In my last post I cited the advent and explosion of the internet as an example of how it is impossible to predict how new technologies and/or ideas will impact our economy.

Well, this is just a muse put in writing....recently in the news it was widely reported that Saturday mail delivery by the United States Postal Service was going to end soon, and the suggestion that one day in the near future residential mail delivery may be reduced to 3 days per week due to both soaring costs within the USPS and a dramatic reduction in mail volumes.

Since the beginning of the commercialization of the internet in the early 1990's until today, the transformational power of this communications and information sharing technology has been nothing short of breathtaking.  One can hardly remember what life was like before the advent of email and instant messaging.  Along for the ride in this 15+ year technological odyssey, the USPS has seen the use of it's snail mail service shrink dramatically.  I wonder out loud how many years we have to go before no one is using snail mail at all.  Is it five years?  Another ten perhaps?  As I suggested in my last post, difficult to see, always in motion is the future.   Thus, I have no idea how much longer the USPS will exist, except to say, that I foresee a day in our life-times when it no longer does.

I note this because the USPS employs around 596,000 workers.  Although I would expect a relatively gradual phase out of the USPS as we know it, it's also possible that mail volumes could reach a tipping point.  As the internet displaces the purpose of the USPS more and more, perhaps, snail mail volumes could drop off a cliff, and sooner than we may think.  Nearly 600,000 government workers being displaced by a 'disruptive technology' is not a number to sneeze at.

Maybe these displaced government workers will be absorbed by the soon to be massive government bureaucracy overseeing every facet of our health care.

Update:  As I think about this, I suppose the USPS won't go away entirely, since they also do a lot of parcel shipping as well.  Still, once the USPS is left with it's parcel business, why not just shut it down at that point and let the private carriers like UPS and Fedex etc.  pick it up?  Not on Obama's watch.....which hopefully will end long before the USPS.