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Thomas Fuchs 🕹️🔭

“the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) will leave the Universal Postal Union (UPU) on October 17, ending 144 years of U.S. involvement”

tl;dr if you’re not a giant corporation, sendings stuff internationally will get prohibitively expensive and small businesses will falter

freightwaves.com/news/us-to-le

Oh, and if you're a libertarian or "free speech" numbnut, before you shit into my stream, please think about how this destroys competition and consumer choice by skewing the market towards giant corporations which have the leverage to get special shipping prices.

Now please go shit somewhere else and block me, kthxbye

@thomasfuchs ... welcome to reality. i thought these crazy low shipping rates being more cheap than local rates as being really odd.

@thomasfuchs International posting is very interesting, I first learned about it via the excellent podcast Planet Money. Very curious how this will impact ordering shit via the internet. npr.org/sections/money/2018/08

www.npr.orgNPR Choice page

@conatus It will make things for consumers more expensive and remove choice by destroying the competition of giant corporations who get special shipping rates anyway

@thomasfuchs this seems pointlessly self destructive even in an era infamous for such things

@salameleon It's in the interest of large corporations; they have special shipping rates anyway (or ship themselves, like Amazon) and it will remove their small business competition. There's a lot of very small/family businesses in China that won't be able to compete if the cheap shipping is removed.

@thomasfuchs Just buy a thousand of the things, and sell the other nine hundred ninety nine to your neighbors (Thanks Craigslist, Ebay). No need to be a giant corporation to make this work out for you.

Also, screw China; we can make those things here too, you know.

@attilakinali @thomasfuchs I mean ... not me personally. My bookshelf is two cinder blocks and a 2x6. 🤨

But in general, "we" the people who have hammers & nails can build things currently imported pre-extruded using cheap steels that bend when you breathe on them.

@Kaavik_B
@thomasfuchs
Yes, that's exactly the question: Why don't "you" the people make/build those things, if you can?