It's the exact same as the Nigerian Prince spam scam https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/why-do-...
I believe a call from anyone worth answering will probably result in a voicemail, and I know that robocalls leave voicemail, so I know it's not a perfect plan. But I am at a point where I would rather just ignore "phone" functionality on my iPhone than to put up with the huge daily distraction of robocalls.
I said what I said because I've disabled calls for people who are not on my contact list, whom rarely call me anyway, in favor of email and video chat like Hangouts. Most businesses can be contacted via email, and nearly all my correspondence with companies, when I was apply for jobs, was handled over email and Hangouts. It just seems to me like we already have plenty of viable options for ditching the outdated, low fidelity phone system, but maybe that's not for everyone. For individuals, however, I do still think disabling calls is worth a try just to see how much one really needs to be answering them.
I was interviewing for jobs the past 4 months, and asked nicely if they would be willing to use Hangouts instead of a phone call because of lots of robocalls. Third party recruiters might refuse(but I avoid them at all costs), but I've yet to have hiring managers or engineers be unwilling to do so. Small businesses are in a tough place, but an individual really does have plenty of options for avoiding phone calls.
EDIT: I'm being a little myopic here, since not everyone is applying for engineering positions. lol Employers outside SV probably won't be receptive to not using the legacy phone system.
If they want to reach me, they can do so my email, and it has worked fine so far.
Very much a captive audience.
If the government calls you, you're really in trouble. Calls from the "government" are almost always a scam. Same with banks to a lesser extent.
The school issue is an interesting one. Schools ought to have other methods to contact parents(or students). At the very least, a school should be willing to provide a list of numbers to whitelist.
My point is that there are difficulties in not taking phone calls, but there aren't as many of those difficulties as one might assume, and they exist in large part because nobody is pushing for obsolescence of the phone in favor of something better.
I wouldn't even mind a system that wasn't IP based so long as it had better security measures. In fact, that'd be preferable to relying on proprietary systems owned by the likes of Facebook and Google. The fact that a Caller ID can be easily spoofed, that numbers themselves can be spoofed, and that phone companies have long been complicit in the criminal activity that goes on over their system, is absurd. It can't be fixed and should either be thrown away or rebuilt from the ground up.
Any totally new solution is liable to be useful only to an increasing minority of the population over at least the next few decades.
It would probably be easier to graft authentication onto the current system and force individuals to post a tiny bond per assigned phone number.
Let people report robo calls and cause robo call originators to forfeit their numbers and bonds and don't allow them to buy new numbers under the same identity or credit card.
Even paying $10 per per 10 robo calls placed would boost the cost to $1 per call.
If you need 1000 bullshit calls to scam $500 out of someone then your net is negative.
If you want a solution, whitelisting isn't it. You could even create them at the organizational level, like schools and government offices publishing lists of numbers to be whitelisted... But that would just be used by the robocallers, spoofers and scammers.
We as a society benefit hugely from instant communication and trying to remove it today would put too many people at risk.
If a bank is calling me, they'd better want zero information from me - they better be just telling me things. Otherwise, I'm going to call them back at a number that I know is really them.