Apparently, as I have recently learned, the United States Postal Service has a monopoly on delivering not-extremely-urgent first class letters and the right to enforce this monopoly with the heavily-armed Postal Inspection Service.

Imagine, for a moment, that you at work, doing your job and minding your own business when, suddenly, a team of men armed with submachine guns and flash grenades break down the door to your workplace and demand that everyone drop to the ground with their hands behind their heads. These armed men are not terrorists, of course, they're postal inspectors. They are raiding your workplace for evidence that you and your coworkers have been committing the horrific crime of sending not-extremely-urgent letters via Federal Express overnight delivery.

The funny thing is that this has actually happened, though perhaps not as dramatically.



Now, this makes me wonder two things.

First, in the world of extraterritorial megacorps, how powerful is the UCAS Postal Service and how far does it go to enforce its monopoly (assuming that it still has one by statute)? Does it raid the homes of private citizens and arrest people for sending letters via competing services? And, more importantly, does it hire Shadowrunners to get revenge on megacorps and use or offer competing services?

The latter, I imagine, is a given. Being hired by the Postal Service to blow up a FedEx facility should be a very common shadowrun. Wetwork against megacorp middle-managers who choose to use competing services should also be fairly common.

The other question it raise is how far do megacorps go to enforce their own monopolies within their territories.

If you accidentally walk onto Ares Territory holding can Fizzy Cola, which directly competes with their Fuzzy Cola, are you subject to arrest? Will several heavily armed Firewatch teams descend upon you as soon as you pop the tab on the contraband softdrink?

I would say that having competitors products on Extraterritorial property would be a criminal offence. The swat team won't come and get you, but if they detect the product via RFID tag then security might do a quick "search and seizure". You'd probably get a fine and a black mark put against your personnel file for "lacking corporate loyalty". I'd imagine there would be a list of "disapproved" products available on every corp. Just have that list downloaded into your comlink and it would warn you if you were going to buy a "non-approved" product. Even if you buy it and use it before going home the corp would note it in scans of your bank account info and purchasing data.

I think that is part of the "Touristville" and slumming charm. You get a fake ID and put some cred on it and go and buy and drink and watch whatever you want while your overlords are blind to it. Not everyone is going to get a joygirl, they just might want the double bacon cheeseburger that their corporate health insurance says they can't have.

I have to imagine that banned corporate products would oftentimes be banned under a guise other than 'supporting our competitor'. A common one would probably be health standards. Fizzy Cola is not permitted on Ares property because one of its ingredients, Muave #8, has been linked to cancer in lab rats when mixed with prolonged exposure to heavy gamma radiation. Fizzy Cola has unsafe levels of Muave #8. If you are caught importing this extremely dangerous product onto Ares territory, you will be arrested by the Health Inspection Service for transporting and possessing a dangerous substance, and you may be required to undergo intense medical (i.e. rectal) examinations until they're certain you are not a carrier of any other possibly contagious medical maladies.

I suspect the USPS will still be around. It operates in a business with a pretty low profit margin, reduced further as soon as there's serious competition. However, most tight corporate housing or office buildings will likely have its own in-house courier service which may, due to legal restrictions, be limited to only 'extremely urgent' messages outside of the bounds of extraterritoriality.

Dude...this is genius!

Someone needs to do a "USPS Postal Commandos" campaign.

It's kind like in that old DOS game Deadline, where you could do missions for a number of illustrious paramilitary organizations, or alternately the British transit authority. Naturally I always did the transit authority missions.

People do not send letters in 2070...

Isn't SRM02-01 exactly a mail delivery?

What about a new "Pony Express" type of operation. Get package X to location Y while keeping the USPS off your ass. Ohh yeah, its just a carrier run with stamps.

Actually, considering how extremely easy it is to crack into 'high security' matrix hosts and presumably to intercept almost any communications sent over the LTGs, I have to assume that letters are tremendously common (albeit, probably not the 41 cent postcards we normally mail, but secured courier mail). Since this significantly increases the need for secure, but not necessarily urgent mail, the above listed law still applies, and presumably the USPS would move in to take over that function.

Perhaps. Often I tend to think that Shadowrun, being a dystopic cyberpunk universe, does everything the worse possible way. People could ditch digital communication because it's not secure, but they don't. In all facets of life, people do the worse possible thing, the most inneffective thing.

But that's just ideological fluff. I'd say, if you want to make a run that involves mailed letters, go ahead.

Garibaldi: "What are you so nervous about? We went up against entire Earth Alliance and two carrier groups!"
Security Officer: "Yeah, but - this is the Post Office! This could get us in real trouble."
Babylon 5 - "A Late Delivery from Avalon" - Season 3: Episode 57