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Comment by icelancer | Hacker News Reader

USPS is complicit in delivering junk mail, so it's fair game.

Not really sure I understand this position.

Also, if you want to get less junk postal mail, you can opt-out of the vast majority. It's not too hard: http://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0262-stopping-unsolicit...

1. As eli wrote above, it accomplishes nothing but annoying your postman.

2. Why would you try to sabotage a public service?

Junkmail is not a public service. Or at least, not to everybody. If it was solely good then I highly doubt it would be called junkmail, my suspicion is that it is called junkmail because a large chunk of it ends up unread in landfills.

Where I live we have simple stickers that allow you to pick yes / no for receiving unaddressed mail and free periodicals. We simply slapped a no/no sticker on the mailbox and forgot about the junk mail problem but not every country has a system like that.

"junkmail because a large chunk of it ends up unread in landfills."

So what? So does food that is not eaten and other forms of waste. I don't follow sports but I understand that there is plenty of waste by people who drive to games, consume beer as well as other costs associated with sporting events. There are people who send out "junkmail" who are legitimate and get business from it. And they are selling things that people want. Obviously no marketing campaign is 100% effective (a few percentage points is usually good actually).

"If it was solely good then I highly doubt it would be called junkmail"

There are pros and cons to most things. Giving it a different name wouldn't make it better or worse. People also don't like television commercials or ads on web pages. If you asked them they would like to eliminate those as well expecting everything to be to their liking.

Junkmail ("direct mail marketing") is to mail as advertising is to the internet. It pays the bills.

It's probably hypocritical of you to hate on junk mail while working in web development.

>1. As eli wrote above, it accomplishes nothing but annoying your postman.

And if 20% of people sent bricks in with their junk mail? What do you think the postmen would say?

Junk mail keeps the cost of other mail down. Not to mention a whole industry and jobs are linked to it. And it works if it didn't the junk mailers would stop mailing.

I'd be willing to pay slightly more in postage in order to eliminate junk mail. The mob (or patent troll industry or insert random undesirables) employs people, too, but you wouldn't argue for its protection solely on that basis. And the fact that it works ignores the fact that it irritates everyone who isn't a junk mailer. There are far more honest ways to advertise.

Not sure what you're trying to say here.

I'm not arguing for it's protection based on that fact at all. I'm pointing out that this idea that junk mail is bad because it annoys some people is wrong.

Guess what? Not everyone is annoyed or bothered by junk mail. Not everyone is annoyed by spam either and I'm not talking about idiots who respond to spam or even read it. There are people that get so few emails that if they login and don't see any mail they think the mail is not being delivered at all. So they'd rather have something show up to show that "the system is working".

Guess what? The number of people who are annoyed by junk mail or spam greatly exceeds the number of people who gain some benefit from it (mainly spammers and junk mailers - and since they are dishonest actors, I give their considerations very little weight).

My argument is not that junk mail is bad, because it annoys some people. My argument is that it is bad, because it annoys almost everyone.

PS - Surely you can think of a better system of informing users their inbox is working than regularly spamming everyone who has an inbox...?

" The number of people who are annoyed by junk mail or spam greatly exceeds the number of people who gain some benefit from it (mainly spammers and junk mailers - and since they are dishonest actors, I give their considerations very little weight)."

Really? What about the postal service employees?

http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/postal-facts/

Or the people (there are a great number of unmarked trucks on the street) that haul postal service mail. Or the airlines that haul postal service mail (of which a large portion is "junk" mail).

Or we could go further into the people who work in the printing industry or paper suppliers or the makers of the mailing equipment or the people who lease industrial space to these people.

"My argument is that it is bad, because it annoys almost everyone."

Disagree. Is there a survey that shows this? And have the people who (if they were surveyed) fully apprised of the benefits of "junk" mail and if so did they still get "annoyed" by it?

Add: One more thing. Where are you getting that the majority of people who send junk postal mail are "dishonest actors"?

Alright, I'll bite. First off, as I said above, plenty of objectively bad organizations like patent trolls and organized crime provide employment for some people, but that is not a reason to support them. You claimed that that was not your argument, but now you're bringing it up again.

Since you seem unwilling to do any research yourself (while asking a great deal of me for basically a throwaway comment), here are some facts:

1. In 2010, 'advertising mail' (in which junk mail is included) constituted $17 billion in revenue for the USPS, as opposed to $34 billion from first class mail. Direct mail advertising does provide a lot of revenue for the USPS, but not a dominant amount.

