It is easier to me to imagine the waste involved; I live in a high rise. There's a large trash bin in the middle of the mail room that's empty at the beginning of the day and full at the end.

90% of the USPS' job is to transmit dead trees to our waste facilities.

But think of all the jobs and money involved in moving those trees.

"jobs" and "money" don't do anything for society. Junk mail is a drain on resources that doesn't produce anything useful. If the problem is that too many people are unemployed and there aren't enough jobs to go around, that shouldn't be an excuse to not put an end to an incredibly wasteful and annoying practice.

I think SilverRed was being sarcastic.

Oops.

Junk mail is "useful" because it distributes information.

It's much less effective than, say, books, because there's a lot of overhead and waste in sending junk mail to people who don't care for them.

Beyond that, it also subsidizes other mail deliveries. If mail wasn't being delivered to every address, having someone drop off a parcel just for you would be much more expensive.

> Beyond that, it also subsidizes other mail deliveries. If mail wasn't being delivered to every address, having someone drop off a parcel just for you would be much more expensive.

This is a political decision which indicts the political regime the USPS operates under.

Do you mean the American political system in general?

Not entirely, just the part that refuses to fund the USPS directly.

I'm not trying to say otherwise. I'm more pointing out that solving this problem will be hard because a lot of people depend on creating the problem.

How does the energy usage compare to digital advertising and cloud computing?

One starts to wonder should we just make advertising illegal. As it seems, it is waste in both paper form and as online adds with all the tracking involved...

what's the line between advertising and protected speech?

trick question: there is no line.

Billboards aren't banned in your state?

https://movia.media/moving-billboard-blog/why-is-billboard-a...

The supreme court, unanimously, in Rowan v United States Post Office Department, "categorically reject[ed] the argument that a vendor has a right under the Constitution or otherwise to send unwanted material into the home of another."

"Consequently, a mailer’s right to communicate ceased at the mailbox of an unwilling addressee."

I would be very suprised if SCOTUS would agree this ruling supports any legislative attempt to preemptively block "communication".

Junk mail is vital for the USPS finances. It's over 20% of their income, ~$16 billion/yr.

It's a shame. Anthing I get in the mail that's not a first-class letter addressed to me by name goes into the trash unopened. But without the will to significantly downsize and reorganize the USPS it is a necessary revenue stream.

https://about.usps.com/newsroom/national-releases/2019/1114-...

Except, of course, that the USPS is categorically not a business, and no fundamental barrier exists to direct funding from the federal government, as with many other federal services. It has historically been expected to self-finance, and doing so may appeal to some sense of prudence, but that does not need to be the case if the externalities of doing so exceeds the income generated.

I can be running around my block waving at people. Someone may be paying me $16bn per year to do this.

The fact that this is a "$16bn effort" doesn't make it useful.

Also consider that if this is a "$16bn effort" the loss is multiple of that. Think of the advertisers (and their clients money), the effort to discard/recycle this garbage etc.

The loss for humanity is greater than $16bn.

Is this 'type of business' is to be eliminated, then USPS will drop the respective fraction of their use-less resources (staff, trucks, sorting machines, etc.).

I have no idea what this means. Are you suggesting the delivery of paper mail in the US is an idea whose time has passed? There are both generations of people who would disagree with you and people in different circumstances that would as well.

Given that they mention "$16bn" repeatedly, it seems pretty clear to me that their comments are regarding marketing mail specifically, not the full set of services USPS provides.

I feel quite comfortable saying that there has been zero value to myself, or any other human, in delivering marketing mail to my home. I never look at it, I never read it, it just goes straight into my recycling as soon as I identify that a letter I've received is not from someone I have a legitimate personal or business relationship with. I have never made any purchase as a result of receiving an advertisement delivered to my home by USPS.

