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Comment by crote | Hacker News Reader

There are still plenty of legit reasons to send bulk email, such as companies sending you bills, or the government informing people about local stuff.

Bulk email is discounted because it saves the mail company a lot of money: it comes presorted, and there is no need to mess around with stamps.

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There's no reason why it has to be defined this way, though. Create a new category for "marketing mail" (or whatever), define what belongs to it, and require senders to continue to presort it, but make it cost 10x as much (or whatever).

This is never going to be perfect, of course, but anything that reduces the amount of crap I get in my mailbox every day isn't just great for my levels of annoyance, but also great for the environment. 95% of what shows up in my mailbox ends up in the recycling bin. Creating, printing, shipping, and recycling that material is a huge waste.

It's certainly possible to do that, but keep in mind that if the government (or an organ of the government) is in the business of deciding what category of speech something is, that is eventually going to cause a problem.

Just because there are legitimate reasons for bulk mail to exist doesn’t mean it should be discounted. Most bills are electronic nowadays, and for the smaller number of people that live in rural areas and maybe still rely on snail mailed bills, I’m sure another 30 cents isn’t going to break the bank, when the bank is making 20% interest on the credit card bill.

Why would a bill be a bulk email?

For the USPS, "bulk mail" is a term of art, more properly bulk presorted mail.

There are several categories: 500 pieces of first-class mail, 200 pieces or 50 lb as "USPS Marketing Mail", Parcel Select Ground (50-piece minimum per mailing), presorted and carrier route sourted bound matter (300 pieces), library mail (300 pieces), media mail (300 pieces).

<https://www.usps.com/business/business-shipping.htm>

The tradition of discounting certain mailings, especially publications (e.g., newspapers) and books dates to the very beginning of the US postal service and was established by Benjamin Franklin.

<https://www.history.com/news/us-post-office-benjamin-frankli...>

I strongly suspect crote wrote "email" intending "mail". Particularly as little email carries stamps or requires sorting by a post office.

I've nearly done the same several times in this thread myself. "Mail" really doesn't roll off my fingertips so readily these days.

One example might be an energy company (they tend to be big) that will send bills to a significant percentage of any residential area in its catchment area, probably four times a year at around the same time for everyone. Now repeat for water companies, phone companies, local government et cetera.

No reason for those to be bulk emails. They’d just be customized per customer.

Bulk, for a mail delivery company, refers exclusively to volume. You get discount on volume. Creating massive volumes of customized mails has been trivial for years.

My comment was about email, not snail mail.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35753488>

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