The US Postal Service should not be a monopoly, much less a protected monopoly. Direct competition should be allowed and encouraged.

Mailboxes should be used for all postal and non-postal delivered items that could fit inside them. Advertisements delivered by hand by dedicated couriers should be allowed, in fact, required to be placed inside mailboxes. The restriction that mailboxes must be used only for mail delivered by the US Postal Service should be lifted. Mailboxes could and should be put to more and better use. For example, UPS, Federal Express, and other delivery services should be allowed to use mailboxes if the packages will fit inside them.

All mailboxes and mail slots should be full-sized, meaning that they should be big and wide enough to allow standard-sized magazines and fairly thick books to be passed thought the mail slot and placed safely and gently into the mailbox without having to be forced, bent, or deformed in order to get it all the way in.

Part of a postal worker’s job should include picking up/accepting outgoing mail from residential mailboxes. But in order to prevent residents from using this service as free mail pickup for a home-based businesses or other operations resulting in large amount of outgoing mail that can potentially swamp the postal worker, perhaps there should be a maximum limit to the number of pieces of mail that the postal worker is allowed to pick up, such as 3 pieces of outgoing mail per day.

Mailboxes should also be designed in such a way so that outgoing mail can be clipped securely somewhere near or on the mailbox, but in a way that doesn’t obstruct the delivery of the mail or anything else.

Postage stamps should never have their cent values printed on them. Such stamps should indicate what class such a stamp is valid for, such as First Class, Postcard, etc. Rather, all such stamps should be worth whatever the current rate of that stamp class is at the time of usage, regardless of when that stamp was printed. The same can be done for all other classes of stamps, as well.

If for whatever reason such postage stamps cannot be of the “Forever” type, but do have fixed values, then such values should be printed on them. This should apply even to the interim stamps that are circulated during the transition period before the new stamps arrive. There is no acceptable reason for not having these values printed on all such stamps.

Post Office Boxes should not be allowed to be addressed as suites, apartments, residences or in any other way that would give the impression to someone who reads the address as being an actual business or residential location.

Unsolicited advertisements such as credit card offers, charitable requests, product/service ads, etc., that are delivered through the postal mail, should have the word ‘Advertisement’ printed somewhere on the outside of the envelope (in visible and large enough type) so that is would be much easier for people to distinguish such ‘junk mail’ from more important mail. Furthermore, such mail should be prohibited from looking ‘official’, meaning that they cannot say things, like “Must Open Immediately”, “For Addressee Only”, “Must Reply within 3 Days”, etc.

Mail couriers should carry plastic bags, esp. in times when it is raining or threatening to rain, so that the mail can be placed in the bags if there is a danger of the mail getting wet, for example, if the mail won’t fit in the mailbox or if it is sticking out of the mailbox, or if the lawn sprinklers are on during the moment of delivery and may get it wet.