[ballpark]

Good point! However, those spammers are doing some good because they're paying money to stamp their mail, which goes to employ mail personel, etc. For that reason I feel good when I throw away credit card letters while saying "Dear greedy creditor, No I don't want your raping fees, but thank you for paying money for me to throw this letter in recycling."

[kenj0418]

Even better: Write what you say at your trash can on the offer, stuff that and every other piece of paper the CC company mailed you, and put it back in the business reply envelope. Now you've gotten the CC company to help the USPS twice.

[nsrivast]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

[argv_empty]

The window's broken either way. With snail mail, at least the one who broke it pays some of the cost of fixing it.

[jonknee]

That money didn't come out of thin air.. It results in higher fees for their customers which means the customer spends less with other companies who then don't hire people, etc etc.

Using your logic it would follow that email spammers are doing some good because they're using bandwidth (jobs for everyone from Cisco to ditch diggers) and create a market for people to combat spam. Stimulus!

[sp332]

"[USPS] fiscal 2009 year-to-date net loss is $4.7 billion"

http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2009/pr09_066.ht...