Milo Yiannopoulos has sued Simon and Schuster for breach of contract because they canceled publication of his book, Dangerous. To support their case, Simon and Schuster submitted the original draft of the manuscript--including comments written during the editing process by an editor who has worked for conservatives from Dick Cheney to Donald Trump--to show they had good reason to cancel publication.
Both the comments and the original draft make Milo look... bad.
Milo Yiannopoulos has sued Simon and Schuster for breach of contract because they canceled publication of his book, Dangerous. To support their case, Simon and Schuster submitted the original draft of the manuscript--including comments written during the editing process by an editor who has worked for conservatives from Dick Cheney to Donald Trump--to show they had good reason to cancel publication.
Both the comments and the original draft make Milo look... bad.
I think I understand why so many people hate him.
I can understand why people wouldn't have looked into this particular branch of the right before the last election. I have stated before I only really started paying attention after the whole dust-up on these forums about a certain expansion (which I know we don't talk about). It led me to Gamergate, which led me to this whole counter-culture that exists almost entirely online. We talked about that article months back about how the main thrust of the alt-right seemed to be punishing liberals, or, at the very least, pissing them off.
Whether or not Milo actually believes the stuff he says and writes is sort of immaterial. I could dredge up a post he wrote not that long ago in the grand scheme of things that is basically 100% the opposite of what he is now. What he saw (what MANY people saw) is this almost nihilistic movement online where everything is coated with this heavy lacquer of supposed irony, because if it wasn't, you'd have to just assume they were all aspiring school-shooters. I watch videos from this echo-chamber when I can tolerate it, and the videos are bad enough (and god are they repetitive), but it's the comment sections that really reveal the underbelly of this. Milo and many others are just cashing in on the fact that there is a group of people so deeply alienated from modern society (and modern conventions of POLITE society, which is called political correctness) that they have turned to ethno-nationalism as a solution.
The fact that Milo's original plans for this book are like this will come as a surprise to those who weren't willing to dive into what he was about previously (and honestly, who could blame you??). But if you've taken even a cursory dive into this world of Pepe the Frog avatars, you'll see that it is filled to the brim with eliminationist rhetoric about everyone from liberals, to Jews, to African-Americans. In regards to women, it is straight-up misogyny. It's all passed off as some sort of joke, but that really doesn't pass muster anymore. If it is a joke, what is the punchline?? If they are trying to mock liberalism, that point came and went long ago. There is certain language used in certain parts of the left (mostly young people in college) that is counter-productive and alienating, mostly because it isn't good messaging. But it doesn't account for an entire generation of young men online who have totally given themselves over to the basic tenants of fascism just for shits and giggles.
I especially love the note the editor made when he says "autist seems like a mental health slur." This is sort of hard to understand if you haven't spent alot of time reading comments on YouTube videos, but it's one of the first things I noticed about this movement. It SEEMS to be a direct reaction to the fact that it is generally considered in pretty bad taste to call someone "retarded" as an insult nowadays. Calling someone "autistic" or an "autist" is simply a replacement for that kind of name-calling, except it almost seems more vicious, because it reveals a concrete DESIRE to want to demean people with a legitimate disease. It's not just that it slips out once in awhile, they ENJOY saying it.
Milo Yiannopoulos has sued Simon and Schuster for breach of contract because they canceled publication of his book, Dangerous. To support their case, Simon and Schuster submitted the original draft of the manuscript--including comments written during the editing process by an editor who has worked for conservatives from Dick Cheney to Donald Trump--to show they had good reason to cancel publication.
Both the comments and the original draft make Milo look... bad.
Milo Yiannopoulos has sued Simon and Schuster for breach of contract because they canceled publication of his book, Dangerous. To support their case, Simon and Schuster submitted the original draft of the manuscript--including comments written during the editing process by an editor who has worked for conservatives from Dick Cheney to Donald Trump--to show they had good reason to cancel publication.
Both the comments and the original draft make Milo look... bad.
Milo Yiannopoulos has sued Simon and Schuster for breach of contract because they canceled publication of his book, Dangerous. To support their case, Simon and Schuster submitted the original draft of the manuscript--including comments written during the editing process by an editor who has worked for conservatives from Dick Cheney to Donald Trump--to show they had good reason to cancel publication.
