Speaker 0
0:00 – 3:21
Another criticism that you may come across from these people who are critical of the SABL act is they'll say, well, this is just like as if you were sending an email, but it would require you to have a stamp from the post office. While that argument may sound funny and, like, and like a good argument, it's really, really not the same. Money is a need under capitalism to survive, and the post office doesn't do just letters. They also do packages and stamps are related to paying for the weight to carry, goods, and packages across The United States. So it's not exactly the same. But what I find actually extremely ironic is that post offices actually used to serve as banks in the past, and it was actually a part of Bernie Sanders' campaign to allow for banking through post offices. So while the crypto people I mean, you'll hear, like, you know, crypto will help bank the unbanked. There has already been this push from progressives to bank the unbanked through public means like the post office. So I think part of part of this, why I think this argument sounds kinda good, is a a a function of neoliberalism and how neoliberalism has sort of limited our imagination for what our public institutions are able to do. And so just assuming that our public institutions are just, like, incompetent pieces of shit that can't do anything, and therefore, we need to go and look into, like, the venture capital world to find solutions. But, obviously, you know, it would take hours to go into why, of course, public institutions, have been degraded so much over time because of neoliberalism, which then benefits from people trying to look for alternative solutions in the private market. I think it is very interesting that there was a time when public institutions in The US functioned much better than they do today. And it is a part of the progressive push in The United States to make those public institutions competent again, and to expand what they're able to provide for citizens without needing to make a profit. Because it doesn't make sense to make a profit Because if you're run by the government and the government makes the money, then who cares? Right? You don't need to make a profit. You don't need to make a profit if you are a private entity on the markets as a company, which is why the health care industry in The US is so disgusting and so barbaric, because these health insurance companies need to make a profit off of the people who are getting sick. But rant aside, I think what would actually be pretty interesting is if in an alternative universe that the post office actually evolved into being an email provider, as a public service so that you don't actually have to either buy an email service from a company or be subjugated to violations in your privacy for free ones. So, I mean, just in case you don't know, the reason that Gmail is free is because they're able to go through your emails, for that data so that they can give you more targeted advertising.