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Comment by flerchin | Hacker News Reader

Yep, and folks could even have a credit of 500 phone calls a month, or whatever a reasonable number would be, so no cost to consumers at all. Instead of a tax, it should be a minimum charge that goes to the carriers. So that they would be incentivized to collect it.

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In a world where we pay for stamps, why didn't bulk unsolicited mail go away? This won't work.

That escalated quickly

It's a fair fee though. It pays for my attention as a recipient. It prevents an externality. It's no different than having to deposit a quarter to take a shopping cart, to incentivize you to return it. A tenth of a cent would probably be just as effective btw; the problem is that you can send a million text messages, wasting a million seconds of other people's time assuming they spend an average of 1 second looking at it, all for far less than the value of all that time wasted.

Nobody is talking about TSA, what a non sequitur.

If only we could get paid by ad companies for trying to steal our attention.

Why wouldn't this solve the problem? Phone calls have a real cost, however small it may be, to both the recipient and the carriers. Everyone accepts paying for stamps. What makes paying for calls different, and such an abhorrent idea that we shouldn't even discuss it?

EDIT: Parent comment was replaced with something completely different so my reply makes no longer makes sense, but I'm leaving it unchanged.

In a world where we pay for stamps, why didn't bulk unsolicited mail go away? Why would it work for telephones?

> In a world where we pay for stamps, why didn't bulk unsolicited mail go away? Why would it work for telephones?

Different situation. Bulk mail is not illegal, in fact the USPS subsidizes it. Spam calls ARE illegal. Hopefully phone carriers will not give discounts for explicitly illegal uses of their networks, but we can deal with that later if it happens.

You are right back at the same "distinguishing legal from illegal calls" problem.

The whole point of this scheme is that it treats all callers equally, and works without needing to distinguish legal from illegal calls.

If paying for stamps can't stop junk mail, I don't see how paying for calls could stop cold callers.

Different situation. Bulk mail is not illegal, in fact the USPS subsidizes it. Spam calls ARE illegal.

I think you're saying that the cure described is worse than the disease, and that the bureaucracy to maintain such regulation would expand beyond its original mandate.

I think that's assuming that things always go poorly, and that there is no possible way for it to go well. Sometimes things go well.

How much more junk mail would we get if postage was free? Orders of magnitude more, I imagine.

It doesn't have to go away entirely to be worth making a change. I get probably 100x more email spam than physical mail

Companies have to pay for commercials and billboards, why don't those go away?

Bulk mail is priced to maximize profit to the postal service. Raising the rate 1000% would effectively end bulk mail. Adding a penny cost per spam would be more than a 1000% increase, and would effectively end the spam.

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