[lordnacho]

But we also all need to eat and use a toilet to live. Those seem to be provided by the market to a reasonable degree. Email is also pretty cheap and there's at least some choice among providers, though of course far fewer that food types.

[AndrewDavis]

I don't think this is a fair comparison. You can replace a toilet, arguably upgrade to a better one with little to no disadvantage.

Taking away an email address someone has had and is their primary point of contact for years, possibly decades is irreplaceable. Being able to create a new one isn't equal to the old one.

Not sure about elsewhere in the world, but even regular mail isn't that painful in my country. Pay a nominal fee to Australia post and you can have all mail addressed to you forwarded from your old to new address for N months (or years).

[lordnacho]

This is a good point. Maybe there should be a free forwarding rule.

I noticed that Yahoo now charges to forward email from my old address, which I think is unreasonable.

[zekica]

The reason there are as many food types is that you pay for food, while most people (except corporations) don't pay for email. This makes it so investments in food production can be returned without waiting for network effect / vendor lock-in to reach a significant level.

[cycomanic]

Your toilet example actually proves the point. Generally, water and wastewater services are not private (I know there's exceptions and most are going terribly wrong). So yes everyone's ability to use a toilet is somewhat government guaranteed.

[kortilla]

Not exceptions (in the US at least). 1/4 water are private and 1/2 sewer is private: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization_in_the_Uni...

[Karrot_Kream]

Yeah but the existence of toilets is mandated by code. The existence of email isn't regulated in any way. Requiring non-commercial (<-- which is doing a lot of work here) email addresses would cause a robust market to appear overnight.

[BlueTemplar]

Wait, what do you mean by "non-commercial" ?

[Karrot_Kream]

Government related

[BlueTemplar]

Ah, but not provided by the government itself ??

[Karrot_Kream]

Correct. Just like a toilet.