Activities like letter writing might get gentrified, with private businesses charging a premium for delivery.
> Danes can still send a love letter or a Christmas card in 2026, but only through a private company.
> They must either drop it at a shop, or pay extra to have it collected from home, which is available online or via an app.
> By law, Danes must always be able to send a letter. If a private company stops delivering them, the government must step in with a new provider.
And yeah, elderly and digitalization is not always working well. Where I live the average age is ~80, and people need assistance to use the laundry machine.
The booking system for the public facilities such as laundry services is a piece of paper.
In my experience the Danish postal service for correct delivery of letters has been subpar in relation to American postal service (of course my American experience is from decades ago).
Danish law requires everyone to have access to postal services for letters. Therefore another private company, DAO, will provide postal delivery to everyone in Denmark and the ability for everyone in Denmark to send letters from DAO service points (in shops, etc).
A significant subsidy is being provided to DAO to enable a universal delivery service.
DAO will be the national postal service for international treaty (UPU) purposes, enabling letter and small parcel post between Denmark and other countries according to UPU agreements.
schoen•2h ago
Edit: I asked an LLM, which told me that we can still send letters to Denmark from abroad, but that Danes themselves will have to go to the new private contractor to send outgoing mail (instead of using their postal service). The private contractor will apparently still do regular residential and business delivery, including for mail that originates outside of Denmark.