On Tue, 13 Mar 2018 09:48:02 -0400, Keyser Soze
wrote:

On 3/13/18 9:06 AM, True North wrote:
On Tuesday, 13 March 2018 09:37:34 UTC-3, John H wrote:
On Mon, 12 Mar 2018 19:48:23 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 12 Mar 2018 19:06:02 -0400, wrote:

On Mon, 12 Mar 2018 13:05:53 -0400,
wrote:

It turns out that the US steel industry shot themselves in the foot by
not adopting new technology back in the 1950s while the rest of the
world was doing it - very similar to what happened to the US auto
industry back in the 1970s.


It did not help the advancement of labor saving technology if they
understood they still needed to employ the same number of people.


===

Certainly union agreements didn't help but It was more fundamental
than that:

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-03-05/steel-history-shows-how-america-lost-ground-to-europe

Better, cheaper technology became widely available but US steel
companies didn't invest in it for reasons that are not entirely clear.
The only exception was Nucor that continues to do well, even in the
face of foreign competition.

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Cheaper technologies exist for the distribution of mail - like corner, multiple mail boxes. Who's
fighting it? The unions, because more efficient delivery means fewer mailmen. The same would have
been true of the steel industry, I believe.

Up here a lot of seniors were upset about losing home delivery. Often enough they wouldn't be able to safely make it to a neighbourhood super mail box..especially during the winter. It was one of the election issues a couple years ago that trashed our then Conservative Govt.


Our rural letter carrier says it takes more time to unlock, fill, and
lock the "neighborhood mail box" that serves the five houses on our
little street than it would take to drive the street down and back and
service the individual mail boxes that usually would be near the street
end of the individual driveways. U.S.P.S. management has not been
"stellar" down here for many decades.

Was USPS ever "stellar"? ;-)
I will say they do seem to be as good at UPS or Fed Ex where I am tho.
You could also point out that the post office is a constitutionally
granted service, one of the few of all that we get from the
government. What is not defined is how many deliveries we get a week
or where that delivery is. As long as they maintain "Priority Mail"
and all that entails, they do have a reason to come to your home.
There are lots of places around here that do use community located
mail boxes tho and the USPS says it is faster. Usually there are a lot
more than 5 boxes there tho. Where my daughter was in West Palm it was
more like 100, all grouped together and they just backed the truck up,
opened the back panel and stuffed in the mail. In about 15 minutes
they did them all.
It should be noted that a rural carrier does a lot more than you see
since they also have to sort and bundle the mail before they leave the
post office. Your real 1st class comes somewhat sorted but they still
have to get it lined up the way they want to run their route and stuff
in all of that other junk mail in your bundle. I know a rural carrier
who was actually fired because he was not making sure the junk mail
you got was addressed to you, in spite of the fact that everyone on
his route was getting exactly the same envelope. That was stuff sent
to "occupant" but each address was specific.