double post...

double post... triple actually ^^

MRDred, selling short.  Which, by the way, the commies want to make illegal...  While there is motivation to balloon stock values, there is equal motivation to deflate them among the investors.  It is lopsided only within the company, where people get paid for making the stock go up, and generally get paid in stock as well.  Blaming investors for the woes of the economy is unfair regardless.

The stock market could drop to zero and it would be irrelevant for purposes of employment if people weren't running businesses off credit.  If you want to pick on something for causing unemployment, it's commonly referred to as plastic and resides in your wallet.  The liberals really like pushing it because people without can live beyond their means, the rest of the morons go along with it because it makes them look good to all their fellow morons that can't tell the booming economy is a bubble.  When people and businesses stop running off credit, major bubbles wont exist to start with.  Getting a loan is intelligent for expansion, not operation, and it always catches up.  The reason it hits when the stockmarket drops, is that capital is used for collateral in lending.  When the price of GM stock halves, GM takes a massive hit to their paper assets, a thousand shares at a thousand dollars can be collateral for a million dollars, a thousand shares at ten dollars only for ten thousand.  The banks also use their own stock as collateral for making loans, they have to actually have ten percent of what they've lent out, if their stock is half their capital, small drops make for really big losses, big drops make for insolvency.

GW, public good is a severely abused term.  Your mail service, since we're on the topic, is in the public good list, but isn't one.  Individuals pay for their own transmissions.  Even if it were complete public funding, the use of it would still detract from others.  It may not register for most people due to insiginficant quantities, but if one were to mail several billion pounds of something all at once, the system would collapse and a backlog would be formed to accomodate the traffic jam.  That is true even with the pay per use system we have, Bill Gates could shut down the mail service for months all by himself if they accepted the orders.  People using it more than normal around Christmas are what accounted for the massive delays before UPS and FedEx started seriously competing for consumer service.  Once they had to actually try for your business it got better, but they still deliver residential orders late frequently.

It really doesn't exist in a perfectly representative state.  All public goods created by industry require significant investment to create, and all public goods created by industry do have a maximum capacity for use that when approached create degraded service.  Traffic jams, busy phones, power outages from load spikes.  You could call air a public good, but only because it's plentiful worldwide, and asthmatics in large cities would disagree with the premise that other peoples use of it doesn't detract from theirs.  The next closest is probably national defense, which holds true until territory is surrendered in favor of holding others.  Whenever capacity is exceeded, a service fails to meet the definitions of a public good.  There is also the matter of unfair tax allocation, creating roadways that exhibit the status of a public good at the expense of people using them is entirely logical, taxing the rich and giving rebates to the poor that don't pay taxes to create so called public goods, is just theft.

Jonnan, context much?

"Well, that answers that question, you didn't read it.  Could you at least go to their websites and calculate package shipping costs and compare equal services?  You'll find that for a two day delivery on that letter, UPS is cheaper."

This was in response to your not bothering to verify that it was indeed illegal for UPS and USPS to compete with USPS as letter carriers.  You then looked up 5 pound packages in response, and ignored the minor issues of delivery times on UPS shipping methods being guaranteed, and USPS shipping methods being optimal.

So, mind looking up two day delivery on a half pound letter?  The object of comparison used by that wonderfully pointless chart you linked?  You know, the only evidence favoring your premise?

"This falls into the magical fairy land category.

First point, and this is categorically true and irrefutable without outright lying, private, for profit industry, without fail, does a better job in the long run at any and all tasks."

Your link falls under outright lying. and mine falls under the categorically true and irrefutable bit.  Does that cover it?

Instead of listening to talking heads from idiot magazines, look at the books, USPS has open books.  Yes, I called Forbes magazine an idiot magazine, the only things of worth in them are the financial reports.  You'd be better off getting a spider than reading financial advice from the guru's, Vegas has better odds for gambling.

For those of you too lazy to read, that link says Jonnan loses.  Their package shipping wouldn't even cover indoor plumbing at the post office.  Do something for your progeny, educate yourselves on the wonders of government monopolies.  Hail the 300% profit margins on first class presorted mail that cover their overhead costs while violating your postal cavity!  Without them, your cavity would bleed from overuse!

Or be sheeple, whichever works.

I'm probably a "commie" in psychoak's book, but, like Marx and Engels, I make no pretense that capitalist systems (edit) don't (end edit) have their efficiency mechanisms. Short-selling can seem wrong or weird when you first read about it, but in our current systems it provides a valuable service by identifying troubled companies.

Re public goods, I'm very interested in having the idea debunked for me, but most of what psychoak offers seems to be passionate rhetoric, not methodical refutation. (On a detail point, I'd exclude air until such time as we need production facilities to get it. So maybe Mexico City, Taipei, and those other places with oxygen vending on the streets are there, but thankfully most of us can just breathe.)

