the most efficient society possible~!
Paper people don’t want, for products that don’t work, using space age technology to make, burn fossil fuels to deliver, thrown straight into the trash unread. Just to happen again the next day
I wonder how much energy is used exclusively for spam emails to accounts that haven’t been logged into for over a decade
yeah, right? shit has to add up
i dunno if there’s any truth to it, but somebody once told me that the revenue collected for junk mail “pays” for USPS. personally, i think even if that’s true, that it’s bullshit and we should just fund the postal service but ban unsolicited ads, scams, and bullshit. it’s such a waste of effort and materials.
like just have less mail moving through the system. the thousandth offer from the company i hate is not going to get my business. the ad for a financial service disguised as an official government letter only pisses me off. i don’t need the buy 5 bags of candy, get 1 free coupons for the grocery store. i have a recycling bin just for the place where i open the mail. i even keep the big rolling bin right by the mailbox so i can huck stuff right in if i have the time to sort it there.
i bet that, on average, of every single communication channel that exists to reach me (email, chat, physical mail, voice/phone), probably more than half of the pieces of communication coming at me each week are unsolicited advertisements.
By volume, most days have more un-addressed flyers than letter mail.
About half of the addressed letter mail is bulk rate mail: ads of various kinds, charities and churches asking for money.
Of the remaining mail (1st class mail) most is bank statements and utility bills. Then a decent amount of government mail. Some magazines, some documents, checks, some greeting cards, an occasional postcard. Sometimes TCG cards.
It’s definitely one of those “80% junk” situations, but some is medium-importance, and sometimes high importance (tax and immigration documents). And those occasional important items are what keeps the system working, otherwise no one would bother with any of it.
I’m just wondering what portion is literally spent on sending mail to people who are actually dead
Hard to say; I only see it if it’s RTSed, if the recipient throws it away I have no idea.
RTS mail is a pretty tiny fraction of total mail, and that’s mostly just people moving.
I still laugh when I get my mail sometimes because a lot of it will come postmarked from Pewaukee, WI
I know the print company that does like half of the junk mail in the Midwest and East Coast because we took a field trip there in the 5th grade
I got to play in the pile of misprints
Just a giant garbage manufacturing site. And this is considered normal and cool and good. Most rational economic system in action.
I heard that before going on strike, Canadian posties were escalating labour action incrementally, where first they refused overtime work, then they threatened to stop delivering flyers, which apparently makes up a substantial amount of Canada Post revenue.
all this “revenue” that comes from dead money spent on dead services really recalls some sort of vampiric imagery, i wonder if anyone’s ever made that comparison
Nearly 1/3 I’d feel safe saying.
A little bit higher if my personal experience delivering mail was indicative of the whole
Which it probably is
I had a thought that maybe it was, but that was a total hip shot to begin with. I just sorta used my experience with my land line telephone for some reason and figured it was likely the same even though they are in no way related.
i love the post service but why should private companies be able to use it to mail me ads?
Dead Courier Theory
