- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- news@beehaw.org
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Privatization of the postal service in Denmark (and Sweden) was a terrible mistake, and the perpetrators should be held accountable.
And the UK, anywhere else?
US soon
Also Germany
Yeah, postnord fucking sucks. We could have gotten lucky with something better, but it was pretty clear from the start this wouldn’t go well, IMO.
And Australia
It’s not privatization since the government(s) still owns PostNord, it’s called corporatization (Sweden owns 60% and Denmark owns 40%)
Technically correct, yes. Still has all of the hallmark negative effects of privatization.
This is so sad. I thought the whole paper mail infrastructure was essentially eternal due to its importance.
Letter numbers have fallen since the start of the century from 1.4 billion to 110 million last year.
110 million is still A LOT of paper letters. Shame the service will be gone.
PostNord has weathered years of financial struggles and last year was running a deficit.
Again, I thought this was a national strategic resource, regardless of profit. Over here in europe’s armpit the national post has been running at a loss for nigh on 40 years, and it’s still kept afloat, for better or worse.
I agree with what you’re saying and also it feels worth pointing out how pervasive the rhetoric of profitability has become.
We don’t talk about the military running at a loss, or the department of transport, or any other part of the government. We talk about their cost, because that’s really what it is. Services don’t “lose” money, they cost money.
Yeah, every public service now has to turn a profit except for highways and extra lanes
This concept of ‘deficit’ is just a construct for them to make it look like waste … and then kill it.
Do we run similar profitability metrics for the army? For transportation and infrastructure? For water filtration and waste processing? No.
Someone decided the mail wasn’t as important as a highway and set about gutting it intentionally.
It’s deemed no longer a national strategic resource since it’s now used so little, and plenty of alternatives exist. That’s why they decided to privatise it, and subsequently close it down when the privatised letter delivery was unable to turn a profit.
Yeah but now much of the 110 million is just spam, scams and advertisements?
really well put and i like your quotes i mean, essesntially due to its importance , yes i cannot say it better myself
This is bad for any card secondary market, think magic the gathering or pokemon. Usually you send or receive singles or maybe 5 cards at most as a letter, now this needs to be a package i guess.
I would also echo the fears of a throughly digitalized society
Letters can be send as packages instead. They already are, because the letters are more expensive. This is the main reason for why the postal service is no longer financially viable. It was privatized and outcompeted.
I believe the price for shipments is artificially low. It’s not reasonable that I can order boxes from China cheaper and faster than delivering a letter across town.
The postal service is a SERVICE the goal was never profit.
Besides, it was profitable until Bush made utterly absurd changes to their pension fund.
It WAS a service, then people stopped needing the service so it was privatized to see if the remaining users would pay for it. It seems the answer was no, so its smart to cut it.
When I lived in Korea, it was cheaper for me to ship something in from the US than it was to ship something from the US to just across the border in Canada.
It’s cheaper to mail a package or letter from US to Canada than it is to mail that same package within Canada (taxes notwithstanding).
The introduction of a new Postal Act in 2024 opened up the letter market to competition from private firms and mail is no longer exempted from VAT, resulting in higher postage costs.
“When a letter costs 29 Danish krone (£3.35; $4.20) there will be fewer letters,” PostNord Denmark’s Managing Director, Kim Pedersen, told local media.
What a mystery as to why nobody is using the letter service.
Damn. I know mailing actual letters has been going the way of the dinosaur and this outcome is in some ways predictable, but it’s still a big shift.
But… writing things down is the only reliable way to communicate in Denmark.