I *knew* you were an idealist of some sort; can't get as ticked off as you seem to be without loving something, somewhere. And, again, you sound more like a lapsed anarchist than any sort of "conservative." Would you go for direct democracy if there were only a few hundred of us on the planet?

First of all Psychoak - so far as I've heard, no one, commie or otherwise, has any plan to render selling short illegal.

They are taking steps to tighten up the regulation of naked short selling (They already are mostly, but not entirely illegal, but they are tightening up loopholes).

For those unfamiliar with the terms, the difference is simple, and the reason they *should* be illegal seems to me to be fairly obvious.

A short sell is a system in the market for when someone thinks the price on a stock is too high and is going to fall. Basically, they borrow stock from a portfolio, and sell that stock at the current market price. If they're right, and the price falls, they then buy stock back at the new cheaper price, return the stock to the portfolio they borrowed it from with some interest, and pocket the difference between the two prices. It is a highly necessary mechanism for helping to prick 'bubbles' in markets, and if it were not there things would be worse than they are.

Now, most market transactions are promissary in nature - money changes hands instanltly, but you have three days to actually deliver the stocks, and five before you're reported for not doing so  - but the system runs on trust that the title will be delivered even though you don't actually have stock change hands as quickly as the money does.

So what you *could* do is sell stock you don't have or haven't arranged to borrow, turn around with that money and buy stock as it falls, and deliver that stock before the trade fails - a 'naked' short. Short selling is a case of arbitrage, because all the transactions you used were yours to use. - you're just pocketing the difference, minus fees.

Naked short selling is fraud, because the money you used to buy the new stock was given to you on the assumption that you had stock already there to sell - but in a liquid market, it's very hard to spot, and you still pocket the difference, just not minus the fees for borrowing the stock.

Now - what if the market is not liquid and you can't turn around and get the new stock  - Suddenly the fraud has gone from very hard to spot to very easy, because the guy you sold the stock to is out his money and out his stock. And he's going to go to the SEC and say this guy sold me stock but didn't deliver - you're about to get in a hell of a lot of trouble.

So you do what any burgler does when they get caught in a crime - you kill the victim, albeit metaphorically. Because if a *lot* of this fraud is done to a company in a short amount of time you can drive a mid-size firm into bankruptcy very quickly, because they're suddenly out of cash and out of stock at the same time. Even if you deliver the stock before the five days is up, you can kill them because they've lost liquidity very quickly, and can't do anything while they wait for stuff to catch up. So it's always been illegal to *deliberately* do a naked short - it's fraud, and in a fast moving market it can kill it's victims.

The SEC is just tightening up the loopholes on this.

Regarding:

You're going to have to actually make your point somehow  -whatever you're moving the goalposts to here is buried in a fiscal report, and given your knack for bringing in something vaguely relevant (i.e ACORN), having the obvious link debunked, and then claiming "Oh, that wasn't at all what I was talking about", you can carry your own damn goalposts when you move them.

Oh, btw, as near as I can tell, UPS and USPS have the same moneyback guarantee on 1 day delivery (Although I'm sure you'll come up with some BS excuse for not accepting that fact) . So we're to best 4 out of 7 now with whatever it it is in fy07cra1.pdf you have dreamed up - I don't suppose there's any chance you've actually looked at the UPS equivalent before you shot your mouth off this time?

Jonnan

P.S. - Oh, what the hell, since you thought it was going to be a major difference if we talked about 1/2 lb letters, I looked it up for you

UPS: Critical broke $6,000 this time! {G}

1 day: $27.88-$67.56

2 day: $19.75-$21.84

USPS:

Express: $16.50-$19.25

Priority: $4.80

1st Class: $2.02 (3 days)

Those Goalposts wearing you out yet, or you wanna go for five out of nine?

"This planet has — or rather had — a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it was not the small pieces of paper that were unhappy." --Douglas Noel Adams

Psychoak - I have no idea what you're talking about here - The USPS lists express mail as guaranteed or your money back here (Which I linked in my original post), that link itself includes a link to calculate your guaranteed delivery time. I've run five of these deals through in the last few days comparing your prices as per your challenges, and it hasn't been even slightly difficult.

Don't accuse me of being a liar while claiming you can't find a page linked to in that very post.

You not only don't know what you're talking about, you've offered five different ways of proving your case and been debunked each time. Your premise is demonstrably incorrect, the universe has no intention of reshaping itself to match your delusions, so reconsider your assumptions.

Or stay in wonderful conservative candyland, where the skies are painted with candy sprinkles and stocks prices are set by the invisible hand of the self-regulating market which causes no bubbles, no crashes, and all is good with the world. Whatever.

Jonnan

You're going to have to give examples - I found a Zip Code Map and have run about 20 random zip codes, both from and to - midwest, southeast, two in Alaska and one in hawaii through without getting any problems whatsoever. Even an invalid zip code returns a simple "The Destination ZIP Code you have entered is invalid." error

Given the complete inability to reproduce the issue, I tend to suspect the problem is on your end.

