City Councilman: Email Tax Could Discourage Spam, Fund Post Office Functions

New submitter Christopher Fritz writes "The Berkeley, CA city council recently met to discuss the closing of their downtown post office, in attempt to find a way to keep it from relocating. This included talk of 'a very tiny tax' to help keep the U.S. Post Office's vital functions going. The suggestion came from Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak: 'There should be something like a bit tax. I mean a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email.' He says a one-hundredth of a cent per e-mail tax could discourage spam while not impacting the typical Internet user, and a sales tax on Internet transactions could help fund 'vital functions that the post office serves.' We all know an e-mail tax is infeasible, and sales tax for online purchases and for digital purchases are likely unavoidable forever, but here's hoping talk of taxing data usage doesn't work its way to Washington."

Comments

FP?

[dosius]

Good luck taxing e-mails sent from privately maintained offshore servers. :P

-uso.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. Taxes will simply encourage all of our job-creating spam corporations to offshore their lucrative jobs.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

No tax ever stays in the advertised form.

Just in case someone reads this who has not experienced many examples already, consider the US federal income tax. The amendment describes a progressive tax of 1, 2, or 3 percent, and the reason it does not include the original line of "and not to exceed 10 percent" is because the politicians of the day thought that adding such a line would be seen as permission to raise the tax to 10 percent by their successors.

I have in Real Life(TM) ranted plentifully about road and bridge projects with a toll that were sold as "until the building cost is paid off" but persist many decades after all possible construction expenses had been paid simply because the regional government likes the revenue.

Re:FP?

[dosius]

You mean like the Grand Island Bridges between Buffalo and Niagara Falls, NY?

-uso.

Re:FP?

[ledow]

Or botnets.

How will it stop spammers who aren't even sending the messages from their own computers anyway? All it will do is add $50 to the bill of anyone who gets infected (which is not, of itself, a bad thing, but it adds a whole new level of complexity, collection and appeal problems) and the original spammers will not pay a penny.

And all that will happens is that email will move offshore. Will you tax per email received or sent? Sent from US only? Sent through non-US servers from a US computer with a VPN? Sent from original accounts or relayed through webmail (e.g. will GMail have to pay for me to send email even though I'm not in the US?)?

To be a tax, it has to be collectable. That means people paying it (instead of avoiding it) and a way to determine who needs to pay it with some level of accuracy.

If you want to push tech companies off-shore, it's a good way to do it, I grant you. Even then, it's uncollectable.

Re:FP?

[satch89450]

Regarding bridges/roads and tolls: One of the rationales for keeping tolls on roads and bridges is to collect money to maintain the roads/bridges once they are paid off. I've seen this reasoning used in three states, and in all cases the tolls were increased "because the cost of maintaining the roads keeps going up." In Cook County IL, the real reason the tolls were kept on is because sub-standard work had to be torn up and re-done -- multiple times. The reason the work was sub-standard is left as an exercise to the reader.

I've never lived in a state where the tolls were retired and the booths torn down.

Dig a little deeper, and you find out that the governments appreciate how tolls free up general revenue for other spending.

Re:FP?

[Threni]

No-one's explained -why would I want to fund the post office?

I just get spam and bills and rubbish. If it cost loads for these clowns to post me rubbish perhaps it would dissuade them and they'd have to actually provide value. The post office should be helping me by preventing it; instead they've stated they need all the spam to survive. Well, I'd rather they not survive.

Re:FP?

[JeanCroix]

I've never lived in a state where the tolls were retired and the booths torn down.

It happened in Connecticut, but at the cost of an accident with 7 fatalities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Turnpike#Connecticut_abolishes_tolls

Re:FP?

[ganjadude]

or the entire NYS thruway

Re:FP?

[CanHasDIY]

I've never lived in a state where the tolls were retired and the booths torn down.

It happened in Connecticut, but at the cost of an accident with 7 fatalities: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Turnpike#Connecticut_abolishes_tolls

According to the Wiki page you linked to, the 7 fatality crash is why they abolished tolls.

Your post seems to indicate the opposite.

Re:FP?

[CanHasDIY]

All it will do is add $50 to the bill of anyone who gets infected (which is not, of itself, a bad thing...)

Oh, yes it is - it's an example of victim blaming, and it is a very, very bad thing.

Not that I disagree with the concept that folks need to be 'incentivized' in order to do things they should be doing anyway, but I don't believe punishing people for being attacked is the right way to go about it.

Re:FP?

[JeanCroix]

Eh? The crash was the impetus, but from TFL: "While the 1983 Stratford accident was cited as the main reason for abolishing tolls in Connecticut, the underlying reason was the fact that federal legislation at that time forbade states with toll roads from using federal funds for road projects."

Either way, the point is that there exists at least one state in which 'tolls were retired and the booths torn down.' It's not unprecedented.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the rationales for keeping tolls on roads and bridges is to collect money to maintain the roads/bridges once they are paid off

Then they may as well be privately owned. Seriously -- what's the difference? Especially on highways where tolls obviously defeat the entire purpose -- it might as well be privately owned and operated for profit. After all, that is exactly what the business of government is doing, the only difference being that government falsely claims to be doing it "for the people".

Re:FP?

[LordLimecat]

If people are leaving their car keys in their cars, and there have been a rash of incidents where cars were stolen (keys already being in them) and used to commit various crimes and hit/ runs, then people who continue to leave their keys in their cars are absolutely part of the problem.

Victim blaming is incorrect if it tries to assign all blame to a victim, but there are many cases where the victim made poor choices which directly contributed to whatever has happened to them. You cant just pretend we live in a world where thats irrelevant, because its not.

Re:FP?

[interkin3tic]

No tax ever stays in the advertised form.

Like all things the government does, making sure politicians keep to their tax promises requires attention and action from the voters in order to keep from growing. Unfortunately, we ignore it until someone tells us we can slash them. And it just happens to benefit them and not most people. Witness the Norquist/tea party insanity.

I admit, I don't pay attention to the budget until it goes into crisis mode: I find it very boring at most times and I'm easily distracted.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I mean if she didn't want to get gang raped, why did she wear those sexy clothes? It isn't entirely her fault, but she should take some of the blame, right?

Re:FP?

[PhotoJim]

Maybe it doesn't happen in the US, but I've seen it happen in many places. The Firth of Forth and the Skye bridges in Scotland. The harbour bridge in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada (and even when it had a toll it was really cheap, like 50 cents - as recently as a couple of years ago). Actually it does happen in the US, too - the Coronado bridge in San Diego has obvious toll booths but they haven't been in use in years.

Re:FP?

[causality]

You cant just pretend we live in a world where thats irrelevant, because its not.

That's not what some are pretending.

They're pretending that the emotional feel-good sentiment of saying "but but don't blame victim!" and the sense of superiority they get from feeling like you're a bad guy for having done so, is more important than the facts of the matter. It's the position of the faint-hearted who cannot cope with reality anytime that reality is even slightly unpleasant. They seldom dispute the facts of the matter or suggest alternatives because they are generally not interested in solving the problem. They just want to look good and feel better about themselves. Ergo, when you suggest adults should learn the most basic precautions, they view it as an opportunity to twist your words into evil, dirty, sinister victim-blaming.

When people like this make important decisions, you get the bankrupt nation we know today. But at least everyone feels good and pats themselves on the back right up until it all collapses. That's what matters, right?

Let's not do this with computer security.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Coronado Bridge in San Diego took out their toll booths years ago - but it was pretty long after the bridge was actually paid for.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The amendment describes a progressive tax of 1, 2, or 3 percent

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Not seeing those numbers there, sorry.

Re:FP?

[hedwards]

WA state has had tolls at points and in the past they've all been taken down after the infrastructure was paid for. We're doing another wave of them, so who knows what will happen, but they were approved of by the voters and the measure required them to be taken down after the infrastructure is paid for.

Bottom line, is that tolls are great, they only tax the people that are actually using the infrastructure rather than everybody, and if you use congestion pricing, you can encourage people to use less which is a net win for everybody.

Re:FP?

[thoth]

I've never lived in a state where the tolls were retired and the booths torn down.

I have, so they exist. For example, the Dallas-Fort Worth turnpike, which was a tollway but now isn't.

[From ref website]The section of Interstate 30 between Dallas and Fort Worth was once a tollway known as the Dallas-Fort Worth Turnpike; however, it is no longer tolled.

Ref: http://www.interstate-guide.com/i-030.html

Re:FP?

[msauve]

Good luck making a law "abridging the freedom of speech."

This attack on 1st Amendment civil rights isn't something I would expect to be coming out of Berkeley. OTOH, the Berkeley government has attacked 2nd Amendment civil rights, so kudos for consistency.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

What constitution are you reading?

AMENDMENT XVI

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several states, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Re:FP?

[David_Hart]

Maybe it doesn't happen in the US, but I've seen it happen in many places. The Firth of Forth and the Skye bridges in Scotland. The harbour bridge in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada (and even when it had a toll it was really cheap, like 50 cents - as recently as a couple of years ago). Actually it does happen in the US, too - the Coronado bridge in San Diego has obvious toll booths but they haven't been in use in years.

Wow, I would never have expected a reference to the harbour bridge in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada where I grew up (I'm in Boston now).

The Harbour bridge tolls were 25 cents for almost 20 years. They gradually increased over the last 10 years or so to 50 cents, before they finally removed the toll booths. The reason why it was so cheap is because it is a relatively short bridge and there are local routes that bypass the bridge. In other words, the bridge is more convenient but it isn't vital for local traffic.

The promise was made when the bridge was built that the tolls would go away once the loan was paid off. Between the cost of running the bridge (salaries, maintenance, etc.) and the interest on the original debt, there was never enough left over to pay down the original loan. Everyone who lives in the area realized that it was a never ending merry-go-round with no end in sight. Most locals, going back and forth to work, would avoid the bridge and take alternate routes.

I'm glad that the politicians listened to their constituents for once.

Re:FP?

[dosius]

Hm. I thought the Thruway was meant to remain toll.

Of course, anyone headed across the state from Pennsylvania would be smart and shunpike on the 86/17 instead.

-uso.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

you used to always have to pay a toll to cross maryland's chesapeake bay bridge. several years ago, they got smarter and changed it so you only pay to cross west to east, but you pay twice as much. so while they didn't remove the toll, they at least made it less of a hassle.

frankly, i don't mind paying tolls. it's a good way to collect tax from people who actually use the road.

Re:FP?

[wmac1]

Major email providers could start charging received emails at a rate cheaper than SMS ($0.01-$0.03).

If paying a small money would make email spam free I would go for it. I send 100 emails a month at most and that would become $1-$3 per month.

Re:FP?

[SonnyDog09]

The US Federal income tax was also promoted as being "a tax on the idle rich."

Re:FP?

[coyote_oww]

Maybe not meant that way. We've had 2 stoplights installed on a major divided hwy near my house, both driven by the accidents with fatalities at intersections on the hwy (it's not a freeway with limited access). Some people say "it cost us x lives to get that stoplight". Personally, i think they should have just blocked left hand turns onto the highway instead, but no one listens to me. :-(

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The post office in the United States is excellent. The problems is the government caused an increase in cost by requiring the pension system to be funded for people not yet born! Nobody else has to do that. The postal system also could raise rates to make up the difference. It is absolutely ridicules that mail delivery should have to be stopped on Saturday because it is lacking funding. CHARGE FOR SATURDAY DELIVERY if you absolutely must or just raise the rates across the board like we always do! My gut is that there is some interest that is trying to destroy the postal system in order to gain an advantage. Or maybe this is a retail lobby or private carriers lobbying like UPS/FedEx/DHL/etc.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Dallas/ Ft. Worth, I30 between the two cities. After it was paid off, they took out the toll booths. Made for some weird on and off ramps. This had been done before I had moved out there for the first half of the 80's, it probably would not happen today. In the SF bay area the bridge tolls are also used to subsidize the mass transit.

Re:FP?

[PhotoJim]

These are all bridges of which I have personal knowledge - and I have paid tolls on that bridge (even though I live in Saskatchewan). I remember seeing an article when the tolls were ended.

Re:FP?

[CalRobert]

The Coronado bridge near San Diego is now toll-free. And hey, I cross the Liffey on the Ha'Penny bridge pretty often, and it only had a toll until 1919!

Re:FP?

[div_2n]

From a historical perspective, the post office WAS the internet back in the day -- i.e. it was the cheapest and easiest way to get lots of information to someone else.

I think it still serves an important function especially for people that still value sending a hand written letter. It also serves to keep the private companies honest in their pricing. As an intangible, there are cases where postal workers that have worked the same route for a long time and gotten to know the people on their route have saved lives by noticing something out of the ordinary and alerting authorities. While I suppose it's possible for UPS or other company drivers to do the same, I would suggest it's less likely since they are so profit driven, they train workers to be in and out as quick as possible. Chatting it up with people on your route is probably not encouraged. I'd be surprised if it isn't explicitly prohibited at risk of job loss.

But all that aside, you should know that you DON'T fund the post office. It operates without any money from Congress (assuming you are a US Citizen and we're talking about the USPS here).

Re:FP?

[ultranova]

Let's not do this with computer security.

Indeed. Let us not let the people who run e-mail servers push their responsibility of dealing with spam to everyone else. You want to run one, you install a spam filter, rather than insist that I install an anti-virus.

After all, I could just as easily claim that the only reason these botnets exist in the first place is that you aren't performing adequate filtering on your e-mail server, thus making them profitable, thus increasing my risks through no fault of mine, so why shouldn't you be liable for any effects they might have for my computer? Why should I be liable for the consequences of your inadequately secured system instead?

After all, system administrators should learn the most basic precautions as a practical solution to their problems with spam, thus coping with the unpleasant reality that most systems are managed by non-professionals, right?

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never lived in a state where the tolls were retired and the booths torn down.

The Coronado Bridge in San Diego, CA.

The toll booths still stand, but the gates are gone. The booth foundations help slow traffic down befroe the speed limit drops to 25mph.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

Got a better alternative to the post office? Good luck mailing anything from cost to cost for less than a dollar with any of the currently available private carriers. How about paying twice the postage as the next guy because the next guy is a corporation and mail more frequently.

Re:FP?

[CanHasDIY]

I was merely pointing out that your sentence phrasing made it seem to the reader that the removal of toll booths is what caused the accident, whereas the actual situation was vice-versa. If you swapped "but at the cost of" with "as a result of," it would parse correctly.

Point wise, I totally agree.

Re:FP?

[JeanCroix]

Ah, gotcha. My brain hadn't registered the alternate parsing. I'd go back and edit if I could.

Re:FP?

[smellsofbikes]

I've never lived in a state where the tolls were retired and the booths torn down.

