USPS: "Volume is down, we need to raise prices."
  Congress: "Nope, sorry"

  USPS: "Uhm, ok.  We'll have to cut Saturday delivery then..."
  Congress: "No can do, sorry"

  USPS: "Well I guess we have to close a bunch of post offices at least"
  Every member of Congress in unison: "Sounds great, but not in my district"

I'm a big fan of the USPS -- I've found them to be more reliable than UPS and FedEx by far and they're amazingly inexpensive to boot. They know what they need to do to fix themselves, but sadly it seems to take a crisis before Congress will get out of the way and just let them do it.

You may not realize it, but you are often contributing to the greater good on a daily basis simply by doing your job. It's sometimes hard to visualize this because we are often many degrees of separation away from the "end user".

You don't actually have to be physically building that home for the homeless or providing food for the hungry; the work you're already doing may be helping someone to help someone else to do that.

I've even thought that the best way to put your technical skills to the greater good is through your day job, not instead of it.

Some of my days jobs have been to write software to ensure that:

  - people get the right prescription medication on time
  - firetrucks and ambulances get to where they're supposed to be
  - parts that go into cars and planes are properly certified
  - prisoners are kept in jail
  - those same prisoners get proper medical care
  - electronic equipment gets assembled properly and on time
  - medical supplies get dispatched to where they're supposed to
  - insurance claims are processed properly
  - quality data is properly maintained for food items
  

On the other hand, if you don't think that the work you do during the day contributes to the greater good, then maybe you should consider doing something else with your valuable time.

Do good and get paid. You can do both at the same time.

Except, you know, not really. You might want to read this: http://www.buffalonews.com/editorial-page/viewpoints/article...

Especially this bit:

What about those news reports of multibillion losses? Well, the $20 billion in losses over the last four years has nothing to do with what you’ve been told about a failing business model or obsolete mail. Here’s the real skinny: In 2006, Congress mandated that the Postal Service prefund future retiree health benefits for the next 75 years, and do so within a decade—something no other public agency or private firm does. The resulting annual payments run $5.5 billion a year, costing the Postal Service $21 billion since 2007. That’s the difference between a positive and a negative balance sheet, as it would be for virtually any entity facing a similar burden — if any did.

Remove that unreasonable obligation and the Postal Service would have been profitable.