I'm Getting to Hate the Post Office

I have written earlier that I was enamored with the dying art of letter-writing and connecting through postal correspondence. I'm so over that now. As the price of sending letters continues to soar, and the range of possibilities for sending packages through the mail for anything less than exorbitant fees shrink, I'm thinking we need another option. Yeah, there are courier services, UPS, and FedEx, but those commercial venues are so focused on business clients that their offerings to poor schlubs like me are not very attractive. Also, there's a post office nearby, but not a UPS or FedEx depot (or whatever they call them).

That said, we need an alternative to the Post Office that is also fueled by public money. Before the establishment of the postal service's monopoly, there was competition with the pony express, and a variety of other alternatives. I know that the internet is supposed to play some kind of equalizing role, but if we want to send and get packages, if we want to reach out to loved ones in a personal way, the internet isn't doing it. So what do we do? I say we set up an alternative pathway, create nodes for the movement of letters and things, and bring it back to basics. There's something wrong when it costs me $8 to send a book that I'm selling for $3 via Half.com.