I'm not saying it's common, but it does happen. The Denver-Boulder Turnpike, aka US 36, was constructed as a toll road in 1952 and the tollposts were removed when it was paid off in 1967. http://www.aaroads.com/west/us-036_co.html
Similarly, pretty much all the Colorado passes were originally toll roads when they were originally chiseled out from the mountain rock in the 1870's. The only ones that still are, are the two roads that go to 14,000 feet: Pike's Peak and Mount Evans, and the rationale, of having to dig out 8-12 meters of snow on a regular basis, seems fairly sound.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

What the reply meant was "at the cost of" implied that the removal of the tolls booths cost seven lives in an accident. "After an accident with 7 fatalities." or ", but it took an accident with 7 fatalities to prompt them." would be more descriptive.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

While I suppose it's possible for UPS or other company drivers to do the same, I would suggest it's less likely since they are so profit driven, they train workers to be in and out as quick as possible. Chatting it up with people on your route is probably not encouraged. I'd be surprised if it isn't explicitly prohibited at risk of job loss.

I am not sure where you live, but the postal employees here won't even get out of their little trucks. I have waited at home for important packages, but go out to the mailbox to find a note that says I have to go pick it up at the post office the next day (between 9:00 and 4:30), because it wouldn't fit in the mailbox and they are too lazy to get out of the truck.

Also, for anyone trying to analyze possible reasons why; a) I do not live in a bad neighborhood, wouldn't call it rural but pretty close b) UPS and FedEx both come to the door every time, and leave package at front door if applicable c) This has happened with packages that do not require signatures

Re:FP?

[CanHasDIY]

No worries, happens to the best of us.

Re:FP?

[squiggleslash]

The amendment describes a progressive tax of 1, 2, or 3 percent

Maybe I'm totally misunderstanding you, but as far as I can see it just describes a tax on income. It doesn't even require it be progressive, and doesn't mention any figures at all.

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.

Re:FP?

[CanHasDIY]

Similar anecdote (this should piss you off real good):

The intersection of Hwy V and Hwy 67 in southeast Missouri was, for most of my life and a decade before, a death trap. Similar setup to the intersection you mentioned, where 2 highways cross with no overpass.

Every year, at least 20-30 people would be killed at this intersection, which had the side effect of causing massive traffic delays. I remember, when I was a kid, worrying about whether or not my dad would make it home from work that night, every single night.

Anyway, over the course of 2 decades the lady who owned the land surrounding this intersection offered, repeatedly, to sell it to the state for about 3/4 of the property's actual value. She (a family friend) said she didn't care about the money, she just wanted the deaths to stop. Time and time again, the state refused her offer, giving every bureaucratic excuse under the sun ('too much money,' 'not enough resources,' 'didn't follow accepted procedure,' et. al.).

Finally, about 5 years ago, the state DOT finally pulled their heads from their asses and decided to put an overpass there. So, they went to the lady's son (she had died of age several years before) to buy the land, and assumed he would give them the same deal his mother had. His response was, essentially, that if they wanted the cheap land price, they should have taken his mother up on her multiple offers. They tried to 'emminent domain' his ass, but since they had been offered the land so many times and refused, the judge wouldn't allow it. MODOT ended up paying every penny the land was worth (far more than what it was when it was originally offered to them), and finally, the deaths have stopped.

So yea, in my experience, positing a good idea to state officials is a sure fire way to make sure it doesn't happen. Stupid, I know.

Re:FP?

[AK Marc]

Dallas North Tollway was to have the tolls lifted once it was paid off. They held to that by extending an "improving" the road endlessly such that the $0.25 toll has continued to increase. And the people are happy with it. The toll keeps the road flowing freely, and is linking affluent areas, so the people like having better roads, even if at a price.

Re:FP?

[chrismcb]

I've never lived in a state where the tolls were retired and the booths torn down.

I live in such a state. They built a bridge, tolled it. The took the toll booths down. Decided to rebuild the bridge, put the "toll booths" back up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evergreen_Point_Floating_Bridge

Re:FP?

[AK Marc]

Yup, the ol' turnpike had them removed, but the Dallas North Tollway hasn't. They were both run by the same state agency.

Re:FP?

[AK Marc]

Oh, yes it is - it's an example of victim blaming, and it is a very, very bad thing.

Many places have it illegal to leave your car running with the keys in them. It's an attractive nussiance. It's also illegal for you to lose a couch out the back of your truck while driving down the highway. In both cases the person "lost" something, so holding them responsible for their negligence is "blaming the victim". But it can be a good thing. It's not when rape is excused because she was asking for it. But sometimes the person "wronged" did much to attract and encourage the harm. And yes, I'd consider running an unpatched computer, or actively installing malware on your computer to justify blame.

Re:FP?

[CanHasDIY]

If people are leaving their car keys in their cars, and there have been a rash of incidents where cars were stolen (keys already being in them) and used to commit various crimes and hit/ runs, then people who continue to leave their keys in their cars are absolutely part of the problem.

But do you put them in jail, or fine them for it? Because that's basically what OP is saying - those people should be fined for leaving their keys in the car, because apparently being robbed, repeatedly, isn't enough of a punishment. Granted, I am a firm believer that stupid should be painful, but I refuse to extend that to include state-induced pain.

FWIW, people leaving valuables in unlocked cars is a major issue in my municipality. The police, tired of having to deal with 300+ complaints a day, decided to issue a few public service announcements. The message? LOCK YOUR CAR, OR WE WON'T BOTHER INVESTIGATING.

Seems to be working fairly well, the number of valuables-stolen-from-unlocked-cars reports has dropped by more than half since the PSA campaign started.

Re:FP?

[Sulphur]

Spam taxes my patience.

Re:FP?

[CanHasDIY]

Oh, yes it is - it's an example of victim blaming, and it is a very, very bad thing.

Many places have it illegal to leave your car running with the keys in them. It's an attractive nussiance

Attractive nuisance laws are bullshit - they remove the onus of personal responsibility from the party, and transfers it to someone else, purely by virtue of the fact that the "someone else" own a certain thing. I.e., in places with such bullshit laws, if you have a swimming pool in your yard, and someone illegally trespasses on your property and drowns in the pool, you are liable for negligent manslaughter. I know that in California, if someone breaks their leg while holding your family hostage at gunpoint, they can sue you for negligence!

There's rarely a week that goes by, I don't thank $deity that I live somewhere a bit more sensible.

It's also illegal for you to lose a couch out the back of your truck while driving down the highway. In both cases the person "lost" something, so holding them responsible for their negligence is "blaming the victim".

OK, now, that's just false equivalence. Having a swimming pool or leaving your keys in the ignition is not even close to the same thing as traveling on a public road with an unsecured load.

Don't stoop to false equivalence, man, I know you're better than that.

And yes, I'd consider running an unpatched computer... to justify blame.

Blame as in, "Well, you didn't do anything to protect yourself, so we're not going to do anything to help, and we're cutting you off of the public networks until you get it fixed" I completely agree with. Blame as in, "Well, you didn't do enough to protect yourself, so we're going to make it harder for you by making you pay a fine / suffer criminal charges" Is bullshit, and a gross misapplication of law.

actively installing malware

Again, different situation - if someone is intentionally installing "bad stuff" on their machine, there's intent, which is a very, very important factor regarding legal matters.

Re:FP?

[AK Marc]

OK, now, that's just false equivalence.

So says the man who brought up swimming pools. Here, you are responsible to have a fence of a certain height with self-closing/latching gates. If you have all that, then you bear no responsibility. If drunk teens climb the fence or open the gate to get in and die in your pool, you are blameless. You secured the pool against reasonably expected intrusions, and anyone who kills themself in it is 100% responsible for their own actions.

So, not only did you attempt a false equivelence, you picked one that doesn't work for here.

In Texas, it's a crime to leave your keys in a running car. If you want to address something, address that. The person gets their car stolen, and also gets charged with a crime themselves.

actively installing malware

Again, different situation - if someone is intentionally installing "bad stuff" on their machine, there's intent, which is a very, very important factor regarding legal matters.

Your words do not match mine. I never said someone intentionally installed "bad stuff" but that they intentionally installed "something". Whether they expected it to be "bad stuff" is a separate question. Most "viruses" these days are not the passively transferred viruses and worms of old, but malware installed by the user as root (whether informed consent can be given is a separate question).

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I want to pay a tax for every spam email I receive. Won't you help me do that?

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Tappan Zee Bridge, across the Hudson River in NY State was so funded. When the 20 years of tolls, which was written into the law merely to pay the construction fees passed, NYS passed a new law allowing the tolls to continue, but specified that the NYS Thruway system, as a whole, could not generate a profit. Well, it generated so much of a profit that they started calling other roads part of the NYS Thruway system, and paid for repairs on those roads from NYS Thruway tolls. Well, they still had too much money, so they included the Great Lakes by NY as part of the Thruway system. Well, they still had too much money, so they designated the parks along the Great Lakes as part of the Thruway system, and funded maintenance on them from the tolls. They've upped and upped the Tappan Zee bridge tolls so much that now, when they figure it's time to replace the bridge, they claim they'll have to up the tolls to around $14 one way to pay for it! Nowhere, in local coverage, is the taking of the tolls and using it elsewhere even mentioned.

Re:FP?

[cpt kangarooski]

They tried to 'emminent domain' his ass, but since they had been offered the land so many times and refused, the judge wouldn't allow it. MODOT ended up paying every penny the land was worth (far more than what it was when it was originally offered to them), and finally, the deaths have stopped.

Eminent domain is when the government takes a piece of property, but they're obligated to pay a fair amount for it. If they make too low of an offer, the property owner can sue them and be awarded more; not necessarily what he wants for it, but an amount that the court determines, based on evidence submitted by both sides, to be appropriate compensation. "Every penny that the land was worth" is exactly how much they're supposed to pay when they use eminent domain.

Re:FP?

[Threni]

How about - stop mailing me stuff and email me instead? I get it quicker. I get it..period. It can be encrypted. I can reply to say I got it. It's free. It's fast. It's easy to back up, forward etc. I can print it if I want. I know there's some stuff that has to be 'served' physically, but I've never had to deal with that, and if you have some edge case then yeah, better find someone with some method of transport to bring it to you. Where I live it's just a bunch of `dear householder` crap trying to sell me broadband (already have it, thanks), credit cards (already have some, thanks) etc.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

consider the US federal income tax. The amendment describes a progressive tax of 1, 2, or 3 percent, and the reason it does not include the original line of "and not to exceed 10 percent" is because the politicians of the day thought that adding such a line would be seen as permission to raise the tax to 10 percent by their successors.

[citation needed]

Re:FP?

[EnglishDude]

Interesting bit about the Skye bridge here in the UK - after ridiculous tolls, the government decided to buy the bridge and abolish the tolls even though they paid many times more than the actual cost of the bridge.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is rather ironic that the "mass mailers" pay way less than someone sending a first class or any other class, mail. My question is why? Everyone should pay the same rate, even postcards. Maybe then, the post office would not be going broker.

Re:FP?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you're connecting the dots here, Jean. You insinuated originally that removing the tolls caused the crash by saying "...but at the cost of an accident." DIY pointed out that wasn't the case, and then you responded with something unrelated, but tried to connect it using the conjunction "but." Don't do that.

Re:FP?

[CanHasDIY]

OK, now, that's just false equivalence.

So says the man who brought up swimming pools.

Swimming pools are the only thing I know to have attractive nuisance laws applied to them; didn't even know about cars with keys in them until you mentioned it.

Consider it a side effect of living in a place that doesn't have attractive nuisance laws.

In Texas, it's a crime to leave your keys in a running car. If you want to address something, address that. The person gets their car stolen, and also gets charged with a crime themselves.

Yea, that's pretty stupid... as if having your car stolen isn't punishment enough.

Sounds more like rent-seeking than proper application of law, IMO.

actively installing malware

Again, different situation - if someone is intentionally installing "bad stuff" on their machine, there's intent, which is a very, very important factor regarding legal matters.

Your words do not match mine. I never said someone intentionally installed "bad stuff" but that they intentionally installed "something". Whether they expected it to be "bad stuff" is a separate question. Most "viruses" these days are not the passively transferred viruses and worms of old, but malware installed by the user as root (whether informed consent can be given is a separate question).

"Actively" implies willfull intent. So, if someone is "actively" installing malware, they are doing it knowingly and purposefully. It appears to me that the word you meant to use was "incidentally," or maybe "unwittingly."

To say that the mere act of installing software constitutes willfull intent to install malware as well is disingenuous at best...

unless they're installing a Symantec product.

Re:FP?

[AK Marc]

Swimming pools are the only thing I know to have attractive nuisance laws applied to them;

Actually, they don't have those laws applied much anymore. Why? Because the laws were clarified to define what steps a pool owner must take to be reasonable. When they do so, they are protected. I've seen attractive nussiance laws applied to ladders, trampolines, trash heaps, and abandoned buildings. That you've not seen them applied to anything other than pools (and I've never lived a place where they did apply to pools, as they were generally explicitly excluded, with conditions), does more to indicate your lack of knowledge, than lack of application of the law.

"Actively" implies willfull intent.

No, it does not. I am the original speaker. When I tell you my intent when I said something, you can't argue about what I meant. I know what I meant. You inferred willful intent. I implied actual action, nothing more. They must have clicked "install" or "allow" or some other action on their part to compromise their computer. That was an actual action. Whether they intended to compromise their computer, stating that I was implying that is absurd.

Do you know anyone who would actively install malware, if they had full knowledge of the act? Most get enticed by promises of some undelivered free functionality - cracks, jokes, games, etc. So I wouldn't ever say it was a willful act (to install malware), just an ignorant one. But it is an act. One which requires an active participation by the person installing the malware. Much like leaving you keys in a running car is not done to get it stolen, but is still a conscious choice to take an illegal (silly, stupid, whatever) action.

So many people misunderstand mens rea. You don't have to have a "guilty mind" but you just must have intended to have performed the action that's later deemed to have been illegal or caused the illegal act. If your car has a dead battery and you don't want to shut it off because it might not start again, locking your doors and leaving the keys in it with it running is afoul of the law in many places. Doing so ignorant of the law against it, and with the precaution of locking the doors (you have a spare set of keys on you or whatever) doesn't make it legal because you tried to secure it against theft best you could. You had a guilty mind because you consciously chose to take an act that was determined later to be illegal. Much like clicking "OK" isn't a conscious decision to install malware, but was a conscious decision to click "ok", and that's sufficient for willful intent under the law as currently applied.

Seems most of the complaints against my legal opinion is that it is applied as I state, and that's a bad thing. Not the complaint that I'm wrong in my description of what is.

Berkley

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid Fuckers.

yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Your idea will not work because...

Re:yeah.

[Inda]

[x] You're an idiot
[x] It's a dumb idea
[x] Email doesn't work like that
[x] You're an idiot

Re:yeah.

[Jack9]

> [x] It's a dumb idea
> [x] Email doesn't work like that

Neither of those are true. Email to some people is a combination of network and client and protocol and practice and whatever else you want to tack on. That's not the only interpretation of email. Email is conceptually, a set of distinct problem and solution pairs.