I think there's still a need for it, but it seems to me that if I got paper mail once a week that would be good enough (senders can still opt for "express" service for anything really time-sensitive). Most bills sent by mail have ~30 day payment due date, so getting them once a week would still be more than adequate. You could cut delivery staff and vehicle needs by close to 4/5 this way (keeping some capacity for the express letters).

The mail was delivered twice a day in most places until April 1950 when cuts made this impossible.

This is to say-- there have been changes made to the delivery frequency historically and there will be again most likely.

I like the USPS, but there is something odd about taking a piece of mail and dumping it directly into the shredder. You'd be surprised how many junk-mails contain a thick plastic card that can't be shredded-- I assume its to force you to open it.

It has gotten to the point with all of my communication technologies-- I dread phone calls, I dread text and instant messages. I dread mail of any type-- it's always bad news.

I believe that the focus/point made of a 'parent' was about bulk (spam) paper advertisements arriving at our homes, not ALL snail mail.

Perhaps I should have clearly stated it in my message.

You are making the incorrect assumption that the remaining services would as profitable. The point is this $16b subsidises unprofitable (but expected) services which USPS offers. If they can’t depend on this income source, the subsidy needs to come from somewhere else (I.e. federal budget).

The question then is:

1. If the money did come from the federal budget.

2. And the practice was stopped

-> Would society benefit by MORE than the money spent?

People also forget that the postal system was created explicitly by the constitution. In that sense it's a more authentic government institution than even the federal reserve which came later. The spirit in which it was created and the discussions surrounding it at the time also make it clear that the framers would be appaled by attacks on both the postal system and net neutrality that have become commonplace.

Forcing a public institution to be self-supporting is a classic strategy to destroy that institution. To funnel tax money away from public transit, just cripple the system by raising fares in the name of profitability while giving tax breaks to automakers. To kill the postal system, set it up to fail with malicious metrics, and make sure companies like Amazon don't have to pay for the externalities they create.

Just as a road is more valuable than the tolls it generates, uniformly accessible secure communication is a general force multiplier for any country. If some people have to pay more than others for the same service, much of that advantage is lost.

> People also forget that the postal system was created explicitly by the constitution.

No—the constitution authorizes Congress “to establish post offices and post roads”. It does not obligate them to do so any more than it obligates them to declare war or hire pirates, to name two other clauses of the exact same section.

Interestingly, both the postal clause and and letters of marque are hold-overs from the (very few) powers granted by the articles of confederation. Without the power to tax or impose tariffs, I wonder to what degree the postal monopoly was seen as a revenue generating measure.

I believe you read the pirate bit wrong

> To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offenses against the Law of Nations;

No, right below that: "[congress shall have the power] to declare War, *grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal*, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water; "

Ah, fair enough. Technically, a privateer is not a pirate... but I'll grant that's only a technical distinction.

Privateers are a type of pirate, and pirates would sometimes alternate between privateering and freelance piracy based on what was more lucrative at the time.

This is entirely the USPS exploiting their statutory monopoly.

There is no other communications medium that the typical customer would accept that much junk from. If I got that much junk email, I would switch email providers and use one with a better spam filter. When I started getting robocalls, I set my phone to stop accepting calls from unknown numbers. If I got enough junk DM’s on a social media site, I would delete my account. But I can’t opt out of USPS. We are a captive audience delivered to scummy advertisers by our own government.

> Junk mail is vital for the USPS finances. It's over 20% of their income, ~$16 billion/yr.

I wonder how time and money processing and delivering that junk mail cost them. They could forgo that $16B and have more time to provide better service for non-junk mail.

Support postal banking and postal identify proofing services, both of which would generate revenue that could replace suboptimal activities such as junk mail.

I wonder what the lost efficiency is on each tree --> junk mail when it gets burned. I know pulp/papermaking has combustable byproducts, but I don't know how much is "lost": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraft_process#Byproducts_and_e...

I save most of mine up for the cabin, but it may or may not lead to a lot of extra chimney sweeping.