USAT: The Dark Side of the Service

I had never even heard of the "forever stamp". Did anybody else?

While I agree that this stamp will make it easier for price increases on postage to go unnoticed. However, this also seems like a fundamental shift. If I were running the USPS, I would favor a flexible "forever stamp" and I expect in the long run postal patrons will too. Knowing that sooner or later packages will be the only significant business as written mail becomes more fully obsolete, the postal service needs a way to compete with retail mail, and it seems intuitive that efficiency for the consumer should trump keeping costs down as a consideration because the physical act of mailing something will only be sensible for parcels such as hard copies of documents or personal packages, namely things for which the attention of the sender matters more than the item itself and the inflated cost of which comes from the fact that is cannot be sent more efficiently via electronic media.

Perhaps I do not care because the only things I mail anymore already came with an envelope that did not require postage in the US, but I for one will not fear the impact of "forever".