How to structure a service to deliver messages over the internet that can be taxed : this requires *drum roll* Identity management along with transaction tracking and more...
How to implement : government contractors....good luck
How to get the public to use the service : this requires money for advertising

One of these problems is hard to solve and any problem solving, at all, is difficult for the government.

Re:yeah.

[DickBreath]

It would never work because it would drive the development of a new, improved store and read-later protocol that would replace SMTP and the software surrounding it.

This time, just be sure not to use the word "mail" in the name. Call it, oh, for example: the Message Box protocol.

Then what happens is that if someone tries to tax this one? It becomes obvious they are trying to tax specific internet protocols. It starts to clearly look like they want to tax new innovations to fund the post office. What do you wanna bet that this damage can be routed around faster than they can enact a tax on the previous workaround?

Re:yeah.

[Anonymous Coward]

So what you're saying is, he's an idiot?

And you know what would help even more?

[dosius]

How about not forcing the postal service to keep 75 years' worth of back-funding for pensions?

-uso.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[sycodon]

How about converting everyone to 401k retirement plans, like he rest of us.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes. Let's immediately dump a large sum of money into the stock market. There is no way that can fail.

As a current owner of stock, I REALLY hope they do this and do it quickly. I can't wait to make a killing just like I did the last time it happened.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then suck it up and FULLY fund the pensions and don't depend on a government bail out when they fail to fund it fully.

We, the taxpayers, are tired of EVERY federal agency offering large pensions that we don't get, that get bailed out every time there is a shortfall forcing OUR retirement to reduce because of corrupt officials. We are not your personal pocketbook to decide how much of our money we should be allowed to keep.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[sycodon]

Because that's forcing the government to invest in private institutions

You mean like...G.M.?

Besides, the taxpayer will take it in the ass regardless. 401k plans are better than us being on the hook to pay some guy his full salary and benefits after he's retired.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[i kan reed]

Yes, I do mean like G.M. That was unprecedented, and I'm pretty sure many people believe there were better alternatives to stock purchase.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[i kan reed]

You sound like you have no understanding of accounting, nor of human life-spans. Why 75 years?

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Because that's forcing the government to invest in private institutions,

No, no it's not. It forces *individuals* to invest in private institutions. It also has the benefit of being at least one level removed from politicians seeking to spend someone else's money.

Additionally, pensions funds are typically invested in private institutions as well. What do you think CALPERS does with all of that money they collect - just sit on their hands? They invest pretty much every dime they collect. So in effect, the government is *already* investing in private institutions.

401ks suck

If you can think of a better investment vehicle for retirement, by all means, feel free to share it with the rest of us. (Be aware that Roth 401(k), IRA, Roth IRA, and the corresponding 403 plans for government employees are all roughly the same outside of the tax implications and some other minor features.)

They're awful, and only really represent a way to fleece a few more cents out of workers,

Really? The 401(k) loads are typically on the order of 0.75% per year, and less if you invest in index funds. That means that any employer match over 0.75% is a net GAIN of a "few cents" for workers.

in a way that leaves them no legal recourse when they blow up(and they blow up every 20 years like clockwork).

Every generation, but yes - you need to be able to survive a short- to moderate-term recession. Diversification is important. The people with diversified 401(k)s didn't see an erosion of their wealth.

Also, see above: pension funds suffered the same fate, because they were invested the same way.

Pensions are seen as good only by those irrational enough to assume that rainbow-colored unicorns fart dollars that cover the pensions in the event of a "market correction" or company bankruptcy, instead of being covered by the 60% of people that actually pay federal taxes and fund the PBGC. Additionally, there's a good reason that we make Congress and the USPS fund their pensions out to 75 years: those of us that actually pay taxes have watched union leaders and politicians negotiate in bad faith over pension benefits that can never be paid. If you think I'm making this up, just look at the state budgets and pension obligations for California, Illinois, and New York - they are so far in the hole on pension obligations that it is unlikely they will be able to pay their pensioners in a number of years.

So yeah, everyone should get converted to 401(k)s (or 403s) in place of pensions.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not privatize the Postal Service? Fed-Ex and UPS do one heck of a job getting things delivered at as much as you are willing to pay to get it there in a specific time frame. The USPS offers the same but regularly fails to deliver on time, in a reasonable time and even not ever at all.

Plus besides adverts, mags and bills, who uses them anymore anyway? I pay everything online and have to dig for a while to find the pack of forever stamps I bought a few years back when I do have to mail a letter.

If they can't keep up with the times, do their jobs properly in a timely manner and provide the services paid for reliably, then why not change the way they do business.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just like with borrowing from Social Security, by forcing US Postal Service to pre-fund pensions lets government to borrow money from pension plan without affecting the credit markets. The Social Security used to be almost endless well of free money to borrow but it started to dry up lately so they had to come up with another source of free money.

If not for those loophole US Government would be forced to pay higher interest rates on their obligations. So literally the US Government is stealing money from these organizations, because it pays lower interest rate than it would have been if they borrowed on the open market.

Do you think they would stop if you ask them nicely? I don't think so.

Stupid politicians don't understand that once Social Security will have to call in all those Treasury bonds the interest rates will hit double digits and there will be no way for them to balance the budget even if they try and country will be faced with default.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[copious28]

http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/03/04/how-the-postal-service-is-being-gutted.aspx

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

The Federal government has lost me. Why 75 years? I no longer care, fully fund it so you won't come asking me for money later when it isn't there, 75 years sounds like it should do nicely. Could it be less? I DON'T CARE.

We, the tax payers, just had our taxes raised by 2% on Jan 1, and then witnessed what the government does when their spending gets cut by 1%. With the childish things, like closing White House tours, cutting VA help for veterans, cutting college reimbersment for veterans, etc. They have shown they are CHILDISH and can't be reasoned with. I say 150 years, and then when Homeland Security pensions can't be funded they can take the money from USPS instead of us.

I no longer care about government created problems. They can suck it up like the rest of us already have been. You've lost the middle class who pay attention.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Wookact]

FWIU Congress forced the postal service to fund the pensions, so they could raid the pensions.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[i kan reed]

So, your goal is to waste more money. Congratulations, you're part of the problem. You're increasing your own taxes out of spite.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Chalnoth]

Personally, I think that was about the best way to handle it. The issue with companies like GM is that they support an entire ecosystem of manufacturing. Kill GM, and you kill millions of manufacturing jobs across the Midwest, leading to a tremendously-widespread destruction of the US's already lacking manufacturing industry. This is especially relevant when you consider that the rate at which people bought cars dropped so precipitously after the recession that there was virtually no way for a company like GM to stay solvent on its own: this is precisely the kind of situation where the government should step in and act as a sort of insurance agency.

And honestly, I have no problem in principle with 401k plans. The problem with them isn't that they're the government investing in private institutions (because 401k plans are controlled by the people to whom they pay out). Instead, the problem is that they're far less cost-effective than defined-benefit plans like Social Security. That is to say, for a given amount of money put into the retirement plan, a 401k plan will, on average, pay out much less than a defined-benefit plan. And on top of all of that, 401k plans are much riskier. Lower expected returns, higher risk. What is there to love?

Whichever way you slice it, though, it's obvious that the original poster to this thread was absolutely right: the answer is to repeal the asinine law that requires the postal service to fund its pensions so far in advance.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[khallow]

Bankruptcy court is another avenue for handling this sort of thing. And it gets used a lot more frequently and successfully than government fiat.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[roccomaglio]

You should pay the full cost of the employee in the year in which they are employed. If you are providing pension benefits you need to pay the full cost of the pension benefits in the current year's budget. If you offer retirement health care you need to pay for that in the current years budget. Otherwise it is twenty years down the road and you owe billions for benefits for retired employees. It also makes it impossible to cost out the price of adding an employee, since you pay them some now and you owe more for their retirement down the road.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

why drag people down to your level? How about ask, why do you not get a guaranteed pension and have to play russian roulette with the stock market ?

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I do mean like G.M. That was unprecedented, and I'm pretty sure many people believe there were better alternatives to stock purchase.

Perhaps, but the people also believe that saving the jobs as well as an entire American automotive sector from disappearing -- even though we lost $14 billion on the deal -- was still a good investment in our country's economic future. The benefits of which are being seen in jobs numbers today. The U.S. wouldn't be below 8% unemployment if the entire auto industry would have collapsed. We'd be more likely closer to Italy's 12% by now, or backsliding closer to the Great Depression-esque dystopian future like Spain at almost 27%. What alternatives would you suggest being one of many people?

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Kaenneth]

They should just fund them based on "We will have to fire everyone next year and shut down because of this dumb rule, so we are only funding for current employees"

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

You seem to forget about all those private companies that get bought out in a hostile takeover. The corporate raider sees a company with a fully funded retirement plan and sees it as a good deal for him. The raider then loots all of tha assets of the company including the retirement fund. He then bails out and lets the company go bankrupt. You know who then is on the hook for those pentions? We, the taxpayer are!

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[durdur]

Despite the current year tax increases, we have very low marginal tax rates on high income earners, compared to the rest of the world and compared to historic rates in the US over the past 50 years. High taxes are not the biggest economic problem most people face. Ask someone who is unemployed whether high taxes are a problem for them.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Chalnoth]

Bankruptcy court would have also sent GM's suppliers into bankruptcy, which would have killed other domestic auto manufacturing companies, which would have ended the period where the US had any large domestic auto companies.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[sycodon]

Why don't I get a free car every year and a 4 bedroom house for free?

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[binary paladin]

Doing away with government pensions in general would solve a world of problems.

On the upside, that's a system that's going to bury itself eventually anyway.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[PhxBlue]

401k plans are better than us being on the hook to pay some guy his full salary and benefits after he's retired.

I wonder how many military retirees might take exception to this statement?

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[LihTox]

How about being pissed off that private corporations aren't offering the pensions that used to be standard? If somebody has something good that you don't, is your first impulse always "take that away from them!" instead of "how can I get that too?"

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[electron sponge]

General Motors filed for bankruptcy on June 1, 2009.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Chalnoth]

Fair enough. I was unaware of this particular detail. But it is very clear that the bankruptcy process would not have been nearly so orderly without the significant government financing that did occur.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[khallow]

Bankruptcy court would have also sent GM's suppliers into bankruptcy

Why? They're already at the front of the line. What would happened differently is that the United Auto Workers wouldn't have gotten public funding and the public wouldn't be out a few tens of billions of dollars.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Chalnoth]

The public isn't out any money. The money has all been repaid, with interest.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Anonymous Coward]

Unraveling the myth that the Postal Service must fund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[cpt kangarooski]

Additionally, pensions funds are typically invested in private institutions as well. What do you think CALPERS does with all of that money they collect - just sit on their hands? They invest pretty much every dime they collect. So in effect, the government is *already* investing in private institutions.

Of course, that doesn't seem to protect them from rapacious private institutions any more than it does us: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/21/business/21street.html?_r=0

So yeah, everyone should get converted to 401(k)s (or 403s) in place of pensions.

I'd rather have something like a beefed up Social Security. It's clear that putting money into banks isn't a good idea; they're crooks. And businesses don't want to be involved; it's a headache for them, and they're crooks.

So, as with health care, let it be a government function, so that maybe we can try to watch out for one another (at least there's a little bit more we can do about the crooks), and run it with a largely pay as you go system.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[khallow]

The money has all been repaid, with interest.

Not for the stock that the federal government purchased. That's well under water.

Also, where did GM get the money to pay off that loan? Remember they were near bankruptcy for a reason, because they were pretty incompetent at making and selling cars. That reason still applies.

I think we're seeing other federal funding, say QE ("Quantitative Easing") or stimulus money, redirected here.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[Chalnoth]

Um, people have been buying cars in general at far, far lower rates than normal since the crisis struck. All car manufacturers have suffered, and no company (besides the banks) deserves to die because a bunch of bankers screwed up the economy. It would also be quite absurd for the US government to sell its stake in GM until the economy recovers, and which point I strongly expect GM stock to have recovered.

And it is also clear to me that you don't know anything about quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is a process by which the Federal Reserve sells short-term treasuries in order to purchase long-term treasuries. The purpose of this is to push down long-term interest rates and push up expectations of inflation. This really isn't even remotely related to any sort of bailout.

Re:And you know what would help even more?

[khallow]

and no company (besides the banks) deserves to die because a bunch of bankers screwed up the economy

Ignoring here that GM was one of the bankers that screwed up the economy, we have to keep in mind that there are other reasons for a business to "deserve to die". GM has the problem that it has for many decades not been responsive to its customers and been run incompetently since at least the mid 70s.

And it is also clear to me that you don't know anything about quantitative easing. Quantitative easing is a process by which the Federal Reserve sells short-term treasuries in order to purchase long-term treasuries. The purpose of this is to push down long-term interest rates and push up expectations of inflation. This really isn't even remotely related to any sort of bailout.

Unless the QE funding was used at some point to buy GM bonds (the Fed buys a lot of private securities with that money, not just short-term treasuries) and the funds then used to pay off GM's TARP loans. That would be related to a bailout.

It would also be quite absurd for the US government to sell its stake in GM until the economy recovers, and which point I strongly expect GM stock to have recovered.

While GM continues to lose market share? There won't be a GM recovery unless the federal government sticks another limb into the tar baby and gives them more money.

Didn't Gates suggest this a long while back

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't Bill Gates suggest this a long while back?

Re:Didn't Gates suggest this a long while back

[ggeens]

Didn't Bill Gates suggest this a long while back?

Yes, he did. About 10 years ago, IIRC. It was a stupid idea back then, and it still is now (even more so).

Back then, spam was mostly sent from hit-and-run accounts and open email relays. (So the spammers would be difficult to track down.)

Nowadays, they use botnets. Infected users would get charged for the spam flow. Some of them might not even notice the extra costs on their ISP bill.

Cute idea

[DogDude]

It's a cute idea, but clearly this city councilperson doesn't understand how email works.

Re:Cute idea

[Skapare]

So ... but what if the spammers move out of Berkeley? What then?

Re:Cute idea

[Attila Dimedici]

and ti would require exactly NO change for the users.

You are saying that paying a tax is no change from not paying a tax? I would say that that is a pretty significant change.
I would also say that a lot of what currently gets communicated as email would get communicated in some other manner, probably a less efficient manner.

Re:Cute idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I think, we should maybe, insert a tiny little dildo into the concilman's ass. Just to get a reaction from him.

OMG, the post office is closing?

[alen]

where else will i go to meet and talk to people i know for an hour or two at a time? its like a town meeting square where people go for hours just to stand around

Re:OMG, the post office is closing?

[geekoid]

I use the postal system, and I haven't waited more then 3 minutes that vast majority of the time.
Of course if you only show up on Dec 20, yeah there is going to be a wait.

Berkeley City Council

[ShanghaiBill]

Berkeley is a college town, so a large block of voters are students with no long term interest in the community. So a lot of kooks get elected.

