Comment by everforward | Hacker News Reader

Comment by everforward | Hacker News Reader

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The waste is a problem, and another big issue is that it undermines the purpose of the USPS. A major reason why the USPS was created and continues to exist is because the government needs to be able to contact people. Taxes, censuses, legal proceedings, etc, there are a lot of times the government needs to be able to contact people.

Allowing bulk spam mail to use that channel of contact is contrary to its purpose. It's not a place where I get high priority messages with delivery confirmation to make sure I get them anymore. It's a place where random flyers get stuffed, and the government insists on mixing their messages into that stream of crap.

USPS should stop bulk delivery entirely and have FedEx and UPS do it. They're not allowed to put stuff in my mailbox (and literally can't, because they don't have keys). At least then we restore the line. Things in the mailbox are important. Things that get left on my doorstep might be, but probably aren't.

But USPS is underfunded and according to the source below they made $13.9B from marketing mail in 2020. As long as USPS is underfunded it is a necessary evil.

https://qz.com/emails/quartz-obsession/2062562/

I never cease to be amazed how much I pay in taxes and then whenever there is a government service that is necessary or desirable for me, I have to pay to use it or endure shit like this to subsidize it.

Well for one thing you're also subsidising ('subsidising') all the people who earn less and pay less tax than you; not to mention all the people who are net paid by taxes.

I've never lived in the US and I do hear that perhaps it isn't particularly efficient with tax money, but still, if you looked at the average tax paid instead of your own it might not be nearly so amazing?

A good reference?

https://countryeconomy.com/taxes/tax-revenue

I'm not sure what other things to take into account. For example it says tax collected in Luxemberg is $44k per capita. Vs USA at $16k per capita. I'm sure another issue is 20% of USA taxes going to military?

Of othe places I've actually spent significant time, Singapore and Japan seemed to have pretty great government services and their taxes collected per person are lower than the USA. But I also know their cultures are different and that there are less people that need government support

> But USPS is underfunded and according to the source below they made $13.9B from marketing mail in 2020.

I would happily pay (napkin maths) $40-50 more in taxes per person per year to make this fucking stop.

Shit, it'd save my city some money. Less trash.

I'd happily pay zero more taxes, and have the USPS properly funded using money that used to pay for overpriced cruise missiles or Navy ships that don't even function.

I think you're heavily in the minority here.

Just one hour a year at median individual hourly income lost to junkmail and you're, what, at least halfway to that cost? One important missed letter every few years can easily cause more harm than several years of that fee. Seems like a good deal to me, even if I'd rather (as another poster wrote) just spend slightly less on the military and give it to the USPS to make this stop.

Go the other way. Charge the spammers more for delivering their trash.

No, this won't eliminate it. It will give you less of it, though, and give the USPS more money. Win/win, even if we don't win as much as we would like.

Bulk mail currently gets a discount compared to individual letters. Eliminate that, and we'd see less bulk mail.

This discount is what got brought up when I complain about this on NextDoor and Facebook. Local business owners who are contributing to the spam, whose circulars are among those I just immediately throw in the trash, don't want to pay more. I'm very curious if they actually track the ROI on that advertising. I've asked - one local business found they got nothing from mailings anyway. But that's just a sample size of 1.

You are in the minority. As evidenced by the proliferation of overlay ads in their smart TVs, people are extraordinarily price-sensitive when it comes to something they can put a hard monetary value on. "This costs you $50" is something people are significantly more hostile toward than "This costs you some of your time, attention, and peace of mind" because in general we're really bad at assessing the value of our own mental well-being.

>As evidenced by the proliferation of overlay ads in their smart TVs

Genuine question, is it even an option to pay $X more and get an otherwise identical TV with no overlay ads? It's admittedly been 7 or 8 years since I last purchased a TV, but I don't remember such an option being available at the time, and the only time I can ever remember seeing that sort of choice being available was with the kindle, where it's very explicit that the ad-free (but otherwise identical) version is like $20 more (or, was when I bought my kindle, which again was many years ago).

That being said, I'd be extremely curious to see sales numbers for ad-free vs ad-laden kindles, although I sort of doubt I'll ever have the chance to.

Economies of scale and some sort of insufficient-competition market failure seem to sometimes make relatively-niche choices far more expensive than they "should" be, and TVs seem to be one of those cases—so you end up with manufacturers making $100 extra dollars (numbers made up, but bear with me) per panel on ads, but it'd cost you $1,000 to get the same panel without ads, which distorts apparent consumer preferences (pushing that niche even farther out of the mainstream, and so making the gap even worse).

It's not that they care a ton about price (they do, but), but that price is verifiable, certain, and stable,, while future benefits are not, or might be rugpulled.

I have lots of problems w/crypto, but one thing they've gotten right is the credibility of self-binding. Without that, it's just hard to trust any actor on their future behavior---from Reagan's immigration amnesty, to cable tv's ads, to funding government agencies that ("this time") will fix a problem.

(None of this is motivated by any dislike for USPS, which I generally like. I'm just talking about people's (imo justified) reluctance to trade the known for the unknown).

That cost isn't saved, it's just shifted somewhere else, as demonstrated for example by the daily emptying of trash that op described.

USPS is operationally profitable for a long time. They have this requirement to save large amounts for future pension obligations that keeps them in red.

Also, Congress retains the ability to use USPS profits at will for their own projects, versus a true corporate model where profits would be reinvested back into the "business".

I’d pay $0.10 for stamps vs the 5c now (is it 5 now? I have no idea)

They're around 60 cents right now.

USPS first class "Forever" stamps currently cost $0.58.

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