- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews@lemmy.bestiver.se
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This is so sad. I thought the whole paper mail infrastructure was essentially eternal due to its importance.
Letter numbers have fallen since the start of the century from 1.4 billion to 110 million last year.
110 million is still A LOT of paper letters. Shame the service will be gone.
PostNord has weathered years of financial struggles and last year was running a deficit.
Again, I thought this was a national strategic resource, regardless of profit. Over here in europe’s armpit the national post has been running at a loss for nigh on 40 years, and it’s still kept afloat, for better or worse.
I wrote it already when the article popped up in !europe!europe@feddit.org
I think it is a strategically bad idea to remove the infrastructure for physical mail, while Russia is waging Hybrid warfare, which also targets electronic communication.
This concept of ‘deficit’ is just a construct for them to make it look like waste … and then kill it.
Do we run similar profitability metrics for the army? For transportation and infrastructure? For water filtration and waste processing? No.
Someone decided the mail wasn’t as important as a highway and set about gutting it intentionally.
really well put and i like your quotes i mean, essesntially due to its importance , yes i cannot say it better myself
I agree with what you’re saying and also it feels worth pointing out how pervasive the rhetoric of profitability has become.
We don’t talk about the military running at a loss, or the department of transport, or any other part of the government. We talk about their cost, because that’s really what it is. Services don’t “lose” money, they cost money.
Yeah, every public service now has to turn a profit except for highways and extra lanes
It’s deemed no longer a national strategic resource since it’s now used so little, and plenty of alternatives exist. That’s why they decided to privatise it, and subsequently close it down when the privatised letter delivery was unable to turn a profit.
Yeah but now much of the 110 million is just spam, scams and advertisements?
Are there any danes here, that could chime in? The idea of having an almost entirely digitized society feels so scary to me. Everything having mobile apps, no cash? Feels like a horror story given the implications on privacy. I couldn’t even run most of the the so called secure apps on my lineageOS. My bank knowing exactly when I payed how much money for what would be so dystopian to me. Are there other methods available to protect your privacy in Denmark? Or does there truly not anyone give a shit about their digital footprint?
There is still cash, as well as a national credit card provider.
Digital footprint is not something many people are concerned about. Possibly this has something to do with the strict protections offered by GDPR. Digital processes have also been normalised after all interactions with the state became digital. Trust in the state is high.
Not saying people shouldn’t be concerned, they just don’t seem to be.
Dane here.
Indeed it’s essentially impossible to minimise your digital footprint because there is no cash.
there is no cash
This is false. Cash still exists and can be used in a wide range of businesses. It may not be the norm, but it definitely still exists.
And, what if the US block MasterCard and visa in Europe?
They have their own national credit card provider, DanKort.
This is so blatantly false, IDK how any Dane could believe this???
We do absolutely have cash, and it’s legal tender, which means cash can’t be refused as payment.
Except we also have an anti corruption law, which states we can’t make cash payments above $3000.
So that’s kind of weird?I imagine OP isn’t saying that there literally is no such thing as cash in Denmark but something more nuanced like “cash is becoming rare.”
No idea about Denmark’s laws but there are companies (edit: I mean “countries” not companies) where cash is yes still the legal tender but payment at some businesses can only be made cashless. Denmark may have a law stating businesses must accept cash, but you can certainly have systems where cash is legal tender but some businesses will not accept it.
you can certainly have systems where cash is legal tender but some businesses will not accept it.
Not by normal laws, legal tender means you have to accept it. It’s not just that it’s not illegal to use. Credit cards for instance are NOT legal tender, meaning a business does not have to accept them, but you can use them almost everywhere.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_tender
Legal tender is a form of money that courts of law are required to recognize as satisfactory payment
And just in case you think I’m BS’ing here is an actual government policy explicitly stating that stores can refuse cash payments
Eh OK so Singapore have rules that are different. But as I clearly linked, that is not the “normal” definition.
I do agree it’s “not normal,” especially in the West. It does seem to be significantly more common across Asia.
And I suspect it’ll become more common across the West.
And I hate it. Cash is still king for me for whatever reason.
The introduction of a new Postal Act in 2024 opened up the letter market to competition from private firms and mail is no longer exempted from VAT, resulting in higher postage costs.
“When a letter costs 29 Danish krone (£3.35; $4.20) there will be fewer letters,” PostNord Denmark’s Managing Director, Kim Pedersen, told local media.
What a mystery as to why nobody is using the letter service.