Re:Berkeley City Council

[serialband]

That would be true of any November ballots, if students even vote in large enough numbers. June ballots are not affected since students are out of town. The kooks are voted in because the town is full of kooks. A lot of people have settled in and taken root.

Re:Berkeley City Council

[PolygamousRanchKid]

The kooks are voted in because the town is full of kooks.

Well, then a kook tax would be appropriate. Rephrasing his proposal:

"There should be something like a kook tax. I mean a kook tax could be a cent per gigakook and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year."

Re:Berkeley City Council

[multimediavt]

Berkeley is a college town, so a large block of voters are students with no long term interest in the community. So a lot of kooks get elected.

That would be true of any November ballots, if students even vote in large enough numbers. June ballots are not affected since students are out of town. The kooks are voted in because the town is full of kooks. A lot of people have settled in and taken root.

Ok, I can see that neither of you have lived permanently in a college town. Unless students establish residency in the state they are going to school in, and the local municipality where the school is, they cannot vote in local elections. If a student is going to school at Berkeley from Virginia he/she does not vote in California unless they establish permanent residency there, and register to vote there. Most students from out of state (or in-state from another region) don't do that. They use absentee ballots from the state/municipality where they have permanent residence and vote in national/state/local elections relevant to that location, not where they go to school. This is why so many students DON'T vote is because they don't want to deal with absentee ballots or they are too distracted to send it out on time. The "kooks" that elected these idiots are the permanent residents of the town of Berkeley, not the visiting students.

Re:Berkeley City Council

[mako1138]

Having lived most of my life in the Bay Area, including six years in Berkeley, I would agree with your assessment. The City Council attracts some strange characters, and there is a slew of "committees" on topics that range from bleeding heart liberal issues to just plain weirdness. I consider myself fairly left/liberal but sometimes the Berkeley/SF councils seem like they're in a contest for craziness.

Re:Berkeley City Council

[Anonymous Coward]

As someone who was born and raised in Berkeley, I feel the need to defend it. Yes, this proposal is stupid and completely ignorant of the way that email works. But Sendmail came out of Berkeley, so Berkeley has also made a positive contribution to email.

As to the assertion that kooks are voted in because the town is full of kooks, that's entirely unfounded. The kooks are voted in because it's the Berkeley city council and serious candidates don't apply. My parent's former landlord is on the city council and she ran unopposed because the challenger failed to file the paperwork in time. Berkeley is too small to be a stepping stone to anything else, so it seems to attract retirees and people who've had bad experiences with the previous government rather than politicians.

There may be a lot of liberals there, but what seems to be Berkeley's public reputation is based on a few outliers...the vast majority of people there are very reasonable (I almost used the word normal, but then I remembered that one of my former classmates wrote "Dick in a Box" and reconsidered.)

Re:Berkeley City Council

[ShanghaiBill]

Unless students establish residency in the state they are going to school in, and the local municipality where the school is, they cannot vote in local elections.

You make it sound like "establishing residency" is like getting citizenship in a new country. Any of the following is enough to establish residency for purposes of voting:

1. Getting a drivers license.
2. Signing a lease or rental agreement.
3. Possessing a utility bill with your name and address
4. Registering to vote at least 30 days prior to the election

Yes, #4 is correct. If you register to vote, that action makes you a resident for purposes of voting.

The SCOTUS ruled in Symm vs The United States that states and municipalities can't put any restrictions on student voting rights.

Many Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

still seem to believe that USA == World

Haven't needed this in awhile...

[geminidomino]

Dear nitwit,

Your post advocates a

( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
(X) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
(X) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
(X) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
(X) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
(X) Asshats
(X) Jurisdictional problems
(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
(X) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
(X) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever
been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
(X) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[JeanCroix]

Came here for this. /thread

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Specifically, your plan fails to account for:
(X) Asshats

Does anyone ever properly account for asshats?

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[geminidomino]

Sorry, Gordon. The truth hurts some time. If this idiotic suggestion didn't make it clear that you have no clue how things work, this post certainly does.

Stick to taking your kickbacks, Councilman. Leave the technical stuff to the professionals.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[L4t3r4lu5]

+6.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[LordLimecat]

If the email doesn't have a legal code showing it paid taxes, it gets automatically rejected and sent back to the sender

Ah, yes, because the entire legitimate email-using world would instantly convert to using a tax suggested by a Berkeley council member. Im sure noone REALLY needs those emails from their UK business partners.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[ayvee]

(X) Microsoft will not put up with it

Uh, no. Microsoft actually wanted to do this ten years ago.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

You lost me at "Dear nitwit". tldr

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[serviscope_minor]

I wouldn't normally reply to an AC, but it's been modded up.

The list above is moronic. It is wrong for the following reasons:

No, it was carefully honed through the 90's and I've yet to see a time since about 1998 where any anti spam measure could not be answered by checking a box.

1) Mailing list etc.: Screw them.

Okey dokey. Well, I do, and people sign up to my mailing lists. I'm also on a number of tech mailing lists. They work very well and removing them would hamper much online activity.

2) Collecting money: If the email doesn't have a legal code showing it paid taxes, it gets automatically rejected and sent back to the sender

And how's that supposed to work? Again, try reading the list: there is no central controlling authority. Let me repeat since you are hearing impaired:

THERE IS NO CENTRAL CONTROLLING AUTHORITY.

So, how do you prove it? How will it work internationally? Answer: it won't.

3) I am a user of email and I not only will put up with it, I WANT it.

Yep you, and a few other people worldwide. Noone else will bother.

4) Microsoft has no power or right to stop it.

Microsoft have immense power due to their size. If Microsoft don't implement it, then it won't happen. If your new email system can't contact people on Outlook/Exchange server, then no one will ever use it.

5) Why do you think people can't spend 1 cent per hundred email? But anyway, it is not our legal responsibility to make life easy for the incompetent. See answer #1 above. Regulations are a part of business. If you can't comply, then you don't deserve to run the business., or get a job. But honestly, this w

Because there's no conceivable mechanism whereby charging would work.

6) We don't need a central authority for emails, we can do it with codes. Pay a tax, get a code number. Email software rejects those without the code.

So, your solution not requiring a central authority is to have a central code authority. Right.

And again, who is going to make veryone worldwide make the switch? Which authority will force that? Or, do you want to go offline to everyone outside your country.

7) Open relays in foreign countries are fine, it doesn't affect those that use the code rejection system

So foriegn people have to pay a tax to your country (USA?) in order to send them emails? Why would any foreign company adopt that?

8) Screw the Asshats - and send them to jail for tax crimes

OK, how do you catch them?

9)Armies of virus infected window boxes might actually get cleaned up if they were costing the idiots money by spamming

Indeed they might. But an awful lot of people (voters) are going to get very upset at this legislative solution...

10) We are reducing the profitability of spammers.

lol. Let me repeat that: lol.

11) Technically illiterate politicians are still smarter than YOU and came up with this solution

So, politicians smarter than me came up with a solution which is completely unworkable. That's very nice.

12) Saying something should should be free, it doesn't make it so. In fact, it isn't free - it costs the ISPs money every time you send an email, just such a small amount (electricity, electronic upkeep), that they don't charge for it. They should. The fact you don't know this represents your own foolishness.

It's a philosophical point: the ISPs already charge for data, so that cost is covered. Beyond that, why should some particular peer-to-peer communication be taxed over any other?

13) This isn't a feel good measure, it actually solves the problem.

Except it requires (accoriding to you) a server somewhere which dishes out tax codes.

Your post advocates a (X) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work.

13) This isn't a feel good measure, it actually s

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[LordLimecat]

Im actually going to explain why youre so wrong, just in case you are legitimately ignorant (rather than just trolling):
1) People who do not sign onto the system (mailing list providers) will undermine the system. The gov't agency I am with has internal DLs that include email addresses that belong to private contractors; is that illigitimate?
2) This would require everyone to come into full compliance with this tax suggested by a CA council member, otherwise you block loads of legit email.
3) Most users will not put up with it. And who would pay for gmail, comcast, yahoo, hotmail, etc hosted emails? Are we monitoring all port 25 traffic plus DPI on port 80, or what?
4) Microsoft makes one of the top 3 MTAs out there.
5) Who are they paying it to? Why do Shanghai Bank employees need to pay a tax to some US entity? Why wouldnt they just tell us to get stuffed?
6) You cannot force people to reject the email. Email is an international thing.
Etc etc etc.

Every objection you have is basically answered by "people in foreign countries will not pay a tax to the US, which means people in the US cannot afford to just block untaxed emails, which means the entire system cannot work".

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[serviscope_minor]

Well played.

I too have not seen that in a while. It is really quite amazing how good that form is at answering every proposed solution I've ever seen.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

>2) Collecting money: If the email doesn't have a legal code showing it paid taxes, it gets automatically rejected and sent back to the sender

The other ones are stupid enough, but I'll address this one, since a tax doesn't work if you can't collect it.

Does the US accept taxes in every single foreign currency? Do you seriously think even someone in Canada is going to go and open a US bank account just because the US has a fucked up email system? Do you seriously think that American business will survive without China (who won't use this email system, guaranteed, because they won't pay taxes to the USA)?

And do you really think that there is no alternative to email? I'd rather just run a forum and use PM than pay taxes. Cheaper and since I'm not in the US way less effort than:

  - Go to bank
  - Take out US$
  - Go to post office
  - Purchase US mail order (Yes, Canada actually has them) for $0.01 US (for a cost of $6 CDN)
  - Send international mail at over $1 per letter (been a long time since I've had to do it so I have no idea how much it costs now) to remit taxes to idiot in the USA
  - Wait 2 to 3 weeks for your retards to receive the $0.01 and manually release my email
  - Employee being paid .3 cents per second spends 10 seconds ($0.03) opening the envelope, processing the email release and putting the $0.01 money order in the deposits bin

More than this, most Canadians I know don't have a passport, which means they can't visit the USA. This is the country attached to your damn border that actually has enough income that most people regularly use the internet--the one with 90% of its population within a 2 hour drive of the USA. Canadians are not bound to US taxation rules, thus if a Canadian simply refuses to pay (assuming the reject rule was removed, since the US will end up at a standstill when email literally STOPS for 2 weeks waiting for these penny money orders I believe it will) they don't even have to give a shit that the US won't let them into the country due to tax evasion as they clearly didn't plan to go there anyways. They also know within a month the email system will blow up in every Americans face that the taxation requirement will be abolished retroactively.

Considering outside of Canada and Mexico, almost everyone has never visited the USA nor do they plan to, nor will their countries extradite them for an email tax, what will you do? Lob some nuclear bombs at them?

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

Ow, the stupid is actually painful.
1) Yes, because no one actually signs up for news and updates to things. (I know I get registerred to many more than I choose to sign up to, but I would be rather annoyed if the ones I chose were unavailable)
2) Rejected at what level, by which authority, with what proof? More rant on this later.
3) I have never heard of a government agency that would reject a voluntary donation of money. Go give Berkley a $50.
4) ... ... ... next
5) ... ... I see you have stopped taking your meds. If you had actually checked to see that this point ended with a complete sentence it might be worth a response.
6) I refuse to download your tax-centric e-mail client. My client also self-stamps with the "tax paid" code, so you get my spam anyway. If you want a code that can not be faked, then it must be checked against some sort of central repository of tax paid codes, even BitCoin is centralized in a variant of that.
7) So you admit that the whole tax you propose is an opt-in that will do nothing for the users who opt in?
8) ... .... ...
9) ... That one almost resembles a point.
10) Only if they opt in to the tax system, unless you have some magical way of enforcing this.
11) I can agree that you are technically illiterate as well as technologically illiterate.
12) I already pay my ISP for all my usage, e-mail is no different to them than Slashdot, it's all bandwidth and electricity.
13) lol
14) loler
----------
1) Inaction is wiser than wrong action.
2) Ah, another rant attempt where you failed to even check that you had an entire sentence. My opinion of you soars.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[DeadTOm]

There are so many things that make this whole idea impossible to implement, that I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll just go down your list:

1) What? I'm not even sure what you're saying here. Mailing lists are illegal? They're used by thousands of legitimate businesses, for legitimate purposes, all over the world, every day. That's not accounting for non-profits and things like LUGS and hobby groups. The idea that they're useless and/or illegal is completely ignorant, if that is in fact what you're getting at here. Like I said, I'm not really sure what you're saying with this.

2) How are we going to get this code into the email? A the server level? Who is going to write this code and how is it going to be implemented into the myriads of different mail server software for every platform and OS out there? What's to keep it from being spoofed, faked or removed from the header (I'm assuming that's where it would go) by malicious programs? What happens when a mail server gets infected and sends out hundreds of thousands of emails containing this "legal code"? This idea has way too many holes. It would never work.

3) Good for you. You are a user of a product that you clearly know very little about.

4) Power? Like it or not, and I definitely hate it, MS is the wealthiest and most influential software company in existence and this is the USA. That's all the power one needs. As far as MS having the right, again, this is the USA. The people with the money have all the rights. Period.

5) This seems to be more of a meaningless rant and you didn't finish it. I have no idea how to respond.

6) A display of your "email software" ignorance. See response to #2.

7) #6, and by the transitive property, #2, all over again. You clearly have no idea how mail servers or open relays work. If your "code rejection system" doesn't affect or apply to other countries, any business in the US could set up a mail server in another country, route all mail over a VPN to that server to be sent out and there ya go, completely bypassing your system and there would be no way for anyone to know or prove it without going on a legal fishing expedition. We know how much judges love those.

8) Right, including all of those Nigerian asshats that are responsible for a huge portion of spam. We'll just "send them to jail" huh? Good luck with that.

9) People that write virus code for spammers are annoying but not stupid. So totally easy to get around this. See VPN example in #7.

10) Even if #9 didn't apply to this as well and some how, spammers were paying taxes on the spam that their illegally obtained botnets we're spewing out, at 1 cent per hundred emails, the reduction in profit would be barely noticeable to them.

11) Um... what? A technically illiterate person, TRYING to coming up with a solution to a highly technical problem, is smarter than, just for example, me, who has been managing networks and email servers for more than a decade? Um... OK. If you say so.

12) Yes, and where do you think ISPs get money to pay for that? They charge us for it. WE'RE ALREADY PAYING FOR IT.

13) It is a feel good measure, because that's all it would do. It would not at all solve the problem because it is impossible to implement.

14) Again, rather than come up with a thought out, rational response, you resort to personal insults. How very mature and intelligent of you.

Reasons why this hasn't actually been tried yet:

1) Us idiots, that know exactly how email servers work, know that there is no way to implement this.

2) Again, how are mailing lists close to criminal? The library I work for uses them all the time and, get this, you'll love it, the recipients ASKED TO BE ON THE LIST and they can opt out at any time.

Ya, nuff said.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm concerned that you might be serious. That was a lot of typing for a joke. If you did intend this to be serious, please go back to reddit.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[geekoid]

You have the ISP pay a tax for every email that passes through them and they passes to the consumer.
They can do it per email, or a flat increase. Bear in mind that but increase we are talking very little money per person.