2. 44 percent of junk mail is thrown away unopened, and junk mail produces 5.8 million tons of waste in landfills annually.

3. I can't find any statistics or junk mail approval rating, likely because anyone who proposed such a study would get laughed at for trying to answer such an obvious question. I'm not sure what you want me to say here (I'm definitely not going to conduct the survey), but I think that based on the existence of things like spam filters, do not contact lists, and this entire thread that junk mail is not something most people appreciate receiving.

You seem to be arguing in favor of junk mail, because it generates money for certain businesses, including so far, the USPS, other mail delivery services, paper companies, the printing industry, and corporations which use direct mail advertising campaigns. I posit that junk mail is not a good thing, because it harms the environment, consuming over 100 million trees per year in the US alone and contributing to landfills. In addition, it annoys the vast majority of its recipients (even you admitted a successful advertising campaign will convert only a few percentage points of users above). Finally, the industries which you have named are not dependent on junk mail for their survival; even the USPS receives at most a third of annual revenue from the practice, and as I (and several others in the thread) have said, we would be willing to pay more in exchange for a halt to junk mail delivery.

If you have another argument to offer than supporting industry, please share it. Otherwise, I'm finished with this thread; if we're stuck on the basic point 'spam is bad,' we're never going to reach agreement.

Edit: I forgot to include my (admittedly found via random Googling) sources.

1. http://stateimpact.npr.org/new-hampshire/2011/09/27/how-junk...

2. http://environment.about.com/od/greenlivingdesign/a/junkmail...

All those workers are still a small minority of the people who receive it, otherwise junk mailing would be completely cost prohibitive.

Of course, even if they weren't, that's still not a good reason to keep it. If we're going to pay just to keep people employed, there are better holes to dig and fill up again.

Disagree. Is there a survey that shows this?

Why, yes: 81% of Americans support the creation of "Do not mail" lists to reduce advertising on their postal mailbox[1].

: http://phys.org/news/2012-12-survey-americans-mail.html

Yes. Junk mail is economically inefficient and solely supported by the subsidization allowed via high first-class post rates. There is a cost for every piece they send out. They are not paying this cost. Hence, externality.

> So they'd rather have something show up to show that "the system is working".

Haha, that's such a ridiculously poor argument. Why not just email yourself something or ask a friend to email something? How bewildered by the internet are the people you imagine? "Oh good, 'embolden my penis'. It's still working. I was worried for a second there when I closed all the internets on my screen."

Actually, at least in the U.S., the regular first class postage rates subsidize the junk mailings. That is one part of the reason why the USPS is bleeding red ink. First class mail is way down (due to electronic bill pay and email and other internet systems) and they no longer have the cash cow that was first class mail to utilize to subsidize the junk mail delivery.

I thought it was the other way around. Can you cite a source?

Title: Junk Mail's Endless Summer URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/todd-paglia/junk-mails-endless... Quote: "Our standard postage subsidizes junk mail. "

Title: Why Do We Subsidize Junk Mail? URL: http://shuthimup.mitzenmacher.net/?p=252 Quote: "So why do we pay 45 cents to mail a first-class letter while direct-mail advertisers pay only 18.5 cents? Can you say “crony capitalism?” Can you say “union busting?” This amounts to nothing more than a very costly subsidy given to the direct-mail industry, at the expense of first-class mailers,"

Title: Snail Mail Spam Subsidies Stuttering Towards A Stop URL: http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/09/08/snail-... Quote: "the USPS loses billions of dollars each year so that advertisers can send out billions of pieces of spam at below market costs."

I would pay 40 dollars a year to not get junk mail.

Well first it doesn't matter what you individually would do (because your idea would never be adopted by others who aren't bothered as much) but more importantly what about junk mail bothers you so much?

Also in theory you have a greater chance of getting your important mail if you get a lot of mail than you do if you don't get any mail at all. Because there is a bundle of mail for you.

Just theoretically: Why shouldn't we want our postal services to just be a dumb pipe? Isn't it basically a slow internet?

But that's not what is happening. Government subsidiaries (in this case, USPS) are selling lists of addresses to businesses based on one piece of knowledge: Zip codes. You provide tons of mail (literally) and a list of zip codes and USPS sees to it that the junk mail is delivered accordingly.

That's not a dumb pipe. ARIN/RIPE or Network Solutions aren't handing over lists of email addresses to spam.

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