> But that confuses the snail-mail concept of fixed cost (homeowner > purchases mailbox for a set price, regardless of how much or little mail > they receive, since the variable cost if borne by the sender) with the > e-mail concept of variable cost (increasing overhead and ISP fees borne > by *both* the user and the ISP themselves)
So a company that builds out a mailroom doesn't have any variable cost associated with that? The USPS (or FedEx or UPS) that has a branch office to deliver your mail/packages? If more mail/packages are sent, they need more facilities/personnel to handle it. There's a reason UPS resists union demands... > The fundamental question remains - if a commercial e-mail sender pays > postage, to whom do they pay it? If they pay my ISP, they have not > adequately compensated me for my time. And Lands End compensates you for your time when you get a catalog from them that you didn't request? Yahoo sends me popup ads through my browser that I don't want - should they compensate me for that? In a perfect world, yes. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth... Wait - Yahoo *does* pay extra - to their bandwidth providers. Who in turn ultimately shares some of that revenue with *my* bandwidth provider as part of their peering agreements, which does *not* share that revenue with me. Thieves! Hmmm... And I *don't* pay (incrementally, per-packet) extra for bandwidth - I only pay in large blocks. Perhaps I should demand my money back from my ISP since I only use 25GB of my 30GB monthly allocation. > The concept of adequate protection is at work here, since the sending of > e-mail contributes to the depreciation of overhead assets and the > increase of overhead costs for both user and ISP. Yes, but the mere fact that postage is charged *at all* will have a dramatic effect on the capacity utilization of these assets. I understand your desire for a perfect market, but the perfect is often the enemy of the good. IMO this binary approach to spam - solve the problem completely or not at all; block everything or nothing at all - is almost as much a barrier to success as the spammers themselves. The goal of e-postage is to provide incentives where none exist. It *may* not work, but I know that *not* doing anything definitely *won't* work. (Actually, incentives currently exist, but they're the Wrong Kind.) Until very recently (historically speaking), the idea of fixed price for a product did not exist - everything was bartered. Economically speaking, this is usually the most rational approach to determining the true value of something. But fixed pricing is rational at the macro level, too, because it removes the variable cost (for both sides) of negotiating with every potential buyer. BUT it is somewhat unfair at the micro level because some people could negotiate better deals for themselves. In the name of scale, and speed, however, society puts up with it. I suspect that a similar phenomenon would emerge with e-postage. The point of all this rambling is to point out that e-postage does not have to be perfect to be successful. There are plenty of examples all around us. -Derek PS All this said, there's nothing to stop an ISP from setting itself up to share the wealth by passing revenues through to end users. In which case it would be a market decision, not a decree from on high. _______________________________________________ spamcon-general mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.spamcon.org/mailman/listinfo/spamcon-general#subscribers Subscribe, unsubscribe, etc: Use the URL above or send "help" in body of message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Contact administrator: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