This method is also easy to automate for the government.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[tilante]

Okay, so... thanks for demonstrating that you're a moron.

First off, your association of "mailing lists" with illegal activities. The mailing lists that the poster is referring to aren't the ones spammers use - they're the ones that people use to communicate with others with similar interests. Generally, the mailing list software runs on a server, and people can sign up for the list. When someone sends an email to the list, everyone who has signed up for the list gets it. The members can choose to leave the list at any time.

Historically, most mailing list software worked via email commands - you would send a message to the list to ask to subscribe to it, and the list software would automatically add you. When you wished to leave, you sent a message asking to unsubscribe. These days, a lot of software also offers a web interface.

Conceptually, this is similar to web forums; the difference is that the message comes to your email, instead of you having to go to a web site to read it, and you can reply by email, instead of replying through a web site. There are many non-profit organizations that also still use these to communicate with people, because right now it's very inexpensive, and it doesn't require that their supporters regularly visit a web site. If you have announcements to send out, but only have a dozen or so a year, it makes a lot more sense than putting them out through a web forum.

The existence of mailing lists raises a question, though - who's responsible for paying the tax? The person who sent the original email sends one email; the mailing list server sends hundreds or thousands.

But wait, there's more! What about mailboxes that go to multiple people? For example, if you send mail to "tech@(the company I work for)", your email actually goes to about half a dozen people. Should you be charged for each of those? If you answer 'yes', then every time anyone sends an email, they're taking an unknown risk - they don't know how many copies of that email will actually be generated, so they don't know what it will cost.

How about internal email? The vast majority of email doesn't go across the Internet at all - most companies send much, much more internal email than they do external email. Will that be taxed? If so, how, and how will it be enforced?

Which brings up the whole problem of enforcement. You say to have a code number in each email, and have email software reject email without the code. First off, where are the code numbers going to be issued from? If there's a single web site to get the code numbers from, then congratulations - you've just created a single point of failure for all email on the Internet. Second, how are these numbers going to be verified? If it's a simple checksum sort of check, ways will be found to generate fake 'valid' codes. If the mail software has to contact someplace to find out whether the code is valid, you're opening up the possibility of man-in-the-middle attacks (someone faking either a 'valid' or 'invalid' response), and, again, adding a point of failure to the email system.

Further, where is this software going to come from? Someone has to write it, and has to write versions that will work with every suite of mail server software that exists - unless you're also going to mandate restrictions on what mail server software people can run, in which case be prepared for a huge second tax there, as software companies lobby to have their software be the only approved mail server software.

Going to this specific case, though - this isn't the US government proposing this. It's a city council. They have no legal power to enforce their laws on anyone outside the city, and their police have no authority outside the city limits. There's no reasonable way for them to actually enforce this.

Lastly, your message seems to be written under the assumption that this is about spam. It's not. It's about getting funding to prop up the local post office. We have ways to eliminate spam and

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[serviscope_minor]

It's just a bunch of statements with no actual argument behind them.

No, it isn't even slightly. Every point has been rehashed again and again and again on usenet and then again and again and again on forums. That's why this form was invented, to neatly summarize every sane argument about anti-spam systems ever made, and it does a very good job. Spend 2 minutes thinking and you can see how the checkboxes expand. Look, in order:

Mailing lists and other legitamite users will be affected. Now, mailing list operators will become laiable for large tax bills. This will adversely affect a lot of open source projects and other things, no doubt.

So, how do you propose to find the email senders and collect money? That's very non trivial (see later).

How will you get the users of email to all adopt the system? For it to work, the entire system has to be switched worldwide overnight, otherwise people won't be able to receive emails.

You think microsoft will implement that? If they don't who else will use the system? How much use will it be if you can't send an email to an Exchange user.

Can you afford not to receive emails from abroad and thereby alienate those customers? Or, will you not tax emails from abroad?

So what central controlling authority which does not exist is going to (a) scan every email to check for taxes or (b) enforce non-receipt of emails for which tax isn't paid. Since there's no global authority, how will this work?

The trouble is if you don't tax users from abroad then open relays in other countries will be used to send spam. If they are taxed, how on earth do you propose to get the entire world to switch to this new system overnight?

Asshats will find ways to sneak spam in anyway and leave some poor sap picking up the bill.

There is no worldwide jusisdiction. How will the tax be implemented?

Do you think the entire population will accept this new tax, or vote for hte guy who promises to repeal it?

The armies of worm-ridden boxes will keep sending SPAM. Sure the users will foot the bill (then at least temporarily fix their box) but it will still be a game of whack-a-mole with no decrease in spam.

Spam is profitable, so spammers will spend lots of money to figure out ways of sending spam. Just look at how much money is invsted in botnets now. If soverign governments cannot secure their networks from botnest, what hope do you think everyone else has?

The person who suggested this is technically illiterate because he has failed to account for any of the problems.

Philosophically, I feel sending mail should be free. It's just regular peer-to-peer internet communication like everything else, none of which is taxed. And tacing it would be hard. First: define email unambiguously.

This is indeed a feelgood measure because it sounds nice but will not address the problem (see above).

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[serviscope_minor]

You have the ISP pay a tax for every email that passes through them and they passes to the consumer.

Wow, so consumers pay a tax for every SPAM they receive? And this will stop spammers HOW?

Or if you mean the other way, my government is not the same as your government. If mine doesn't charge the tax, then will you (a) block emails from my country or (b) still put up with exactly the same amount of spam?

This method is also easy to automate for the government.

No it isn't! They have to put monitoring software in every SMTP server out there, since people already connect over SSL, VPN or webmail. ISPs have no way of knowing which traffic is spam and which isn't.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd stay and argue that any solution is better than no solution but I have a flight to catch.

Re:Haven't needed this in awhile...

[Rakarra]

Is this aimed at all emails? I would argue this would be aimed at large web mail providers, gmail, yahoo mail, hotmail and such.

Yeah, and they tend not to be the problem.
In general, the people who are going to be paying the tax are not the people who are sending spam.

Good idea

[Geoffrey.landis]

Good idea; I wish there were a way to implement it.

Basically, emails do have a cost, both a real cost in the connections and computers that transmit and store them, and a time cost in the time I spend deleting them, and the fact that the senders don't bear this cost means that they overuse the resource. Hard to calculate that cost, but the hardware alone is certainly more than 0.01 cent per email if it's correctly pro-rated-- maintaining the internet is not without cost. A 0.1 cent per email cost would mean nothing to me, or to any legitimate users, but would stop indiscriminate spam.

Good idea. Only problem: how could we implement it?

Re:Good idea

[pipatron]

Like the ISP with google, you fail to remember that everyone with a network connection already pays for this access to their ISP.

Also, no one ever sends spam from their own computer, what do you think all the hacked windows botnets are used for? This would just make innocent people get smallish extra charges added to their normal ISP bill, and won't cost anything to the senders of spam.

Best case scenario if they managed to make this stupid idea into reality is that ordinary folks at home will pay more attention to computer security to make sure they won't get charged those extra dollars each month.

Re:Good idea

[Picass0]

>> "Good idea; I wish there were a way to implement it."

Your time would be better spent trying to save the Buggy Whip industry. They haven't been doing so well since the arrival of the horseless carriage.

You do have a Buggy Whip in your car, yes? If not, you're part of the problem.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

A 0.1 cent per email cost would mean a lot to me. For a start it would mean my bank account had to be tied to my email address.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

and when your pc or your spouses, or oh wait this is slashdot - so back to my original entry line and when your computer is taken over as part of a spambot, you get to pay your .01 cents for each of the 15,000 e-mails you send via your hacked computer.

Way to go waste your money...

Re:Good idea

[CanHasDIY]

You do have a Buggy Whip in your car, yes?

Well sure! How else are we supposed to fend off the street urchins?

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

And our tax dollars already go towards the up keep of the internet's infrastructure.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Emails may have a cost. But if you exclude the recipient cost (which varies), it'll cost far more to set up systems to charge for them.

But if the customers are fine with it, I'm sure the ISPs will be very happy to invest in systems so that they can charge us 1/100th what the mobile telcos charge for text messaging.

Re:Good idea

[SJHillman]

Or you could get a bill monthly from your ISP or something. They would just be monitoring emails sent from your IP. Of course, that wouldn't work for webmail in which just a browser session, and not the email itself, is sent to you.

Re:Good idea

[Richard_at_work]

The buggy whip industry died (and is used as a common example because it died) as a result of something better that completely and utterly replaced the horse drawn carriage. Unfortunately, its a bad example to use because often, especially in debates here on Slashdot, the industry being compared has not been replaced either in whole or in part.

I'm not defending the point of the article, but email has only replaced a small part of the packet mail delivery industry - I can't send a physical item through email, I can't send documents I need to confirm someone at the other end received, I can't get an email insured etc etc etc.

Yes, the packet mail delivery industry is suffering, and it needs to do one or more of three things - raise prices, find other revenue sources or lower costs.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Well sure! How else are we supposed to fend off the street urchins?

Shotgun loaded with rock salt?

Re:Good idea

[srbell]

Good grief! And how exactly is it that the post office is due ANY funds from an email someone sends??? If they want more funds they should EARN it like the rest of us have to, not steal it from someone else that has earned it. If they're not making enough to keep things going then they should do like any other business and manage their costs and set prices appropriately.

Re:Good idea

[ondelette]

The buggy whip industry died (and is used as a common example because it died) as a result of something better that completely and utterly replaced the horse drawn carriage. Unfortunately, its a bad example to use because often, especially in debates here on Slashdot, the industry being compared has not been replaced either in whole or in part.

New technology almost never wipes out the old. We still have horse carriages in downtown Montreal. There are still practical reasons to ride a horse: we have cops that do.

We will still have old school mail as well as old school radio in 20 years. It won't go away. It just becomes less economically important.

Re:Good idea

[Talderas]

Horrible idea.

A lot of spam is done via spambots. So how do you ding the bill against the actual spammer (the people controlling the spambots) rather than the individuals who have the infected PCs and are sending spam unaware? There's nothing right or just in sending the innocent a bill for acts they did not consciously perform.

Re:Good idea

[Chrisq]

And our tax dollars already go towards the up keep of the internet's infrastructure.

Exactly. It would be useful (though probably impossible) if the small cost associated with each email were charged to the sender instead of picked up by everyone. If you got 1000 emails for a penny most people would spend very little each year, but the scams and spams that work if 1 in 100,000 people spend £20 would no longer be viable.

Re:Good idea

[jadv]

Well sure! How else are we supposed to fend off the street urchins?

Shotgun loaded with rock salt?

Rock salt is for pussies. Live ammo FTW!

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The fact you believe this to be a good idea makes me think you must be from California. California and Florida are the only two places that have a reality distortion powerful enough to cause this to make sense.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, no one ever sends spam from their own computer, what do you think all the hacked windows botnets are used for? This would just make innocent people get smallish extra charges added to their normal ISP bill, and won't cost anything to the senders of spam.

People who put insecure computers on the global network are not innocent. They're negligent. You want to really do something about that problem, start fining them.

If I put a big truck on the highway and I don't secure my cargo, I get to pay for any damage it does. Same principle. You are responsible for your property and any damage it causes on a shared, public resource.

I'm sure they can make a convincing puppy-eyes at you. So what? Stop excusing them. The damage they facilitate is very real.

Re:Good idea

[bhagwad]

If people really find the postal system so useful they should be willing to pay more for it. This is a solution in search of a problem.

Re:Good idea

[I'm New Around Here]

That's for ghosts and demons, he specified street urchins.

Re:Good idea

[Synerg1y]

Lowering costs is actually exactly what they're trying and need to do, the problem is not the reduced mail volume, the problem is the Post office's obligation to up until recently deliver mail on Saturdays, and they've also got a raw deal on health insurance, all while not being as profitable in the past. This is a classic case of bureaucracy failing.

Re:Good idea

[PhotoJim]

I have to say, society would have a huge incentive to stop spammers if spammers cost individual people hundreds of dollars in fraudulent sent email charges.

Re:Good idea

[tilante]

Actually, the packet mail delivery industry isn't suffering. FedEx, UPS, and DHL are all doing fine - it's only the US Postal Service that's having problems. A big part of their problems are caused by government regulation, which many see as being designed to try to get rid of the USPS. See http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2013/03/04/how-the-postal-service-is-being-gutted.aspx for fuller explanations.

Re:Good idea

[dywolf]

no, that comparison really isnt relevant here.
you have to step back and ask what, ultimately, is the purpose of the Postal Service?
Answer: To faciliate communication between peoples.

Before the postal service letter writing was rather risky. You pay some random person to deliver a message...never knowing whether he would actually do so. He may keep the money and toss it in the trash. he may read it himself. He may deliver it to wrong person. Etc etc.

The postal service eliminated all of that uncertainty, and in doing so, enabled people far across the new country to communicate freely, further enabling and enhancing those rights we also put in the Constitution.

These days, not many people right letters. True

But that doesnt mean there is no longer a need to facilitate and maintain reliable communication between peoples.

The method has chaned, but not the need. Comcast, Cox, AT&T, etc, are under no real obligation to actually deliver and maintain email service. They are much more like the random person you hired to deliver a message in the town he already happened to be going to.

And as such, I could see the USPS being one of the protectors of the open internet. In fact, it's likely a better one than the FCC, as opponents of the FCC keep trying to have it determines that the internet was not within the FCC's orignal charter, and the FCC itself was less about facilitating communication, than about sherparding the public resource we call the "airwaves". But the USPS is in the constituion itself.

(Though honestly, I would see sheparding of the internet as being a combined effort of the two agnecies)

Re:Good idea

[dywolf]

to add to myself:
As interpreted and implemented "USPS is legally obligated to serve all Americans, regardless of geography, at uniform price and quality."
And "primarily to facilitate interstate communication"

Can you think of a better way to justify creating universal internet access with a minimum acceptable quality of service?
I think it's a damned good way to go about it.

Re:Good idea

[fche]

"Basically, emails do have a cost" ... none of which is borne by government, so imposed tax money that goes to it merely serves to punish rather than pay for the cost.

Re:Good idea

[dywolf]

in fact, to further add to myself: the post office owned and operated the first telegraph lines. so there is precedent.

Re:Good idea

[MacDork]

Hard to calculate that cost

No it isn't. Amazon charges $0.10 per thousand emails.

A 0.1 cent per email cost would mean nothing to me, or to any legitimate users, but would stop indiscriminate spam.

A one-hundredth of a cent tax per email works out to be... $0.10 per thousand emails. They want to double the price of email, and call it 'a very tiny tax.' Nevermind that it's a stupid idea suggested by a technically illiterate city council.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with the post office is that we have this "presorted bulk rate" class 3 mail that costs next to nothing for a company to send (hence all the adverts and crap in our mailboxes all the time), but that still has a real cost to deliver vs the 40+ cents it costs for a normal, unsorted, first class letter. If we raised the presorted bulk rate to say 30 cents, the post office would do OK (we'd need LESS of them of course since many adverts would not be sent anymore and companies would try harder to get you to online bill paying and no physical mailed bill). But the remaining post offices would be solid financially. It is just that they are today carrying the physical spam industry...

