This summer, [national mail carrier] Omniva will be closing the Viljandi post office, along with several others in the same situation. Officially, the postal company doesn't call it a closure but a relocation. However, they might as well be shutting it down altogether, since instead of being in a shopping center in the heart of town next to the bus station, it will now be housed in Omniva's distribution center — literally the last building on the edge of the city limits. There's a bus stop directly in front of the center, but no buses go there. The spot is so remote that when a short stretch of road was built a decade ago to serve the nearby industrial area, someone graffitied "End of the World" on the unnamed sign at the bus stop.

Omniva presents the change in the usual corporate fashion — everything is being done to better serve customers. At the new location, they say, customers will be able to send large packages like sofas and refrigerators.

Most people would probably call a courier or transport such items themselves, rather than find a vehicle that fits a sofa, lift it into the car, drive to the post office, unload it, wrap it up and pay to send it off to someone who must then figure out how to get it out of the post office on their end. But perhaps there really is a clientele for this type of service.

What about the people — especially the elderly — who have been using the post office to pay bills, subscribe to newspapers and send letters and packages?

Yes, of course, most customers have moved online — just like with everything else. But if someone is paying nearly five euros in service fees just to pay a €25 electricity bill at the post office, then it's clear that the internet is not an option they can easily navigate. And quite often, they don't have a car to drive to a post office located at the end of the world.

You can, of course, sympathize with Eesti Post. If you're bleeding serious losses every year — €2.2 million last year — you have to start cutting costs somewhere. Especially if the state, as the owner, is wagging its finger. But then just say so outright, instead of talking about expanding sofa-shipping services. Secondly, the state should realize that in many places, the post office is, alongside the library, one of the last institutions providing public services.

Unfortunately, it often seems that one hand of the state doesn't know what the other is doing. This not only creates confusion but can easily cancel out the limited savings achieved through such reorganizations.

Take the case of the Viljandi post office relocation: while the state-owned company saves on rental costs, the Viljandi County Public Transportation Center will now have to run a bus to the "end of the world" so that customers can even get there. So the savings are questionable — but the service will definitely be worse for customers.

There are plenty of similar cases where the law of communicating vessels is forgotten. Some are easier to detect, others harder.

For example, after years of scrutiny by the Bank of Estonia, it recently came to light that Statistics Estonia had miscalculated the rise in electricity prices and thus slightly overestimated inflation. The topic is dry and technical and the percentages small, but the effect on the state budget could be significant — since official inflation figures are used to index pensions, which this year will cost nearly €3.8 billion.

Why did Statistics Estonia get it wrong? We'll probably never know for sure. Everyone makes mistakes. But several knowledgeable sources have suggested that too many analysts have simply been laid off.

The state's hands seem particularly disconnected when their fingers start rummaging around in budget line items outside the capital. Recently, for example, the Ministry of Culture unveiled a draft proposal — with the usual noble aim — to bring Estonia's 900 public libraries to a higher standard. One of the core ideas of the reform is to shift responsibilities like book procurement, staff training and consultation — currently handled by county libraries — under the National Library. For Viljandi's city library, this would mean losing four jobs.

It's understandable that in a time of austerity, the state must review whether operations can continue with fewer employees. But if the government wants to talk seriously about regional policy, then job consolidation should not automatically mean relocating positions to Tallinn.

There are several other technical issues with the reform, which we don't have space to get into here. To top it off, libraries in Viljandi County would be grouped into the western region along with Pärnu County, Lääne County and the islands, even though most public sector organizations treat Viljandi County as part of the southern region. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Regional Affairs and Agriculture is trying to create yet another administrative region — an especially illogical "Central Estonia" zone that would stretch from Mulgimaa to Lahemaa. Apparently, someone looking at a map from afar thinks Mõisaküla and Käsmu are similar enough to be thrown into the same bucket.

Looking on the bright side, this state of affairs should put to rest all conspiracy theories about secret societies of evil geniuses running the world behind the scenes.

Oh no — even in tiny Estonia, many things can't be coordinated properly. It's easy for me, too, to criticize the state for doing a bad job or not doing anything at all. But in reality, the omnipotent "state" doesn't actually exist. Instead, we have a long list of people and organizations trying to do their thing — some with broader vision, others more self-serving. Broadly speaking, there's some overarching governance, but when you zoom in on the details, you find an astonishing number of swans, pikes and crayfish all pulling in different directions.

Maybe Estonia needs an artificial intelligence-based data layer that could cross-reference development plans, reform proposals, budget cuts and operational models — and raise red flags when they contradict one another. That way, it would be easier to consider those warnings — or even deliberately ignore them if needed. Because we shouldn't be so afraid of making a wrong turn that we freeze up entirely. We must keep searching for newer, better paths. But we also need to know where the danger zones lie.

As the band Vennaskond once sang: "At the end of the world, there's a café where we'll all meet someday." But if decision-makers only see a narrow trail ahead and not the whole map, that café might end up being reachable only by those who drive cars, are tech-savvy and live in larger urban areas. The rest will be left waiting for a bus that never comes.

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