Thread by @bramcohen

Fixing the post office's finances is entirely doable. It has available a business model which would turn it to profitability quickly (thread)

The new service is: Portable addresses. You get one nationwide PO Box which never changes, even when you move. When you move you simply tell the post office where you're moving and on what day and all your personal packages get rerouted

It costs X/month. If X was $20 I personally would immediately sign up, stay signed up for the rest of my life, and never think about it. So would a lot of other people. That adds up fast.

This would be better both for privacy and for law enforcement than the system we have now. Addresses would be hidden from randos who shipped someone a $5 toy, but readily available to law enforcement when they needed it, which is the opposite of what we have now

The main technical headache is how you deal with people knowing how much shipping will cost. Many shipping prices are already flat nationwide, and for the ones which aren't the USPS could offer an API for approved vendors where they could look up \

current shipping price from their location to a particular target address.

Calling it a PO Box is a bit misleading, since the destination could be a residence, or a PO Box, or a private mailbox. Ideally they'd print as something pretty instead of just a number, no reason they couldn't have fictional street/place/state with vanity ones extra

All that's needed to make this happen is for Congress to decide to do it: Given the USPS the budget and orders to make it happen and it will happen, and the need to budget for the USPS in the future will go away.

I'm not holding my breath, but I can dream