Re:Good idea

[mrbester]

And The Bride, if your name is Budd...

Re:Good idea

[fallen1]

With a riding crop, of course! Everyone knows those buggies are merely a trend that will fade away and decent people will keep riding their horses, using saddles, just like God intended!

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

You could do it the other way, where you charge a tax for a proper header and discard everything that lacks the header.

The problem though is that email's strength is in part it's anonymity. The spam problem would go away over night if morons would stop clicking the links in spam messages.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Not at all supporting adding cost to email, but, if people noticed extra charges on their bills - perhaps they would actually do something about their infection.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The buggy whip industry died (and is used as a common example because it died) as a result of something better that completely and utterly replaced the horse drawn carriage.

I call car shit.

Re:Good idea

[arth1]

The Post office managed to have two deliveries a day and one on Saturday for the longest time, profitably. It's not what's killing them.
Having become seriously top-heavy and over-regulated by bean counters who need to see justifications for all expenses (at costs higher than the expenses) is part of the problem. The bulk e-mail agreements and deals like UPS dropping off packages at the post office and having them deliver it for a pittance is what's killing them.
I.e. increased commercialization.

Mail is a utility, and needs to be treated as such. They can't fulfil their obligation to deliver mail if they are also to compete on packages, bulk delivery, and express.
They need to go back to what they were, and the free market evangelists need to keep their hands in their pockets where utilities are concerned. They can be profitable, but not on a free market.

Re:Good idea

[Linzer]

Good idea; I wish there were a way to implement it.

As pointed out by others, you can't intercept an email on its way to tax it, but you can always catch it at its final destination. Here is an idea that doesn't involve a government tax.

As you rightfully point out, I bear some cost for each message I receive, so I could pass on this cost to the sender by demanding a fee for reading the message. Essentially this would need a credit system where my incoming mail server can silently drop any message that doesn't come with a small electronic payment of some form.

For any person with whom I have a normal, symmetric communication, this just cancels out, but those who want to spam me would have to pay for that priviledge.

Obviously, implementing such a credit system to be both reliable and inexpensive is a major technical challenge, but certainly something that I'd like to see explored.

Re:Good idea

[Bigby]

Most mail needs to go into a "we'll deliver it when most cost effective; max of 14 days". Just build up the mail to a certain area until it gets "full", then deliver it. Some areas would only have deliveries once a week. Others would be every day. You can then have a real "first class" mail that would be delivered more often.

Basically, introduce a "second class" mail. And price the first class MUCH higher.

Re:Good idea

[gewalker]

If ISP's blocked outbound SMTP traffic everywhere (except to the ISP email servers). Consumer should be able easily to opt out of this. Then, even if the home computer was botted, no spam would be sent via the typical smtp channel. Webmail providers would have further incentive not to allow spamming via their network.

So, some parts of the tech-fix approach are feasible -- other parts are not.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

And part of the problem is that FedEx, UPS, and DHL have taken a lot of the "premium" package business from the USPS, leaving them with the less profitable part of the market.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Huh? The USPS is failing because it was privatized and decoupled from the government. Now it's subject to the whims of the same types of people that have brought us all our other financial crises.

Re:Good idea

[Le Marteau]

If they're not making enough to keep things going then they should do like any other business and manage their costs and set prices appropriately.

The Post Office is not "like any other business". They can't just raise their prices. Their prices are set through a convoluted legal process, and the Post Office depends on forces and governmental entities outside of it's control in setting it's prices.

Re:Good idea

[CastrTroy]

Exactly. If they decide to tax email, then people are just going to find other ways to send messages back and forth to each other over the internet. Since almost everybody uses webmail nowadays, the webmail providers could all get together and decide on a standard for sending email vi HTTP POST instead of SMTP. They might try to write the law such that they account for this, but then there would be a risk of taxing things that weren't actually email.

Re:Good idea

[coyote_oww]

On the other hand, it would help to identify infected computers and train users to pay more attention to what their computer is doing, and how to avoid the pain of getting a bill voided by avoiding infections and behaviors that lead to infections.

Its ultimately true that if people don't bear any cost for their irresponsibility, you can expect them to continue to be irresponsible. You own a computer, you gotta be responsible for it - or pay someone else to do it for you.

Re:Good idea

[peragrin]

God gave Man two legs for a reason.

If god wanted man to abuse animals he would have made them run slower than man.

Therefore use your god given legs and walk.

Re:Good idea

[Githaron]

I'd have to agree. What we really need to do shift from an address based physical mail to a person based official national email program. Everyone would be given a official email and CAC card. The CAC would be necessary for log in and document signing. The emails would be part of a publicly searchable contact directory. A small artificial cost would be applied to the sender to avoid abuse from advertising/SPAM agencies. All official government correspondence would be sent and received through said email program. Any document signed with the CAC would be seen as legally strong as a physical document signed by a handwritten signature. All libraries would be fitted with document scanners, computers, and CAC readers for those that do not have said equipment at home. Ideally, all government paper forms would be converted to digital forms. All correspondence or notifications could optionally be freely forward to your personal email so that you know when to check your government email.

As far as the transport of non-message objects goes, we could either have a post office that delivers mail only a couple times a week or simply go completely private (UPS, Fedex, etc.).

Re:Good idea

[sabt-pestnu]

I find it interesting that one of the "regulations gutting the USPS" is that it is being required to fund its pension plan with today's dollars.

My financial advisers tell me to put money into my 401k or IRA now. Pre-tax income, in a fund that generally keeps up with inflation. ... mostly.

from the article: The cuts USPS is being forced to make are like eating dog food when you have a million bucks in the bank. ... a comparison much like saying "why should I live on ramen noodles when I've got next month's rent in the bank".

Much of the rest of the article, I can agree with, though. Unlike DHL et al, the USPS has an obligation to serve everyone even if doing so is an operational loss. Not so such private companies.

Re:Good idea

[blackest_k]

Is it really suffering, because of the internet there is access to more suppliers than ever before. Where you might have gone to a local store and bought what they had that was close to what you actually wanted now you get what you want and at some point it gets shipped to you.

If anything the internet is helping support the postal service through increased long distance trading. Post Offices do suffer somewhat since their role is increasingly marginal, however they could be revived if redefined and they acted more as distribution centres. It would be far more convenient to go to the local post office to collect an item rather than having to arrange a different delivery time take time off to wait for the item or locate the remote depot that is open until about an hour after you get off work when travelling anywhere is at its slowest.

Re:Good idea

[qwe4rty]

From my understanding, it's not that the USPS is being required to put today's dollars into a pension plan, but tomorrow's, next weeks, and the dollars 5 years from now in as well. If I recall (correctly?), they are being required to make the next 20 years worth of funding within the next few years.

I think its more like your adviser telling you to put away 10% of every paycheck into a 401k account, but do the next 20 years worth of deposits all within the next 5

Re:Good idea

[pixr99]

Most mail needs to go into a "we'll deliver it when most cost effective; max of 14 days".

I really like this idea. Seems like they'd be spending resources where they are really needed. Rural places like where I live would get less frequent deliveries than cities and I'm okay with that. Like you mentioned, there's First Class if you really need something delivered soon-ish. To some degree, this system is already appearing with the end of Saturday deliveries.

Bigby for president!

Re:Good idea

[Belial6]

It wouldn't necessarily impossible. I have said for a decade that the post office should get in to the email game. This would be one revenue source for them. Charge a small fee for email delivery through their relay. Then the rest of us could set our email servers to only accept email from white listed domains and addresses. This would cause all of the cost to be front loaded on the initial contact. Thus legitimate email would be very close to free, and spam would be really expensive.

This could be even better if our smtp standard could be enhanced with a 'you are not white listed, send via usps relay' error message. This way out going email could function as it currently does for users and admins could set their own cost budgeting policies.

Re:Good idea

[mjr167]

I pay my ISP a monthly fee to cover the costs of sending my emails. One of the fees on that bill is ... TAX.

Regardless of the fairness or inconsequential of the tax, the government have no business knowing how many emails I send. For that matter the government has no business knowing pretty much anything about the bits I send.

Stop trying to prop up dying industries by punishing technological progress.

Re:Good idea

[mjr167]

I can't send a physical item through email, I can't send documents I need to confirm someone at the other end received, I can't get an email insured etc etc etc.

Are you sure about that? When I was in college my roommate had the following conversation with her mom:

Mom: I'm emailing you this form you need to print and sign.

Roommate: I don't have a printer.

Mom: That's ok. I have a printer. I'll print it, scan it, and then email it to you.

Re:Good idea

[booyoh]

Everything has a cost. Even breathing clean air has a cost. I got a another good idea for you... Why don't we just tax the air we breathe? Imagine the trillions the government can make to support the failing U.S. Post Office. But I got a better idea! We could always shut down the US Post Office and let Private Businesses take over such as FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc. Then the government can tax them for all the snail mail.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

DHL is not doing fine in the US.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

We implement it by having big brother monitor from whom and to where emails are going and taxing email accounts link to real users verified by their SSN appropriately. Enjoy your police state.

Re:Good idea

[mcgrew]

The USPS isn't losing money, their budgetary problems stem from Congress, who mandated that they fund their entire pension system 75 years into the future. Nobody else is under those constraints. Without that artificial baggage, they make a profit every year.

Re:Good idea

[srbell]

I do understand that. My previous comment was not meant in a negative way towards the many fine folks working at the USPS (I sure wouldn't want any of their jobs!) but more in pointing out that maybe someone needs to rethink just how it's run. Maybe it should be run more like a business, even if they just end up breaking even.

Re:Good idea

[arth1]

That's what they had before.
There's a reason why your stamps say "first class".

What happened is that they got rid of second class mail. And instead introduced bulk mail for companies. A bad trade, if you ask me.

I also miss air mail with its rice paper, cross-written to save weight.

Re:Good idea

[Blrfl]

And our tax dollars already go towards the up keep of the internet's infrastructure.

I'm sorry, but this is so incorrect that it isn't funny. The Internet was commercialized in 1995 when NSFNET was decommissioned. Since then, what you know as "The Internet" in the U.S. has been carried on private equipment and circuits. The exception is the U.S. government's own infrastructure, and they're just like any other ISP, carrying traffic for their own departments and agencies.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

If you got 1000 emails for a penny most people would spend very little each year, but the scams and spams that work if 1 in 100,000 people spend £20 would no longer be viable.

By your math (1000 emails for $.01), it would cost a spammer 1 dollar to send 100,000 spam emails. If they get one of those 100,000 people to spend $20, they still made $19, so it is still well worth it.

Re:Good idea

[Talderas]

That is all well and good but the proper response to that problem is a finite fine rather than an unbounded tax.

Re:Good idea

[slapout]

Ever heard of a botnet? The spammer's won't be the ones paying the taxes.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

For a start it would mean my bank account had to be tied to my email address.

There's absolutely no need for that. Tying your email address to your name and physical mail address would allow to send you a bill which you then have to pay. Or, tying it to your credit card would allow to charge you that way. Or there could even be a prepaid model where you pay in advance for a certain number of emails (in any way), and then if you've used up that limit, no further mails can be sent until you pay.

Of course all those models break down by the fact that nobody can control how many emails you actually send, but assuming you could force all emails to be sent via an official mail provider, it would be trivial to set it up. The mail provider would pay the taxes for every mail it sends, and would charge you for the cost using any model it sees fit. In principle, you could even have a mail account where you can pay for your mails in bitcoins, if the mail provider is willing to take up the associated risks.

Another possibility would be a "virtual stamp" which you buy, and which you then have to include in your mail. It would basically be a public key certificate with a serial number (where the private key is held by whoever manages the virtual stamps). Each mail you'd send would need to contain such a virtual stamp (maybe in an additional header X-Stamp), and the SMTP mail server would check with the issuer's server that the stamp has not yet been used, and won't deliver it if it is not properly stamped (you'd get it back in the same way as if you e.g. had sent it to a non-existent mail address). The mail system which ultimately delivers the mail to the recipient would then in addition tell the issuer's server that the virtual stamp is now used.

The latter scheme would allow posting from arbitrary computers, but require the receiving end to be an official mail provider.

Re:Good idea

[AK Marc]

"why should I live on ramen noodles when I've got next month's rent in the bank".

If I make enough money between now and next month to pay the rent, why should I be required to hold back money I have now that I'll be able to replace before I need?

Re:Good idea

[AK Marc]

If you negligently leave your computer open to spammers, then you are responsible. Think of it as a "stupid tax" rather than an email tax. If you drive down the road with an unsecured load, and your couch falls off and causes a crash, you are responsible. If you drive down the Information Superhighway with an unsecured load, why are you then held blameless for your gross negligence?

Re:Good idea

[PRMan]

Regardless of the fairness or inconsequential of the tax, the government have no business knowing how many emails I send. For that matter the government has no business knowing pretty much anything about the bits I send.

Stop trying to prop up dying industries by punishing technological progress.

And yet, they're almost certainly already reading it.

Re:Good idea

[Bert64]

Why would it stop indiscriminate spam?
Hacked boxes?
Spam coming from foreign systems outside of the jurisdiction of those imposing the tax?
All it would do is punish legitimate organisations who send a lot of email.

Re:Good idea

[CanHasDIY]

God gave Man two legs for a reason.

Yea - one to get the horse to go right, and one to get him to go left! HA!

Side note: Slashdot is probably not the best place to invoke any holy deity in your reasoning, considering that a large portion of the audience here are atheists.

Saying "But GOD wants you to do this!" doesn't work real well on people who don't believe in any such thing.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Myopic fool! Not everone has, or even wants, a computer. So...what...fuck them?

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

How about Congress not mandating that pensions be pre-funded 75 years into the future and do so with revenues acquired in a decade.

Those pensions buy government bonds and help prop up their spending habit. The current fund is by no means destitute either with a current balance somewhere around $44,000,000,000.

Re:Good idea

[dyingtolive]

Myopic fool! Not everyone has, or even wants, a telephone. So...what...fuck them?

Re:Good idea

[eyrieowl]

If I put a big truck on the highway and someone else comes along and opens up the doors because I didn't lock them, and everyone knows that it was, in fact, someone else who opened the doors, I would not be liable, at least not 100%. I agree that people ought to take responsibility for protecting their posessions, but I don't believe failure to secure things perfectly should lead to liability for others' damages.

Re:Good idea

[xclr8r]

You start fining them and the sheeple start clamoring for walled garden computers. Since there are more of them than you.. industry happily complies and then you have to buy a register key to 'unlock/develop' in your own machine. I don't want to go down that road.. worst case scenario would be an isp shunt to block traffick with a page with available updates. Yes I'm going a little out there but it's almost spring break.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't feasible to tax email for all the reasons that everyone has already said...email is portable, so you can locate servers outside of the tax jurisdiction, it's very difficult to monitor for compliance and there are other messaging protocols.