Both the comments and the original draft make Milo look... bad.
Well, the fact that he had a section in the book on Nietzsche is entirely unsurprising. As I've said, I regard this entire movement Milo is a supposed "leader" of (and, again, I have believed from the start the entire thing has been an act) as utterly nihilistic, except nihilists aren't supposed to really care about anything much at all. And they absolutely DO care about one thing, which is seeing people they don't like in some kind of sadness or despair. All the other signs are there. There is no belief in any type of morality (they would call it "virtue-signaling"), and societal norms are shunned like the plague. The Alt-right is some sort of potent mixture of shitty economic prospects, internet troll culture, and good old-fashioned American racism. Though honestly I'd compare it more to notions of Nordic superiority, just applied to the entire white race. One of the most amusing dust-ups among this crowd during the last month was when two of the leading females who trek in these waters started getting criticized because they (no joke) aren't married and in the midst of producing a plethora of white children. And no one could possibly feel sorry for them, because if they'd taken 5 minutes over the course of the last year to read the comment sections on their own videos or articles, the only reasonable conclusion would be that these wolves would eventually turn on them.
I don't think you understand Nietzsche. He is distinctly anti-nihilist.
Well, that is sort of up for debate. He is certainly the person in history most ASSOCIATED with it, whether arguing for or against it, he talked about it the most.
I don't think you understand Nietzsche. He is distinctly anti-nihilist.
Well, that is sort of up for debate. He is certainly the person in history most ASSOCIATED with it, whether arguing for or against it, he talked about it the most.
It is not up for debate. Yes, he talked about it a lot, but whether he was for or against is not trivial.
Calling for a massive increase in Postal Service fees is certainly an interesting political tactic. Also, I don't know how to tell him this, but most people don't hate Amazon. They love getting free 2-day shipping. And Amazon gets good rates from the Post Office because they do massive bulk business. You wanna piss off a good portion of Americans?? F**k with their Prime Memberships and make it cost more or take longer to get their packages.
Obama did present plans to reform the Postal Service in 2016, which suggested ideas including things like eliminating Saturday delivery. While pragmatic, the real solution is to stop treating the Postal Service like a business. It shouldn't matter if the Postal Service loses money any more than if the Department of Defense does. It's one of the few governmental entities that is specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
Coming a little late here. Oh well where to start. Straight to the point, I'm a member of the "Parti Républicain, Radical et Radical-Socialiste" or simply called "Parti Radical". Its school of thought is Radicalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radicalism_(historical)
This is, as of today, the oldest political party of France. The historic republican party opposed to monarchists, and bonapartists from one side and the communists from the other side back in the days. It was more an assemblage of radical republican people with different convictions. Some were very liberals (in the academic sense), some were really close to communists. In modern politics and from a US perspective they're stuck somewhere between the right wing of the Democrats and the left wing of the Republicans. A stance which was, back in their founding time, considered far-left (how things change).
Regarding our president, I think he does the job right. He jumped on the opportunity left by Trump's decision to leave the Paris Agreement and seems to assume some kind of leadership on environnement research. On a global stage I must say Trump's blunder and May's weak position help him taking a good position in the West, but he seizes the opportunities so...
He is kind of a contradiction for most anglophone people. He offers civil right progresses which the liberals (in the US sense) would support very much, at the same time he strongly favour a serious security (police and military) budget and policy and is very "free-market" oriented. More like the Conservatives (in the US sense too).
EDIT: just to clarify, if there is any ambiguity, Macron, our president, has founded his own party one year before the elections and destroyed the traditionnal bipartite system of France (Conversatives vs Socialists). Frank Underwood could take lessons from him.
Calling for a massive increase in Postal Service fees is certainly an interesting political tactic. Also, I don't know how to tell him this, but most people don't hate Amazon. They love getting free 2-day shipping. And Amazon gets good rates from the Post Office because they do massive bulk business. You wanna piss off a good portion of Americans?? F**k with their Prime Memberships and make it cost more or take longer to get their packages.
