[WalterBright]

> 1 sale is made for every 5,000 calls they've made their money

To stop this, the phone company should charge 10 cents to place a call. That would destroy the economics of spamming.

The same goes for email. Charge a penny to the originator to receive an email.

[fapjacks]

There was also a push in the 90s to make a kind of "postage stamp" where the cost of sending an email was CPU, which would have had the same effect of prohibiting spam by making email too expensive to spam with. ISTR the guy who came up with that idea (or one of the guys) has had an interesting series of projects since. Can't remember much beyond that, though.

[dpc_pw]

Hashcash. The idea is used in Bitcoin as Proof of Work.

[pfranz]

Too bad that didn't work out for snail mail. The post office got addicted to the income, gives them super sweet deals, so users are maximally annoyed while the post office grabs maximum profit.

It's just ridiculous that every shared mailbox (like an apartment) has a giant recycle bin next to it full of mailers.

[theonemind]

https://www.linns.com/news/postal-updates/2017/april/congres...

I feel like more of that blame lies with the government as a whole than the post office in particular. They have to get innovative when they don't take Federal dollars, get dollars taken from them, have to fund retirement of their employees out further than other agencies, and can't close offices. It surprises me that it stays afloat despite active hindrance from the government at large.