairly reliable. FedEx is hit and miss depending on the driver coverage area you're in, DHL and others just don't even exist.

USPS has always been great, but primarily for handling "last mile" where a lot of customers need reliable delivery of low monetary value packages like letters that UPS isn't set to handle, but carry some of the most important lifelines of information to rural and poor Americans.

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[–] [email protected] 51 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

I'd bet he wants to take over Amtrak so he can replace it with that stupid Las Vegas car tunnel.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (3 children)

my personal conspiracy theory is that Amtrak exists solely to make train travel look bad, driving up private car sales.

I had a long career in ecommerce and the amtrak website has been annoying to book train rides on for the entirety of its existence. It would be trivial to improve it in any number of ways but it's got (and maintains) the design patterns of a captive audience portal like ssa.gov instead of doing anything that removes barriers to purchase.

While it's possible they have just had the same not very good at their job person for the entirety of the sites history (decades now) i very much doubt it. The company's site today gives the same feel as when it started; they really don't care if you buy a ticket or not and they aren't really going to do much to help you do it.

[–] MajorasMaskForever 1 points 37 minutes ago

The conspiracy theory isn't that the automotive industry makes them look bad, it's the rail owners.

Real: Amtrak doesn't own any rails, they lease them and legally are supposed to have right of way on tracks unless the owner/operators of the rail currently have their own train that's too big for the bypasses.

Conspiracy: Rail owners make Amtrak experience so painful that it drives down usage so Amtrak runs fewer and fewer trains, so they can be less of a nuisance to them or outright get rid of the service line and they get to completely ignore Amtrak

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You aren’t wrong, BUT Amtrak does a decent job maintaining their trains and service despite the odds.

Amtrak recently received a huge infusion of funding under biden so of course trump wants to kill it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 hour ago

i do like the trains! The Coast Starlight is amazing and the view from the observation car is just heaven.

The Empire Builder is another good train although the scenery on that route can't compare with the west coast.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

I can get on board with this theory. They're also insanely slow and nearly as expensive as air travel. I understand some of this is due to the rail network and who owns it, but it still seems like Amtrak hasn't improved one bit since the 1950s.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 hours ago

I used them once to get from Tampa to Miami. It was fine. We got there over an hour late. I wouldn't really want to take a longer trip.

[–] OhStopYellingAtMe 55 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (3 children)

The usps is a government SERVICE. These parasites look at that and say “but nobody profits from that” and somehow they just can’t let that happen.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

The thing is they did generate a profit until they were fucked with by Republicans to make them look unprofitable.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 9 hours ago

There isn't a functioning part of our government that the regressives wont destroy for private profit.

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[–] AntY 41 points 9 hours ago (2 children)

I remember seeing an interview with Margaret Thatcher where she said that rail could never be successfully privatized. Just as a reminder of how extreme Musk’s ideas are.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

Thatcher's successor, John Major, oversaw the privatisation of British railways between 1994 and 1997.

It only took 30 years for them all to completely collapse in 2024.

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[–] Pacattack57 9 points 7 hours ago

How bout we increase funding to those things instead. No one should be competing with either of those services.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 9 hours ago

What a surprise given the fuckery he pulled with Hyperloop and California high speed rail

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