TED Community » J. E. Sigler

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• A reply on Conversation: Debate: US Postal Service.

  Nov 28 2012: This sounds like a good solution to me. Decentralizing the service would allow for local needs to be met more appropriately: urban communities can do what suits them, and rural communities get what they need. If I understand correctly, sending from one local branch to another would then operate kinda' similarly to the way one sends between different countries: The sender pays according to the information the sending country/local branch has about the recipient country/local branch's shipping rates, etc., thus ensuring that costs are covered for any cheaper (urban) shipping portions of the trip as well as more expensive (rural) portions of the trip. Is that right? At the same time, urbanites aren't forced to subsidize rural postal delivery via government taxation. They only cover those costs if they're actually shipping there.
  
  I hope I understand correctly... If I do, then I think you may have an idea worth sharing here, Mitch!

• A reply on Conversation: Debate: US Postal Service.

  Nov 28 2012: The first two are good ideas, I think. The first one in particular would create a sort of forced social meeting ground that has largely gone lost since we began living exclusively inside our own little private bubbles (cars, garages, fenced homes, etc.).
  
  Given that the USPS does not pay super-high wages, though, wouldn't eliminating their retirement benefits just force us to publicly fund them in their old age anyway? As workers, they've a right to retirement benefits, no?

• A reply on Conversation: Debate: US Postal Service.

  Nov 28 2012: Decentralization of the postal service is an interesting idea. How would it work? If it were decentralized, wouldn't it lose all the advantages it has over private postal services?

• A reply on Conversation: Debate: US Postal Service.

  Nov 28 2012: I think it's important to ask UNDER WHICH CONDITIONS it can support itself. Under conditions of federal meddling in its affairs? Or under free-market conditions in which it is left to contend with competitors on its own? I think it's clear it's not doing well bogged down under federal regulations. But could it be a valuable service if the government took its hands off of it?
  
  That is the question to ask, I think!
  
  (And to answer your questions: Never and never. But the "could not have been" are the operative words in your questions. It might be more appropriate to ask: Could I have received them cheaper and faster and with higher quality and better service via email/a non-tax-payer-subsidized service?)

• A reply on Conversation: Debate: US Postal Service.

  Nov 28 2012: I have to agree here. I think we should start not with the question of how we can save the USPS, but WHETHER we should save the USPS. Demographic, geographic, political, economic, and technological conditions now are dramatically different than they were at the time the USPS was designed in the manner it still exists today.
  
  Do we even NEED a publicly funded postal service anymore? If so, WHAT do we need from it? Let's re-design it around those needs.
• +1

  A reply on Talk: Mina Bissell: Experiments that point to a new understanding of cancer

  Jul 19 2012: "Fluff"? TED isn't just a forum for science talks, you know. There are non-scientists out there who prefer art and religion and business and marketing and other non-empirical subjects. Even science can benefit from the publicization of ideas in these fields, if it adopts a truly cross-disciplinary spirit. Bissell herself saw her ideas reflected in a poem.
  
  Then again, maybe you meant some of the science videos themselves have been "fluff". Even then, though, TED's target audience isn't only professional scientists...
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  A reply on Talk: Reggie Watts disorients you in the most entertaining way

  May 27 2012: im pretty sure thats the point. he seems to be making fun of the emptiness of modern intellectualism and entertainment: theyre all form and no content. if thats the case, his apparently empty form actually has brilliant (satirical) content.
  this would seem to be why the audience laughs despite his making comments that sound very serious, by the way. listen again to the parts when they laugh and youll see he isnt saying anything; hes just using a lot of lofty-sounding words. once youve seen that, the artistic portions take on congruent meaning.