Che succede?

Il post di oggi di Fred Wilson sembra scritto per l’Italia più che per qualsiasi altro Paese occidentale.

Signora Camusso, signori politici, è il caso di leggerlo e di risvegliarsi: qui pianeta terra 2011.

The most interesting piece in the New York Times yesterday was not David Carr’s hatchet job on Mike Arrington. It was the piece about problems at the US Postal Service:

The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs. As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail. At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.

Right there you have in a microcosm the issue facing most developed economies, particularly western europe and the US. We are undergoing a big time technological revolution that is disrupting big industries and big companies all over the place. And many of these big companies (and societies) have in place huge entitlements that make it impossible to operate them profitably.

The US Postal Service story is not a unique situation. It is the situation. And we are going to be living with this situation for many years to come. We are crossing a huge chasm from an industrial society to an information society.