On the Saturday mail delivery no more...

How often in our life will we be able to stay, with certainty, that something is definitely a goner? Apparently, not often enough. Such is the debate, if you can call it a debate, on whether USPS should continue delivering mails on Saturdays, or to do away with it, and save $3 billion a year?

Perhaps, before jumping to some sort of conclusion, there's soul-searching to be done. How often do I actually use the mail? What do I actually get in the mail these days, anyways? Do I really miss much, if there's no mail on Saturdays?

To start with, I actually don't check mails on Saturdays. I check my mailbox on weekdays when I go in/out, and when my mind is actively at work (and attending to things). On Saturdays, when I'm not working, I don't do alot of things that I would normally do on Monday - Friday. Checking mails is certainly one of those tasks. So, logistically speaking, I don't really know or care if the postmen come on Saturdays. Their hardwork has been wasted on me, for a very long time now.

And then, there are the contents in the mails. Every year, we took long vacation or time-off during summer, and go overseas. One of the great things about living in condo is that, you pay your dues (in the form of management fees), but when you want to be gone, you lock the door and can be gone for as long as you want. There's no maintenance to do (as in houses), no garden to attend to, no lawn to mow, no bush to trim, etc. The only catch is that, USPS would only hold mails for you for a month. If you're gone beyond one month, you would find an exploding mailbox when you're back. As we're usually gone for at least a month, that becomes a constant headache for me, so that I have to rely on (and beg for) my good neighbors to help me clean out the mailbox beyond the one-month period. And I don't like to rely on someone's charity when I'm away on vacation.

My resolution to that? I electronify everything. I've used paperless statements for all bank accounts. I get bills and invoices in email, which I can pay online, regardless of where I might be. I cancel all journal and magazine mail delivery, except Fortune, since it comes only once a month, and I like reading hardcopy of it when I go to places. And I use online subscription for other stuffs that I like to read (eg. Wall Street Journal), which I can read, wherever I am.

Mostly, these days, I get only junk mail and my periodic dose of DVD from netflix in my mail. That has dramatically cut down wasted time (having to go through, then shred all the junk mail), wasted papers (from all junk mails) for recycle but which shouldn't be printed in the first place, and I cut down my total mails by probably 70% or more. At least, even if I have to impinge on my neighbors to help me collect mails beyond one month, it won't be bags and bags of mails when I get back.

For all the abovementioned good reasons, I have to ask myself, why people are still holding onto this relics of Saturday USPS mail delivery when they hardly use it these days. Everybody get bills and pay bills online. Nobody bothers to write anymore. You either email, or text, or IM, or video conference with someone online with webcam, or send greeting cards etc to friends and family, etc. I would venture to say that, most people, like myself, hardly check mails on Saturdays.

I find that most of the comments or arguments against dropping the Saturday mail delivery to be more sentimental than rational. Those who argue to preserve it are really arguing for preserving a way of life that is fast becoming obsolete, when they refuse to face the fact that they want it more for the idea of keeping up the appearance and keeping the relics alive, rather than much real usage of it.

In a way, it's not unlike those who argue against big government in health care, and yet they are exactly the people who are already currently receiving government benefits at this very moment. It just makes very little sense, reading or listening these silly people talking about the fact that they don't want government in this and that, and they want the things exactly as they are now, when in fact what they're having now is exactly government handouts. I have very little tolerance to silly arguments like this. Ah but, this is a heavy subject for another day. :)