Bandwidth, on the other hand, is very taxable. Put a $0.01/GB tax on bandwidth and it would become very hard to avoid. Bandwidth is tied to something physical...the transmission lines that connect to the internet. Forcing providers to apply the tax would be fairly simple and it wouldn't be possible to avoid it by using an alternate means of communication.

If I'm a city councilman for a small town and I want to receive tax revenue from internet usage, I'd direct my efforts to getting AT&T, Comcast and their ilk to collect it for me. It shouldn't be that difficult to implement since they already monitor individual bandwidth usage to apply caps.

Re:Good idea

[MrL0G1C]

If you had a truck and the wheels fell off because the truck company had not built it sufficiently well and the truck then killed someone as a result, why would you blame the driver?

It is the responsibility of software creators to ensure their software does not have vulnerabilities and that those vulnerabilities are fixed quickly when found (all internet facing software should auto-update by default).

Spam is not harmful anyway, it is simply a nuisance and good Bayesian filters etc can deal with the vast bulk of it.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

unfortunately, at this point, the USA has utterly destroyed any ability for its post office to function. Any attempt to make it viable will get killed in it's crib by corporate interests, any attempt to close it will be stopped by constitutionalists, any attempt to privatise it will be killed in it's crib by the competition (they don't wan the USPS to be unencumbered) and the unions (as then they will no longer be government employees and lose alot of benefits),

In short, we are doomed to bizarre theater for as long as there is a USA, as it is a functional issue with how american culture, government, and business is operated. This is stuff similar to what you see in a country right before there is a collapse or revolution.

Re:Good idea

[MrL0G1C]

That's a great idea.

Re:Good idea

[Rakarra]

I find it interesting that one of the "regulations gutting the USPS" is that it is being required to fund its pension plan with today's dollars.

My financial advisers tell me to put money into my 401k or IRA now. Pre-tax income, in a fund that generally keeps up with inflation. ... mostly.

Ok, sounds fine. But what if you were required by law to put in enough money -today- to be able to fully fund the next 80 years of your life?
The USPS is the victim of Congressmen who want to gut it, so they inserted a clause in a bill to ensure that the USPS funds the pensions today of future workers who are not yet born. No other business would have to put up with that.

Re:Good idea

[tacokill]

Wait, what? Those are very real pension costs. Are you suggesting they just ignore them so they can "show" a profit?

You aren't, by chance a Chicago alderman or a California house member are you? That's what they've been doing for a long time and in case you haven't noticed, that hasn't worked out very well. Of course, it's still ongoing and things could change but their budgets are fucked. And they are fucked specifically because of pensions.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Those must be some bloody darn big bugs if you need a whip to deal with them!

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem with comparing the USPS to private delivery companies is that the USPS is required by law to deliver to all addresses while the private carriers are allowed to chose where they deliver based on profitability.

It makes sense to have a guaranteed delivery system in place even if it comes at a cost directly to the taxpayers. The mail system is relied on and is dependable. There is no guarantee of the other private carriers upholding the same standards.

Re:Good idea

[Anonymous Coward]

The postal service didn't eliminate the uncertainty of your mail not being delivered. A quick Google search will find all sorts of postal employees convicted of stealing, destroying, or discarding mail:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/crime-scene/post/postal-carrier-sentenced-for-destroying-mail/2011/09/02/gIQAtJalxJ_blog.html
http://www.kimt.com/content/localnews/story/Postal-Carrier-Sentenced-For-Mail-Theft/oZSNWFMj_kODq-MF8j-ycw.cspx

Re:Good idea

[bryan1945]

When you grow the balls to post non-AC, get back to me.
Apparently, the whole reason behind AC has been lost in the past 10 years.

Re:Good idea

[Hotawa Hawk-eye]

I'd have to agree. What we really need to do shift from an address based physical mail to a person based official national email program. Everyone would be given a official email and CAC card. The CAC would be necessary for log in and document signing. The emails would be part of a publicly searchable contact directory. A small artificial cost would be applied to the sender to avoid abuse from advertising/SPAM agencies. All official government correspondence would be sent and received through said email program. Any document signed with the CAC would be seen as legally strong as a physical document signed by a handwritten signature. All libraries would be fitted with document scanners, computers, and CAC readers for those that do not have said equipment at home. Ideally, all government paper forms would be converted to digital forms. All correspondence or notifications could optionally be freely forward to your personal email so that you know when to check your government email.

As far as the transport of non-message objects goes, we could either have a post office that delivers mail only a couple times a week or simply go completely private (UPS, Fedex, etc.).

Allow me to play Devil's Advocate.

• When (not if, given the payout) the CAC card is compromised all documents signed with it are suspect until the government goes to the expense of fixing or replacing the cards. If someone's physical signature is forged, a limited number of documents are compromised; if the digital signing mechanism were to be broken in March, say, how many tax returns could be messed up?
• Mailing lists, at least free ones, cease to exist. How many messages are sent each year to the Linux kernel mailing list, as one example? Wikipedia says 350-450 messages per DAY. So if the "artificial cost" were a tenth of a cent, that means each subscriber who has the list sent to their official address costs 35 to 45 cents a day or about $125-$160 per year. I suppose the LKML could try to exclude official addresses from the list, but every opt-in mailing list out there would need to do the same and even a 0.1% failure rate in that exclusion method could cost the list maintainer thousands of dollars a year. That's not counting people who deliberately try to cost the LKML money -- don't you think Microsoft would love to do that?
• Politicians would exclude themselves from the "small artificial cost" clause of your proposal, so around election times those accounts would become unusable. After all, why pay a staffer to identify those email accounts whose owners can vote for the politician when it's less expensive (for them) to just send out a blanket email?

Re:Good idea

[mcgrew]

No, they were wrong to not have budgeted forward from the beginning. Had they done that the USPS would show a profit. What's killing them is coming up with 75 years worth of pensions all at once.

Maybe, instead...

[Ashenkase]

The city councillor can impose a liquorice tax on all emails sent within his jurisdiction. For every 1 trillion emails sent, a person must place one stick of liquorice on the councillors desk.

That makes about as much sense as what the councillor is proposing.

Just to be clear, I don't like liquorice all that much.

Re:Maybe, instead...

[Skapare]

And it's also well known that taxing one particular type of business drives that type of business away. So the spammers will just move down to San Jose.

Let's use a gas tax to fund horse and buggies

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, who are we to say that buggy whip manufacturers are any less deserving of our support?

Re:Let's use a gas tax to fund horse and buggies

[fermion]

The Pot office is an example of buggy whip operation that has not been allowed to innovate of charge a market price. For instance the forever first class stamp is a good form of innovation, but it does not go far enough. Why should it cost the same to mail a letter from Dallas to Chicago as from Dallas to the middle of nowhere frontier North Dakota. There is no opportunity of scale in North Dakota. Charging different rates will be inefficient, so just formally make the delivery time up to 5 days, instead of 2-3 for most. The understanding is that it will be at a post office in the area in 2 day, but may not be delivered until there is enough to justify the cost, just like UPS does. If you want it faster for rural areas, then pay for Priority Mail. No more subsidies for the rural folk by the city folk.

Then there is the issue of closing post offices. There should be some standard, such as no post office for less than 5,000 people. For instance, evidently the people of Derby Connecticticut (3,000 people) are upset that their post office is going to close even though there is another a half mile away. Evidently the US taxpayer is expected to cover maintenance costs for the building. I know how they feel. My historic post office might close, which serves way over 20,000 people, although there are satellite kiosks in other areas, but the reality is that it is sitting on a very valuable piece of property and does not need to be that big. I kind of hope it does not close, but will understand if it does.

Then there is saturday delivery, which the USPS is giving away while others do not have it. Again, if one want saturday deliver, which I have no use for, then pay for it. Priority mail, which the plan says will deliver on saturday, is six bucks. For the same service Fedex is 50 bucks. Ended Saturday delivery is something many firms are against because it is an entitlement. An entitlement that the taxpayer, according to congress, is not willing to pay for.

Re:Let's use a gas tax to fund horse and buggies

[TClevenger]

Then there is the issue of closing post offices. There should be some standard, such as no post office for less than 5,000 people. For instance, evidently the people of Derby Connecticticut (3,000 people) are upset that their post office is going to close even though there is another a half mile away. Evidently the US taxpayer is expected to cover maintenance costs for the building. I know how they feel. My historic post office might close, which serves way over 20,000 people, although there are satellite kiosks in other areas, but the reality is that it is sitting on a very valuable piece of property and does not need to be that big. I kind of hope it does not close, but will understand if it does.

On the other hand, they're planning to close the Long Beach sorting center, which is pretty much the only center in Southern California that can accept Express Mail as late as 9:00pm and still deliver it to California the next day (something even FedEx and UPS don't do.) Yet, the "bulk mail acceptance facility" in Anaheim isn't in any danger, despite closing at 5:00pm.

Re:Let's use a gas tax to fund horse and buggies

[multimediavt]

After all, who are we to say that buggy whip manufacturers are any less deserving of our support?

Don't forget the milkmen, the knife sharpeners and the [insert dead tech here] repair shops.

Finaly some who does his job

[Krneki]

WTF?! Seriously, why are we paying this idiots for?

This idea is so stupid it doesn't even need a technical explanation why it will fail to produce anything good.

Here we go:

[dyingtolive]

Your post advocates a

( ) technical (X) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to fighting spam. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won't work. (One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Spammers can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Mailing lists and other legitimate email uses would be affected
(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It will stop spam for two weeks and then we'll be stuck with it
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from spammers
(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many email users cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers
( ) Spammers don't care about invalid addresses in their lists
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else's career or business

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Ease of searching tiny alphanumeric address space of all email addresses
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in SMTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than SMTP to attack
( ) Willingness of users to install OS patches received by email
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of spam
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with spammers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of spammers themselves
( ) Bandwidth costs that are unaffected by client filtering
( ) Outlook

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) Any scheme based on opt-out is unacceptable
( ) SMTP headers should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about Viagra without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
(X) Sending email should be free
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) Temporary/one-time email addresses are cumbersome
( ) I don't want the government reading my email
( ) Killing them that way is not slow and painful enough

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don't think it would work.
(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) Nice try, assh0le! I'm going to find out where you live and burn your house down!

Re:Here we go:

[geekoid]

(X) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
not true. I can think up a way to do this right now.

(X) Lack of centrally controlling authority for email
not needed.
(X) Users of email will not put up with it
too broad of a statement. Meaningless.

(X) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
false.
(X) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
so?
(X) Technically illiterate politicians
what does that have to do with creating a policy?

(X) Sending email should be free
It's not free now. Do you think magic pixies run the system?

(X) This is a stupid idea, and you're a stupid person for suggesting it.
which is short hand for "I can't actually put together an argument, so Ad Hom it is!"

Re:Here we go:

[serviscope_minor]

not true. I can think up a way to do this right now.,

Go on. Bear in mind that email is a global system.

too broad of a statement. Meaningless.

Email users are worldwide and many will object to such a tax.

false.

So... if every other contry in the world doesn't cooperate, then how will this work? Never get emails from them?

so?

Politicians want to get reelected, that's why.

what does that have to do with creating a policy?

They tend to suggest technically infeasible policies.

It's not free now. Do you think magic pixies run the system?

The marginal cost is actually zero. I, like many others, pay for a fixed allocation of data, which will be more than I'll use. Therefore emails are free for me.

As in, I pay nothing, since everything else is paid for.

If you don't like that definition of free, then you may as well describe walking as not free since someone has to pay for the pavements.

which is short hand for "I can't actually put together an argument, so Ad Hom it is!"

The argument is above. You failed completely to grasp it.

After I lick the stamp,

[Anonymous Coward]

Do I put the stamp on my monitor or insert it into my computer's cup holder?

Re:After I lick the stamp,

[multimediavt]

Do I put the stamp on my monitor or insert it into my computer's cup holder?

Neither. It goes on your forehead as a warning to others.

If only they'd thought of this ...

[therealkevinkretz]

For only a few dollars extra per car, all the blacksmiths would still be in business.

Re:If only they'd thought of this ...

[safetyinnumbers]

But this tax is just to ensure that some websites continue to work properly (Amazon, ebay, etsy, newegg....)

Clear lack of understanding

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering most spam is sent via botnet computers, you'd end up just taxing John Q Taxpayer who just happens to have a virus, and not discourage spam at all. Just raise the rest of our tax liability.

Re:Clear lack of understanding

[Skapare]

And that's only if John Q Taxpayer lives in Berkeley.

USPS full of junk

[Anonymous Coward]

If USPS were private firm, it would already have been through chapter 11 and had courts re-organize the pension plan. Promises were made by management that can't be kept. And shame on unions for greediness.

If rates are to be raised on anything, let it be done on *JUNK* mail, or as USPS euphemistically puts it: "standard" mail. Really. Very telling.
http://www.nooga.com/157417/usps-leaders-aim-to-increase-standard-mail-aka-junk-mail/

Re:USPS full of junk

[Seumas]

So what this guy wants is to tax a service that the USPS doesn't provide, to help fund the USPS. That's fucking idiotic. Second, if you want to reduce the cost of the USPS, don't stop delivery on Saturday. Stop it on EVERY day of the week, except one. It's 2013 and nobody uses the USPS for anything that is time sensitive. The only thing I get in my mail is junk. I have a trash min literally at my door, just so I can reach out the door, get the mail, and directly dump it into the trash every day. Anything that is a package, I get through UPS or FEDEX or DHL. Almost everything else is handled online. I do not need mail delivery five or six days every fucking week just for the one letter that a person might send me two or three times a year. Weekly delivery would completely suffice.

Re:USPS full of junk

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally I'm rather polite but since you're a complete idiot I'll forgoe that. You have no clue what you're talking about. The only reason the USPS is doing poorly is because the Republican controlled congress forced them to prefun their pension plan for the next 75 years over a 10 year span. Any entity corporate or otherwise would be going through hardship due to this. Nothing to do with "greedy unions", "poor management" etc ad nauseum. You clearly have no fucking clue what you're talking about and the postal service isn't even allowed to expand to other services because "that would hurt the private sector" wahhh wahhh wahh. It's funny for all the crap about how private sector runs better, this governmental organization has continued to stay afloat despite running a deficit, while under extreme duress and without government funds and while paying their workers a decent wage. Maybe the private sector could learn a bit from them.

Re:USPS full of junk

[Pope]

So, stop the mail service because YOU don't use it. Gotcha.

Re:USPS full of junk

[Anonymous Coward]

Normally I'm polite, but you are a socialist, so I'll forget that. USPS is a has-been, barely surviving by dumpster-diving for junk mail. The pension plans were based on wild optimism. You are clearly want taxpayers to be held responsible for everything, no matter how stupid.