Jonnan

P.S. - I found what I think you are using, the Express Mail Commitments page (And this would have been easier had you linked what you were using instead of describing it  - I was in another section). Apologies, but you didn't actually read the page did you?

I guess it's not 100% clear at first glance, but this is designed to look up an express mail that has already been set up with the USPS - Either already in route, or that has been paid for and just needs dropped off at by 'x' time at 'y' location. So, no - when you were searching, it was looking for any existing commitments for express mail from zip code A to zip code B, and not finding any, any more than if I searched a random tracking number on UPS I would be likely to get a result.

Not that it's *that* difficult an error to make - I thought there was a bug too till I actually read the description on the page, but if you're going to throw around "Moron" and "Liar", it would serve you well to actually have read the page first - .

Jonnan

Psychoak - what the devil do you think you're talking about? If you haven't actually setup and paid for a shipment from Anchorage AK to Hugo OK, this system isn't going to retrieve a delivery time. That's what this is for - it's not some mystery system, it just uses the zip-codes and shipping date to track shopping the same way UPS/Fedex/DHL uses tracking numbers. Read it  - it's fairly obvious.

The rest is your making some kind of vague assertions from links that you never actually said what you were trying to prove. Whoopee - there's a fiscal year report showing something.

Basic Science logic - you had a theory which made specific predictions regarding prices for shipping. Those predictions were objectively verifiable, and turned out not to reflect the actual prices charged for shipping packages as shown by UPS and the USPS.

Theory disproved. End of story.

Jonnan

I haven't had any problems with that link - the description you provides matches another page entirely.

If you claim you're having problems getting a postage/date guarantee from *that* link Pschoak, then you're either lying, or just kinda mildly retarded in a new, and possibly medically interesting way.

Jonnan

P.S. - yep. 2nd page of the link gives a link to the exact same link I was talking about Psychoak - which, by odd coincidence works today with those two zip codes, because two packages have been posted from Indianapolis to West Hollywood. It's not designed to give you a hypothetical time, it's designed to confirm a delivery time guarantee on packages in transit or set to be shipped already

I would like to think you're lying, but sadly, I don't think you are. You're just not understanding the form you're submitting, despite the exact quote highlighting the relevant sentence. You fail at reading comprehension.

Is anyone else confused by this - it's a fairly straightforward page, but maybe there is some other way of reading the description through that would render it more confusing than is obvious?

The trackers are good except they do not reflect delay because of air travel. 

Okay FEDEX (I beleive its them) carries USPS on their planes.

I know that UPS is starting to take over DHL (how far I don't know).

For air mail normally feeders (the single and duel prop planes) will all go to a larger airport.  Such as say Bostan.  Then the larger planes get loaded and are sent to their respective hib. Thats Mephis for FEDEX and Louisville International Airport for UPS.  Then they are loaded unto another large plane (say  A300, 757, 767, DC-10......) and send to the next main airport.  From there its either trucked out or flown by feeders to the closest place (then trucked from the feeders airport).

So if even one of those gets held up (and trust me freight traffic gets screwed up all the time) it will come late and not be reflected on the trackers.  You can see the location the package is at but why its still there is never really known. 

As far as prices go......I only use FEDEX since I have freinds that work there and get 75% discount.

edit:

Since USPS does not use their own planes they don't have to pay for the fuel and I beleive thats why its cheaper USP. Also you don't have to factor means you don't have to pay for the up keep on the planes.  And trust me they break all the time.

Now on the difference between fedex and ups prices, fedex likes to fill up on more fuel then ups for going about the same distance.   

Since I have buddies that at the fedex air cargo place at the local airport, I thought I would add some additional information. 

One of them also works as a fueler.  So he also puts fuel on both carriers. The company that does the fueling also owns the feeder planes that fly cargo for UPS.  So I guess in a way he kind of works for all of them.....

It was not direct towards you if it had come off that way. 

Since I haven't been able to find a single set of data (Including Alaska) that reproduces your results, and you have such a knack for claiming 'X' and then when I check it turns out '!X', I'm going to have to require you actually, y'know, prove your case with a set of input and output information I can use to reproduce your results.

Since, by and large, your track record is of being, y'know, factually incorrect. In fact, given the absoluteness of your original thesis, even being factually correct here would only mean that there are in fact cases where the USPS is *not* the best service under it's standard pricing model.

Since I only posited that sometimes the government run system is better, under some circumstances, and we have verified that it is in fact often cheaper and more efficicient, at this point we're not arguing whether you're right, we're arguing about whether you are 180 degrees wrong, or only 135 degrees wrong - {G}.

So anyway, post how you got the information to kick out something else, and I'll looks at it. Frankly, at this point, my assumption is that you did something wrong, but it's worth verifying.

Jonnan