At 02:55 PM 8/22/96 +0000, Vipul Ved Prakash wrote:
At 06:09 PM 8/20/96 -0700, Rich Graves wrote:
[deleted]
1. Junkmail requires the SENDER to pay for it, not the recipient. Internet pricing models are complicated and debatable, but you surely end up paying for snail-junk-mail. Not directly, but hidden in the high first-class mail costs. More mail, more infrastructure, higher costs. This could be quite true for the net also, if we consider bandwidth costs money.
I beg to differ. The USPS considers "junk" mail their bread-and-butter. Huge mailings of all manner of bulk mail (especially those that are PostNet barcoded by the sender) pay the bills around the Post Office. Your "more mail, more infrastructure, higher costs" argument is flawed. The post office has many fixed costs related to maintaining their huge presence, delivering to so many rural addresses. If we had to pay a per-letter basis *discounting* the value provided by the infrastructure already in place supporting the bulk-mail handling systems, we'd be paying roughly Federal Express 2-day letter rates for each piece of mail (around $6.00, if memory serves correctly.) I do not say this to begin yet another "Privatize the USPS" rant. I also am not interested in whether or not the USPS should be privatized, have its criminal law protctions stripped, or even if the postmaster general should report our stamp purchasing habits to Janet Reno. All I'm saying is that the above statement ("junk mail = higher costs") is false. John -- J. Deters "Captain's log, stardate 25970-point-5. I am nailed to the hull." +-------------------------------------------------------+ | NET: jad@dsddhc.com (work) jad@pclink.com (home) | | PSTN: 1 612 375 3116 (work) 1 612 894 8507 (home) | | ICBM: 44^58'36"N by 93^16'27"W Elev. ~=290m (work) | | PGP Key ID: 768 / 15FFA875 | +-------------------------------------------------------+