I haven't even caught up with the thread. I'm still on page 60. I would like to mention, though, that 40, or even 20 years ago, the medications that keep me from being crippled or possibly even dead did not exist yet.
Taking the timeline given into consideration, there seems to be a consensus that the USPS was better 40 years ago. It may have been in many ways. For one, it was called the USPO (United States Post Office), and was completely a government operation. Most work was done by employees. They had contractors, but only for specific duties like rural mail.
Their employees were well paid, with excellent benefits. In 1980, Congress defunded the USPO and created a non-governmental entity called the United States Postal Service, a privately owned company majority owned by the US Government but otherwise independent of it. Now more of the transportation and delivery are being handled by outside contractors than by employees. Contractors have to go through a bidding process, and receive no benefits.
That said, in the past year I've seen some dramatic changes. FedEx and UPS both raised their rates by as much as 100% in some cases. I've had delivery problems with all three, but lately FedEx has been just awful, and UPS isn't even as snappy as they used to be.
When I first started selling stuff on EBay, I never even considered sending anything but small items by USPS. I couldn't imagine giving the USPS a guitar to deliver 3000 miles away. But today, their rates for that sort of shipping are about 1/2 the price of the other carriers, and their 2 day packages almost always arrive in 2 days.
Whatever. But anyway, a lot of people are living longer healthier lives because of treatments that didn't exist 20 or 40 years ago.
I got my $10 Coolfire 1 yesterday. Nice mod for the cartotanks. Basic, and very well made.