Obama did present plans to reform the Postal Service in 2016, which suggested ideas including things like eliminating Saturday delivery. While pragmatic, the real solution is to stop treating the Postal Service like a business. It shouldn't matter if the Postal Service loses money any more than if the Department of Defense does. It's one of the few governmental entities that is specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
No. I am with Trump on this one. Without this service and discount, Amazon would not be making the profits it would be making.
If the postal service went bankrupt, Amazon would have to find some other means to distribute these packages and either increase the price to do so, or make it take longer to deliver, or use an independent package delivery service like DSL. At this point in time, I don't know why Amazon doesn't set up their own delivery system to reduce costs, unless they are milking the postal service for an insane discount.
I don't care if it pisses off a person with a first world problem of having to wait a couple extra days to get a product. I (as a tax payer), should not have to pay more to have your nonessential package delivered.
Calling for a massive increase in Postal Service fees is certainly an interesting political tactic. Also, I don't know how to tell him this, but most people don't hate Amazon. They love getting free 2-day shipping. And Amazon gets good rates from the Post Office because they do massive bulk business. You wanna piss off a good portion of Americans?? F**k with their Prime Memberships and make it cost more or take longer to get their packages.
Obama did present plans to reform the Postal Service in 2016, which suggested ideas including things like eliminating Saturday delivery. While pragmatic, the real solution is to stop treating the Postal Service like a business. It shouldn't matter if the Postal Service loses money any more than if the Department of Defense does. It's one of the few governmental entities that is specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
No. I am with Trump on this one. Without this service and discount, Amazon would not be making the profits it would be making.
If the postal service went bankrupt, Amazon would have to find some other means to distribute these packages and either increase the price to do so, or make it take longer to deliver, or use an independent package delivery service like DSL. At this point in time, I don't know why Amazon doesn't set up their own delivery system to reduce costs, unless they are milking the postal service for an insane discount.
I don't care if it pisses off a person with a first world problem of having to wait a couple extra days to get a product. I (as a tax payer), should not have to pay more to have your nonessential package delivered.
And the postal service would be in even more dire straights if Amazon stopped using them entirely, since the USPS, at some time or another, handles 40% of their package delivery. Fortune magazine seems to estimate that Amazon is paying about $2 a package, which is roughly half of what they would pay UPS or FedEx. I mean, that is just a given. Of course the Post Office is going to cost less than those two companies. They always have.
Apparently Amazon ships 608 million packages a year. Going by the 40% number, if Amazon abandons the Post Office, that means half a billion dollars in lost revenue based on what they are paying now. Beyond that, one of the reasons the rate is so low is that Amazon has so many outlet facilities, and the Post Office is usually not even transporting the package across the country. They are doing what is called "last mile" delivery, which essentially means delivering the package once Amazon already gets it to the town the recipient lives in.
Of course what this tweet is really about is that Trump wants to punish Jeff Bezos because he owns the Washington Post, and he is trying to intimidate and strong-arm them into more favorable coverage.
Calling for a massive increase in Postal Service fees is certainly an interesting political tactic. Also, I don't know how to tell him this, but most people don't hate Amazon. They love getting free 2-day shipping. And Amazon gets good rates from the Post Office because they do massive bulk business. You wanna piss off a good portion of Americans?? F**k with their Prime Memberships and make it cost more or take longer to get their packages.
Obama did present plans to reform the Postal Service in 2016, which suggested ideas including things like eliminating Saturday delivery. While pragmatic, the real solution is to stop treating the Postal Service like a business. It shouldn't matter if the Postal Service loses money any more than if the Department of Defense does. It's one of the few governmental entities that is specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
No. I am with Trump on this one. Without this service and discount, Amazon would not be making the profits it would be making.
If the postal service went bankrupt, Amazon would have to find some other means to distribute these packages and either increase the price to do so, or make it take longer to deliver, or use an independent package delivery service like DSL. At this point in time, I don't know why Amazon doesn't set up their own delivery system to reduce costs, unless they are milking the postal service for an insane discount.
I don't care if it pisses off a person with a first world problem of having to wait a couple extra days to get a product. I (as a tax payer), should not have to pay more to have your nonessential package delivered.
