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Denmark becomes first country in world to end letter delivery (www.abc.net.au)
submitted 10 months ago by to c/world
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After 401 years, the Danish postal service has ended letter deliveries as the country fully embraces the digital age.

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[–] 87 points 10 months ago (15 children)

Truly a bizarre and ridiculous action. Publicly owned and operated postal delivery is still very useful, especially as late stage capitalism continues getting more and more dystopic.

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  • [–] 26 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    Europe loves to clown on the US for a lack of social services, but the postal service is where it's reversed. In almost all of Europe, postal services are provided by private companies, with no public option. I guess the US was created at just the right time to recognize the benefit of a government postal service (thanks, Ben Franklin).

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  • [+] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)
    [removed by mod]
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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

    I am American, and not the previous commenter, but a quick Google and Wikipedia search seems to indicate that Germany, Denmark, The UK, Malta, Sweden, Norway, and Finland have all privatized their mail services. The reddit posts from years ago about it seem to indicate that most of the people who remember the state owned service preferred the state owned post to private post services.

    So not all of Europe, but a decent amount of Western Europe seems to have privatized their post. I didn't see anything about Spain, Portugal, Greece or Italy, but as I said it was a quick glance around.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    According to Wikipedia the shared Swedish/Danish postal service is shared 60%/40% by the Swedish and Danish governments respectively, so im not sure how privatised it is really if it's completely owned by government.

    "The owners of PostNord Group are the state of Sweden (60 percent) and the Ministry of Transport of Denmark (40 percent)." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PostNord

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago (8 children)

    Useful for what? Wasting resources? Filling space in mail boxes that nobody checks because there's never anything of interest in them?

    Unless you mean having a postal service AT ALL, in which case you're right but also misunderstood what they're doing: they're not ending ALL portal services, they're just not wasting their resources on archaic snail mail letters anymore.

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  • [–] 12 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    I highly doubt snail mail letters were a significant percentage of their deliveries.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    They sure weren't

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  • [–] 9 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    Reading the article they went from 1.5b in 2000 to 110m last year. That doesn't sound like an insignificant amount after all.

    This sounds like a bad move.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    While it sounds like a lot in a raw number,that's not much for a population of 5.5million people for an entire year.

    Besides, most of that was bills and correspondence from the government, things that have no reason for still being snail mail.

    This sounds like a bad move.

    Based on incomplete and misinterpreted data, sure. Based on the realities here in Denmark? Not really.

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    FYI, this is very similar to what is going on in Canada right now: the post is a crown corporation, meaning it's a federal entity funded by the public through taxes and the carrier fees. Package delivery is their highest volume, but they have an exclusive right to letter mail. The government was debating axing the service, but the postal union pushed back hard with month long strikes.

    The argument for axing the service has two flaws:

    1. corporations will fill in the gap: they will not. They will take over the service and monopolize it (or collude). And when it's a necessity that people have to rely on, they will jack up prices and ask for government subsidy to keep it going. Basically all that was created was a middleman taking their cut...

    2. the service has to be profitable: it doesn't. Government services don't have to be profitable. Sure, it's nice when they are, but that's not the point of a service and the government can balance budget elsewhere, like selling energy for example. It's infrastructure, not a business venture.

    So yes, as the lady said, the world is watching for sure.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    when it's a necessity that people have to rely on

    Which snail mail letters haven't been for decades, making your objections hypothetical at best.

    Everything that a snail mail letter can do, there's a better and easier alternative. It's the horse and buggy of correspondence.

    the service has to be profitable: it doesn't. Government services don't have to be profitable

    THAT you're right about, at least.

    So yes, as the lady said, the world is watching for sure.

    And the reactions of those of us not stuck in the distant past range from celebration that this antediluvian system is finally considered obsolete to a complete lack of interest in whether or not something utterly superfluous that nobody has needed for decades will continue to be done.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    If they added a clause somewhere that they could spin the service up again when deemed necessary, that'd be fine.

    How will people receive their government IDs now? Or credit cards? Or postcards?

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