"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".