And the postal service would be in even more dire straights if Amazon stopped using them entirely, since the USPS, at some time or another, handles 40% of their package delivery. Fortune magazine seems to estimate that Amazon is paying about $2 a package, which is roughly half of what they would pay UPS or FedEx. I mean, that is just a given. Of course the Post Office is going to cost less than those two companies. They always have.
Apparently Amazon ships 608 million packages a year. Going by the 40% number, if Amazon abandons the Post Office, that means half a billion dollars in lost revenue based on what they are paying now.
Of course what this tweet is really about is that Trump wants to punish Jeff Bezos because he owns the Washington Post, and he is trying to intimidate and strong-arm them into more favorable coverage.
And if the post office increased their fee to $3 per package they'd make $203 million more. It'd still be cheaper than FedEx while eating at thier losses.
Calling for a massive increase in Postal Service fees is certainly an interesting political tactic. Also, I don't know how to tell him this, but most people don't hate Amazon. They love getting free 2-day shipping. And Amazon gets good rates from the Post Office because they do massive bulk business. You wanna piss off a good portion of Americans?? F**k with their Prime Memberships and make it cost more or take longer to get their packages.
Obama did present plans to reform the Postal Service in 2016, which suggested ideas including things like eliminating Saturday delivery. While pragmatic, the real solution is to stop treating the Postal Service like a business. It shouldn't matter if the Postal Service loses money any more than if the Department of Defense does. It's one of the few governmental entities that is specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
No. I am with Trump on this one. Without this service and discount, Amazon would not be making the profits it would be making.
If the postal service went bankrupt, Amazon would have to find some other means to distribute these packages and either increase the price to do so, or make it take longer to deliver, or use an independent package delivery service like DSL. At this point in time, I don't know why Amazon doesn't set up their own delivery system to reduce costs, unless they are milking the postal service for an insane discount.
I don't care if it pisses off a person with a first world problem of having to wait a couple extra days to get a product. I (as a tax payer), should not have to pay more to have your nonessential package delivered.
And the postal service would be in even more dire straights if Amazon stopped using them entirely, since the USPS, at some time or another, handles 40% of their package delivery. Fortune magazine seems to estimate that Amazon is paying about $2 a package, which is roughly half of what they would pay UPS or FedEx. I mean, that is just a given. Of course the Post Office is going to cost less than those two companies. They always have.
Apparently Amazon ships 608 million packages a year. Going by the 40% number, if Amazon abandons the Post Office, that means half a billion dollars in lost revenue based on what they are paying now. Beyond that, one of the reasons the rate is so low is that Amazon has so many outlet facilities, and the Post Office is usually not even transporting the package across the country. They are doing what is called "last mile" delivery, which essentially means delivering the package once Amazon already gets it to the town the recipient lives in.
Of course what this tweet is really about is that Trump wants to punish Jeff Bezos because he owns the Washington Post, and he is trying to intimidate and strong-arm them into more favorable coverage.
You are assuming USPS makes a profit when they ship for Amazon. Why? If they're making a loss on each package, they would be stronger by dropping Amazon.
1) Amazon has already started developing their own delivery service. 2) They already make heavy use of UPS and FedEx. 3) A lot of what they use USPS for is "final mile" delivery, as opposed to interstate shipping, so it makes sense that they could negotiate for lower rates. [Bloomberg]
The USPS has done a poor job keeping up with technology--email, texting, and social media were always going to eliminate a lot of its business, but they were caught especially flat-footed.
However, the finances of the USPS look terrible (and doubly so when compared to private companies) because they're required to fully pre-fund their employee pensions and future healthcare benefits. Last I checked (and granted it was a while ago), they were sitting on something like $350-400 billion in cash earmarked for this, and aren't allowed to use those funds to expand services or offset costs to consumers. They are still losing money though.
Otherwise I generally agree with @deltago. This smacks of similar scheme where companies, Wal-Mart being the prime example, underpay their employees and then encourage them to apply for government benefits, effectively offloading costs onto the US taxpayer. It's worth examining the deal, even if (as @smeagolheart points out) the real reason Trump cares is to stick it to Bezos.
