Topic: A new American Letter Mail Company (Read 1177 times)

It's progress, to be sure.

That is interesting, but still not the target I'm shooting for here.  that's mostly for moving larger objects.  I'm talking about parcel post sized objects, wherein only combining several such packages is cost effective.

What about a built-in escrow system?

Here's what I envision:  Each postmaster has a Bitcoin address.  When a person wishes to ship a package, they must create a payment, to be held in decentralized escrow (i.e., inaccessible to anyone), that pays each postmaster along the way.  The fees would be automatically calculated, but perhaps decided upon by some committee or group of people (maybe not possible to decentralize this part?).  The receiver of the shipment has the key to release the escrow, and upon successful receipt of the package, releases the escrow.

For a practical example, say I want to ship a package to the suburbs of New York.
- I enter in the shipping details into whatever decentralized software is tracking everything.
- Said decentralized software calculates the total price out of a derivative for the price of moving the package to each postmaster, then to the destination.
- For example, my package would go from my house to the Eugene, OR postmaster, which might be a 0.02 BTC fee.
- It would then go to Portland's postmaster, which might be a 0.1 BTC fee.
- It would then go to New York's postmaster, which might be a 0.5 BTC fee.
- It would then go to the suburbs of New York and be delivered, which might be a 0.1 BTC fee.
- The software would calculate this fee prior to my shipping the package as a total of 0.72 BTC.
- The software would ask me to send payment to a specific BTC address, which would then be split out to each postmaster's escrow account accordingly.
- When the package is delivered, the receiver releases the escrow key, which sends the payments to each postmaster.

Thoughts?

https://www.meemeep.com/   

Well now that's a point.

Up until a few years ago, online payment systems were improved by centralization too.  I don't know how it could be done, but I don't believe that it can't be done.

It's true that Bitcoins are revolutionary in general and quite useful in many applications. However, it'd seem handling mail is not one of them. Look at it historically: mail handling was improved by centralization. Look at it practically: the value of the network is its total reach, but the wider it reaches the more difference of income between the nodes. Thus you absolutely must have a way to move some revenue from the rich to the poor or else the network shrinks and the total value shrinks with it.

I guess this just is a business that doesn't take well to the decentralized model. Which, I guess, is sort-of good news for the government: just as in the 19th century the postal service was the place of employment for more than half of govt workers, just so in the 21st. But at least it won't go completely extinct.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company

I wonder if a decentralized 'matternet' could be developed using bitcoin as it's method.  Physically, that should be easy enough.  A single 'postmaster' in each city large enough to have a Greyhound bus depot, preferablely one who lives close enough to the depot to make a daily visit.  Letters and smaller packages intended for differnent cities could be gathered up and shipped together as a larger package via Greyhound's own intercity package shipping service.  Delivery to individual homes would be costly (which is why the USPS is always losing taxpayer money) but delivery to private businesses should be competitive, particularly if many packages are delivered to the same point, like what might occur at the FedEx offices.  Although FedEx might not like others delivering to their rented boxes any more than the USPS.

What I can't fathom is how to decentralize the payments.  If someone (or more than one someone) is going to become the defacto postmaster for a city, and make a job out of it, there has to be some method of sharing the fees that the sender pays for the service; and there must be some way consequence to the many postmasters should some piece of mail not make it to it's intended destination.  I'd also be helpful if there were some way to calculate the cost of sending mail this way so that there isn't some single fee for any destination, otherwise there will always be some very profitable areas that postmasters prefer to serve and others that are net losers for delivering to them.

I'm just thinking out loud here.  From a theoretical perspective, how could this work?  Any ideas?