For one thing, we don't seem to have any idea whether the post office's business relationship with Amazon is beneficial or not. My guess is that the millions of packages Amazon sends out each day are part of what is keeping it afloat at all. Because no one under 50 pays or receives bills in the mail anymore. It is all done online, on a smartphone, or taken out automatically. At some businesses you have to specifically request a paper statement each month. Moreover, the problem with the post office is that it exists in this ridiculous grey area where it is both a government entity and is ALSO expected to run like a business and turn a profit. Why?? We don't expect the Department of Defense or Department of Justice to make money, nor are they raked over the coals when they lose it. It isn't even looked at in those terms. Why the post office should be any different is beyond me. Clearly, we should still charge a reasonable amount for postage, but the damn thing just needs to EXIST so we can have a functional society, unless one is arguing we no longer need a mail system in a country of hundreds of millions of people.
As for Amazon, I have no doubt they treat their workers as shitty as nearly every other large corporation in this country, but what I DON'T see is them ripping off their customers in any way. This whole deal with the USPS exists because of Amazon Prime, which provides free 2-day shipping on any package for $10 a month (or $100 a year). If you even buy two things a month from Amazon, it pays for itself. If you are someone who needs to do alot of shopping online (and for people who may live an hour or more drive away from a metro area, it may be the only option), they are basically handing you free money to the tune of $20-30 a month. Juxtapose that to Wal-Mart. I have no doubt both companies treat their employees like crap. But when I go to Wal-Mart, I frequently have to wait 30-45 minutes simply to find someone to open a display case, or deal with the fact that they are only staffing 1 or 2 of the 24 check-out lanes they have installed. Point being, every time I shop at a Wal-Mart, I can FEEL how badly the workers are being treated because I get treated the same way nearly every time I'm there and actually need something. On the other side of the coin, I've never once felt I was getting anything other than a great deal and total transparency (as a customer) from Amazon.
1. Don't shop at Wal-Mart. Especially don't shop at Wal-Mart if you (not you personally) complain about manufacturing jobs going over seas.
2. That $20-30 a month you get from prime is all good and dandy, but it shouldn't be given from tax payers. If a postal service is needed, it shouldn't be giving discounts to for-profit companies. Amazon should be eating the losses for their own promotions, not a publicly owned service. This statement is true if you don't want the post office running as a business.
So the kid opened the door and got shot. I blame the police. As I mentioned before they are trained that everything is a HUGE threat and potentially armed with a deadly weapon. They have itchy trigger fingers and that's what happened there. This is a complication of the 2nd ammendment and the wild west we have of guns guns guns everywhere.
Could this have happened in a place where it isn't REALLY easy to have guns everywhere? You are unlikely to be shot opening the door in another country. Some places it's been years since anyone was shot by police, not like a daily thing like in the US.
So the kid opened the door and got shot. I blame the police. As I mentioned before they are trained that everything is a HUGE threat and potentially armed with a deadly weapon. They have itchy trigger fingers and that's what happened there. This is a complication of the 2nd ammendment and the wild west we have of guns guns guns everywhere.
Could this have happened in a place where it isn't REALLY easy to have guns everywhere? You are unlikely to be shot opening the door in another country. Some places it's been years since anyone was shot by police, not like a daily thing like in the US.
By all accounts here, it wasn't even the person the shithead Call of Duty player was trying to target. It was just some random citizen caught totally unaware who was going to answer his front door.
So the kid opened the door and got shot. I blame the police. As I mentioned before they are trained that everything is a HUGE threat and potentially armed with a deadly weapon. They have itchy trigger fingers and that's what happened there. This is a complication of the 2nd ammendment and the wild west we have of guns guns guns everywhere.
Could this have happened in a place where it isn't REALLY easy to have guns everywhere? You are unlikely to be shot opening the door in another country. Some places it's been years since anyone was shot by police, not like a daily thing like in the US.
By all accounts here, it wasn't even the person the shithead Call of Duty player was trying to target. It was just some random citizen caught totally unaware who was going to answer his front door.
totally. But police have heard stories about madmen shooting their mothers and were thinking "omg it's happening again, but to ME!" and bam.
The police officer was too trigger happy but the guy who did the swatting deserves at least involuntary manslaughter for this.
It was a stupid prank most likely. But he didn't kill anyone, the cop did it. Trouble for filing a false police report or something. If that's not a big deal they should pass a law to make it one.
The police officer was too trigger happy but the guy who did the swatting deserves at least involuntary manslaughter for this.
It was a stupid prank most likely. But he didn't kill anyone, the cop did it. Trouble for filing a false police report or something. If that's not a big deal they should pass a law to make it one.
It was a stupid prank that got someone killed. I have no sympathy for the prankster.
Comments
Both the comments and the original draft make Milo look... bad.
I think I understand why so many people hate him.
o0o or a
"Paris Hilton is not the best authority to quote here" t-shirt.
Whether or not Milo actually believes the stuff he says and writes is sort of immaterial. I could dredge up a post he wrote not that long ago in the grand scheme of things that is basically 100% the opposite of what he is now. What he saw (what MANY people saw) is this almost nihilistic movement online where everything is coated with this heavy lacquer of supposed irony, because if it wasn't, you'd have to just assume they were all aspiring school-shooters. I watch videos from this echo-chamber when I can tolerate it, and the videos are bad enough (and god are they repetitive), but it's the comment sections that really reveal the underbelly of this. Milo and many others are just cashing in on the fact that there is a group of people so deeply alienated from modern society (and modern conventions of POLITE society, which is called political correctness) that they have turned to ethno-nationalism as a solution.
The fact that Milo's original plans for this book are like this will come as a surprise to those who weren't willing to dive into what he was about previously (and honestly, who could blame you??). But if you've taken even a cursory dive into this world of Pepe the Frog avatars, you'll see that it is filled to the brim with eliminationist rhetoric about everyone from liberals, to Jews, to African-Americans. In regards to women, it is straight-up misogyny. It's all passed off as some sort of joke, but that really doesn't pass muster anymore. If it is a joke, what is the punchline?? If they are trying to mock liberalism, that point came and went long ago. There is certain language used in certain parts of the left (mostly young people in college) that is counter-productive and alienating, mostly because it isn't good messaging. But it doesn't account for an entire generation of young men online who have totally given themselves over to the basic tenants of fascism just for shits and giggles.
I especially love the note the editor made when he says "autist seems like a mental health slur." This is sort of hard to understand if you haven't spent alot of time reading comments on YouTube videos, but it's one of the first things I noticed about this movement. It SEEMS to be a direct reaction to the fact that it is generally considered in pretty bad taste to call someone "retarded" as an insult nowadays. Calling someone "autistic" or an "autist" is simply a replacement for that kind of name-calling, except it almost seems more vicious, because it reveals a concrete DESIRE to want to demean people with a legitimate disease. It's not just that it slips out once in awhile, they ENJOY saying it.
https://img.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeed-static/static/2017-12/28/15/asset/buzzfeed-prod-fastlane-02/sub-buzz-16562-1514493043-1.png
Calling for a massive increase in Postal Service fees is certainly an interesting political tactic. Also, I don't know how to tell him this, but most people don't hate Amazon. They love getting free 2-day shipping. And Amazon gets good rates from the Post Office because they do massive bulk business. You wanna piss off a good portion of Americans?? F**k with their Prime Memberships and make it cost more or take longer to get their packages.
Obama did present plans to reform the Postal Service in 2016, which suggested ideas including things like eliminating Saturday delivery. While pragmatic, the real solution is to stop treating the Postal Service like a business. It shouldn't matter if the Postal Service loses money any more than if the Department of Defense does. It's one of the few governmental entities that is specifically mentioned in the Constitution.
To Trump, Amazon falls in the terrible camp.
Here's why:
-Jeff bezos is richer than Trump (oh noe!)
-Amazon/Bezos own the Washington Post which is not afraid to write the truth about Trump.
Because they are in the terrible camp, Trump will constantly trash them. Trump can't separate Amazon from the Washington Post.
Trump hates everything he can't bully and intimidate and control.
This is, as of today, the oldest political party of France. The historic republican party opposed to monarchists, and bonapartists from one side and the communists from the other side back in the days. It was more an assemblage of radical republican people with different convictions. Some were very liberals (in the academic sense), some were really close to communists. In modern politics and from a US perspective they're stuck somewhere between the right wing of the Democrats and the left wing of the Republicans. A stance which was, back in their founding time, considered far-left (how things change).
Regarding our president, I think he does the job right. He jumped on the opportunity left by Trump's decision to leave the Paris Agreement and seems to assume some kind of leadership on environnement research. On a global stage I must say Trump's blunder and May's weak position help him taking a good position in the West, but he seizes the opportunities so...
He is kind of a contradiction for most anglophone people. He offers civil right progresses which the liberals (in the US sense) would support very much, at the same time he strongly favour a serious security (police and military) budget and policy and is very "free-market" oriented. More like the Conservatives (in the US sense too).
EDIT: just to clarify, if there is any ambiguity, Macron, our president, has founded his own party one year before the elections and destroyed the traditionnal bipartite system of France (Conversatives vs Socialists). Frank Underwood could take lessons from him.
If the postal service went bankrupt, Amazon would have to find some other means to distribute these packages and either increase the price to do so, or make it take longer to deliver, or use an independent package delivery service like DSL. At this point in time, I don't know why Amazon doesn't set up their own delivery system to reduce costs, unless they are milking the postal service for an insane discount.
I don't care if it pisses off a person with a first world problem of having to wait a couple extra days to get a product. I (as a tax payer), should not have to pay more to have your nonessential package delivered.
Apparently Amazon ships 608 million packages a year. Going by the 40% number, if Amazon abandons the Post Office, that means half a billion dollars in lost revenue based on what they are paying now. Beyond that, one of the reasons the rate is so low is that Amazon has so many outlet facilities, and the Post Office is usually not even transporting the package across the country. They are doing what is called "last mile" delivery, which essentially means delivering the package once Amazon already gets it to the town the recipient lives in.
Of course what this tweet is really about is that Trump wants to punish Jeff Bezos because he owns the Washington Post, and he is trying to intimidate and strong-arm them into more favorable coverage.
2) They already make heavy use of UPS and FedEx.
3) A lot of what they use USPS for is "final mile" delivery, as opposed to interstate shipping, so it makes sense that they could negotiate for lower rates.
[Bloomberg]
However, the finances of the USPS look terrible (and doubly so when compared to private companies) because they're required to fully pre-fund their employee pensions and future healthcare benefits. Last I checked (and granted it was a while ago), they were sitting on something like $350-400 billion in cash earmarked for this, and aren't allowed to use those funds to expand services or offset costs to consumers. They are still losing money though.
Otherwise I generally agree with @deltago. This smacks of similar scheme where companies, Wal-Mart being the prime example, underpay their employees and then encourage them to apply for government benefits, effectively offloading costs onto the US taxpayer. It's worth examining the deal, even if (as @smeagolheart points out) the real reason Trump cares is to stick it to Bezos.
As for Amazon, I have no doubt they treat their workers as shitty as nearly every other large corporation in this country, but what I DON'T see is them ripping off their customers in any way. This whole deal with the USPS exists because of Amazon Prime, which provides free 2-day shipping on any package for $10 a month (or $100 a year). If you even buy two things a month from Amazon, it pays for itself. If you are someone who needs to do alot of shopping online (and for people who may live an hour or more drive away from a metro area, it may be the only option), they are basically handing you free money to the tune of $20-30 a month. Juxtapose that to Wal-Mart. I have no doubt both companies treat their employees like crap. But when I go to Wal-Mart, I frequently have to wait 30-45 minutes simply to find someone to open a display case, or deal with the fact that they are only staffing 1 or 2 of the 24 check-out lanes they have installed. Point being, every time I shop at a Wal-Mart, I can FEEL how badly the workers are being treated because I get treated the same way nearly every time I'm there and actually need something. On the other side of the coin, I've never once felt I was getting anything other than a great deal and total transparency (as a customer) from Amazon.
2. That $20-30 a month you get from prime is all good and dandy, but it shouldn't be given from tax payers. If a postal service is needed, it shouldn't be giving discounts to for-profit companies. Amazon should be eating the losses for their own promotions, not a publicly owned service. This statement is true if you don't want the post office running as a business.
http://amp.kansas.com/news/local/crime/article192111974.html?__twitter_impression=true
Could this have happened in a place where it isn't REALLY easy to have guns everywhere? You are unlikely to be shot opening the door in another country. Some places it's been years since anyone was shot by police, not like a daily thing like in the US.