Re:USPS full of junk

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm having to post this anonymously so I don't undo the mods I've made in here...

At any rate, several companies are using "UPS Mail Innovations" for shipping now (I'm looking at YOU, newegg!), which uses the USPS for, at minimum, local delivery. More packages are being delivered at least partially via USPS than you seem to think...

Re:USPS full of junk

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean by failing financially?

Re:USPS full of junk

[geekoid]

"So what this guy wants is to tax a service that the USPS doesn't provide, to help fund the USPS. That's fucking idiotic. "
The idea that things should only be taxed to support that thing is a common fallacy that is actually very bad.
Schools, fire, police and many other citizen services have nothing to tax to support just them. So you need a wide net.

"It's 2013 and nobody uses the USPS for anything that is time sensitive. "
not true, but not as time sensitive as it use to be. I advocate 3 day postal delivery. 1 day sounds nice but do you know they move over 200 Billion pieces of mail a year? You aren't delivering that in a day. Plus, that is only saving on careers, it all has to be processed every day. NEWS FLASH, the is more to the USPS then the person putting mail in your box.

"The only thing I get in my mail is junk. I have a trash min literally at my door, just so I can reach out the door, get the mail, and directly dump it into the trash every day."
becasue that's easier then filling out PS Form 1500: Application for Listing and/or Prohibitory Order?

". I do not need mail delivery five "
you aren't the only person that uses it, jackass.

Re:USPS full of junk

[Seumas]

By "stop the mail service", you mean what I actually suggested, which is "don't deliver mail six fucking days a week, since most time-sensitive materials that need a more granular service aren't being sent by USPS and one day would do"?

Re:USPS full of junk

[Seumas]

"So what this guy wants is to tax a service that the USPS doesn't provide, to help fund the USPS. That's fucking idiotic. "
The idea that things should only be taxed to support that thing is a common fallacy that is actually very bad.
Schools, fire, police and many other citizen services have nothing to tax to support just them. So you need a wide net.

Then let's tax soda drinking to apply to the USPS. They has just as much involvement in soda production and consumption as they do in delivery of email. Supporting a service that is becoming almost anachronistic by taxing a more efficient and wisely used service seems a little myopic, to me. Maybe a little disingenuous, also.

"It's 2013 and nobody uses the USPS for anything that is time sensitive. "
not true, but not as time sensitive as it use to be. I advocate 3 day postal delivery. 1 day sounds nice but do you know they move over 200 Billion pieces of mail a year? You aren't delivering that in a day.

No, you're not delivering that in a day. So what? Most people do not need the mailman to deliver to them six days per week. One day is likely sufficient. That doesn't mean the entire postal service just works one day a week. It means they delivery to different fucking people each day of the week. The same way trash service runs every day, but not to every house every day. Instead of making six visits to my house every week to deliver me 24 pieces of junk mail, just visit me once and do it. Six visits per week, dropping off small amounts of stuff each time, is pretty inefficient.

Plus, that is only saving on careers, it all has to be processed every day. NEWS FLASH, the is more to the USPS then the person putting mail in your box.

"The only thing I get in my mail is junk. I have a trash min literally at my door, just so I can reach out the door, get the mail, and directly dump it into the trash every day." becasue that's easier then filling out PS Form 1500: Application for Listing and/or Prohibitory Order?

". I do not need mail delivery five "

Sorry, but I don't see any logic there. There's a lot of people doing a lot of things at the post office and there's a certain amount of mail to delivery, so the ONLY ANSWER IS TO KEEP DELIVERING EVERY DAY. Seriously? You don't think there's maybe a more efficient option?

you aren't the only person that uses it, jackass.

Sorry, it's not 1950, anymore. USPS usage has changed significantly and the primary purpose it serves today is delivery of junkmail. As far as filling out a form not to receive junk mail anymore -- it's cute that you think it has any impact. I've lived in my house for several years and I receive a fucking ton of mail for people who haven't lived here in this entire time. I still receive mail for people who lived here before the last people lived here in the early 90s. I have contacted the post office. They've told me there is nothing that can be done. I had the same experience at the apartment I lived in for six years, too. The mailbox was jammed full with mail every day for seven different occupants who hadn't lived there in at least the six years I was there.

As for the junk itself? I've signed up for the lists. I've called the numbers on every catalog and piece of junkmail I get and asked to be taken off. It changes little and it does nothing to assuage the bulk-spam that just gets dropped off at every door every week. I get many pounds of mail on an almost daily basis for these other people who don't live here and haven't for ages. Add the junkmail to that. How is this an efficient setup? How is having a service go to people's doors almost every day of the week to deliver huge quantities of mail not intended for them plus garbage even remotely useful or beneficial? All you need is a backbone service that provides a way for people to communicate as a bottom-rung option.

If the postal service focused on

Re:USPS full of junk

[Rakarra]

Normally I'm polite, but you are a socialist, so I'll forget that. USPS is a has-been, barely surviving by dumpster-diving for junk mail. The pension plans were based on wild optimism. You are clearly want taxpayers to be held responsible for everything, no matter how stupid.

Do you seriously think it's reasonable to require -any- organization to fully fund the pensions of people who haven't even been born yet? Does that make any sort of sense? The US Postal Service is one of the most efficient organizations in the country. There are a lot of wasteful, bloated, bureaucratic government departments out there, the USPS is not one of them.

If the USPS was a fully private organization it would be fine because it wouldn't have ridiculous congressional mandates like these. However, operation of the Post Service is a US Constitutional requirement, so it comes under congressional oversight, and Congress has made mandates that would be unconstitutional if they required them of any private organization.

Hashcash

[betterunixthanunix]

On the other hand, hashcash would work. No tax revenue from people offshore, but you still force them to burn CPU cycles which has basically the same effect.

Re:Hashcash

[green1]

What Spammer sends anything from their own machines? When you're sending from a botnet of millions, what real effect will chewing up someone else's CPU cycles have?

Re:Hashcash

[betterunixthanunix]

Well, let's put it this way: if the spam can send ten messages per second per machine in a botnet, and you force them spend one sec per message to compute hashcash tokens, then you have reduced the rate of spam by a factor of ten. Reducing the rate of spam doesn't end spam, but it does help.

Re:Hashcash

[LordLimecat]

It affects everyone by a factor of 10, and does nothing to fix the problem. All it does is add a ton of implementation costs and new ways for the system to break.

Re:Hashcash

[betterunixthanunix]

It does not affect everyone by a factor of 10, because most email users are not composing messages as quickly as their computer can send those messages. If every email message you sent took an extra second of CPU time, you would probably not notice.

The only non-spammer people who would be disproportionately affected are people who like to send mail to dozens of addresses at a time. These people are already impacted by spam mitigation measures, and nobody seems to mind.

Re:Hashcash

[beltsbear]

While I agree that something like hashcash would be good for reducing spam, it would also burn more real world electricity. Spammers would do it via botnets, and all of the hashing for all of the legitimate emails will add up as well.

Re:Hashcash

[IndustrialComplex]

Hmm. I don't see how the company that is sending me my utility bills is getting impacted by spam mitigation measures. I'm pretty sure they just arranged with the ISP to bypass the outgoing filter.

Taxes are not free to collect

[91degrees]

This has been pondered before. Issue is always the same. The cost of collection would be greater than any perceived benefit.

Re:Taxes are not free to collect

[geekoid]

based on.. what?

Yes I know they aren't free to collect.

Gas Taxes to Save the Buggy Whip Industry

[Anonymous Coward]

In practice, this is no different conceptually than what the subject of this post suggests. Taking money for the use of new technologies that supersede an older technology in order to sustain the now obsolete technology. This is waste pure and simple. While there will always be a need for old fashioned mail delivery, it simply doesn't need the infrastructure and resources that it use to. Will individual letter deliver be more expense, sure; but you'll only use it when you really need.

This is the same sort of thing that happened train passenger service in the U.S. (leading to Amtrak) and also demonstrates why goverments cannot manage economies: they make very uneconomic decisions like this.

Even if he did understand...

[neoshroom]

The day after email is taxed is the day fmail is created.

__

Re:Even if he did understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

f-mail, because f-you, you worthless parasites!

(shortly afterward, Google is sued by the city of Berkeley on claims that the 'g' in 'gmail' means 'gank')

Re:Even if he did understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

We skipped fmail and went straight to gmail.

Re:Even if he did understand...

[mjr167]

I used to live New Orleans. There was a period in New Orleans when doors were taxed. As a result buildings were built with no exterior doors. Instead of doors they had floor to ceiling windows... They taxed rooms so buildings where built with no closets... They taxed halls so buildings were built without hallways... People are very creative at tax avoidance.

Re:Even if he did understand...

[Anonymous Coward]

And following that, gmail.

Re:Even if he did understand...

[LordLucless]

The problem with fmail is that it doesn't work a few days every month.

Re:Even if he did understand...

[bluegutang]

I've already tried fmail, but I had some problems with it, so then I moved to gmail.

No compliance

[Anonymous Coward]

We are not going to pay an email tax, period.

I pay for the internet connection, I pay for the hardware, I pay for the software, and I pay for the communications. I would withold all taxes, if that is even attempted.

Not a completely useless idea

[Anonymous Coward]

A minor modification could turn this into a viable method for the post office to generate revenue from email.

What if, instead of taxing email, USPS was to provide end-to-end encrypted email for something like $.10 per message?

Re:Not a completely useless idea

[Anonymous Coward]

What if, instead of taxing email, USPS was to provide end-to-end encrypted email for something like $.10 per message?

But I want decryption on my end!

Re:Not a completely useless idea

[bobstreo]

What if, instead of taxing email, USPS was to provide end-to-end encrypted email for something like $.10 per message?

But I want decryption on my end!

Ok, but only if I can create and manage the keys.

I want the tax on emails

[Anonymous Coward]

Look, I email as much as the next guy. But a 1 cent tax per hundred emails would cost practically nothing and kill many spammers.

I say tax them and be done.

As for the idea of taxing per gigabyte, that is garbage. It would kill video.

Re:I want the tax on emails

[Andrew Lindh]

You would think that an email tax would stop SPAM, but YOU will now have to pay the tax receiving all the SPAM. Then if your system (or your neighbor using your wifi) is infected with a bot net you'll have to pay the tax for sending all the SPAM!

Re:I want the tax on emails

[Skapare]

Tax email? Then I won't use it. I'm moving to port 23 where there are no spammers and no tax.

Better idea

[Sparticus789]

How about we levy a $10,000 "tax" for politicians that introduce stupid legislation.

Re:Better idea

[Chatterton]

I have thought about another method:
- Each politician have 12 points at its first mandate.
- Lose 4 point per regected proposal.
- Lose 1 point per regected amendment to a proposal.
- Can gain once per year 4 points back if he go back to follow an administrative cursus for 3 months
- Can gain back 2 point if he didn't loose any point during the last 2 years
- When he loose all of its points he can't be a politician anymore

Yes, I can dream about that...

Re:Better idea

[Khashishi]

Would that legislation impose a tax on itself, or only on newer legislation?

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

That will accomplish nothing. It's the parties, not the individual politicians who make the policies. Banning people from being politicians will just make the parties go through people more quickly, and I doubt there is a limited supply of idiots willing to spurt bullshit for money / fame / personal belief.

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Most jurisdictions already have taxes like this, they're probably between 50,000 and 100,000 per politician.

And who do you think pays?

The taxpayers living there.

Re:Better idea

[Princeofcups]

How about we levy a $10,000 "tax" for politicians that introduce stupid legislation.

They would raise their salaries to cover the expenses.

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Your "regected" (twice) is probably just your j key being broken.

I mean, you spell "amendment" correctly, and use "its" properly, so you're obviously fluent in English.

But what is "cursus"? "Damn us all to hell?"

Re:Better idea

[StormReaver]

How about we levy a $10,000 "tax" for politicians that introduce stupid legislation.

We could levy a two cent tax for the same, and no government on Earth would never have to worry about insolvency again.

Re:Better idea

[Reziac]

Yes, or better yet, make each point be NN-many dollars taken out of his salary, plus an after-politics tax on income related to being a politician (like the rubber-chicken circuit).

Methinks they'd consider legislation rather more carefully if it inflicted direct pain on their wallets.

Hot air idea

[no-body]

Those polititians can't fix the real issues, so they dream up nonsense to make headlines and get reelected.

There is enough money around to fix all problems, it's not used properly by the people controlling it.

Re:Hot air idea

[Anonymous Coward]

There is enough money around to fix all problems, it's not used properly by the people controlling it.

That's because the type of person who is attracted to a position of coercive authority is the type of person who puts himself first. It's just plain common sense. Coercion isn't a tool for the purpose of altruism; coercion is a tool for the purpose of selfishness. Who says? None other than human nature.

Re:Hot air idea

[mjwalshe]

Probably because OAP Aka Seniors like to use the post office to pickup pensions and pay bills and OAP's are more likely to vote - its pandering to the racist gradma voting block - the ones who still refer to the president using the B and N words.

Let it die. Seriously.

[pla]

Why exactly do we want to find yet another way to siphon money from the public to maintain an obsolete business model that, as far as I can tell, exists solely to deliver snail-spam to my door?

I have no objection to paying $4.99 to FedEx for the once or twice each year I actually send something in a #10 envelope... As long as it means the literally hundreds useless catalogs (plus credit card and life insurance offers, plus political fliers in even-numbered years) I get per year need to do the same - By which I mean, hopefully that would effectively end unsolicited commercial/charitable/political mail.

Mission creep

[hoboroadie]

The Postal Service was sort of a socialist effort to raise up the American people and equalize access to information and commerce.
The USPS is primarily a taxpayer subsidy of a few dubious and onerous types of predatory businesses. (Raise the price of junk-mailing, anyone?)
The Berkeley city council probably was set up to regulate local social intercourse and promote local business interests,

as they say, the rest is history.

Re:Mission creep

[Anonymous Coward]

The Postal Service was sort of a socialist effort to raise up the American people and equalize access to information and commerce./i
Never mind that clause in the constitution or anything...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_One_of_the_United_States_Constitution#Enumerated_powers

"To establish Post Offices and post Roads"

Geeze some peoples kids...

Re:Mission creep

[dywolf]

the postal service was not a socialist effort.

the postal service was created because throughout all of history the delivery of mesages was unreliable and uncertain. it was not a thing that private industry could garuntee. Ben Franklin himself was created the service,d uring hte colony days, that would become the USPS. and it's written intot he consitution. and yes, the purpose was to facilitate and help maintain those open lines of ocmmunication so necesary for the first amendment (speech, assembly, and association) to actually have weight.

the USPS still has purpose. ISPs of today are not legally obligated in any way to facilitate open communication. nor to provide service to everyone. rural and poor residents are very much being left behind by the internet world.

going back to the original intent of the postal clause of the Constitution, it should be very easy to justify using it to provide the modern equivalent of the postal service to all Americans, and giving that responsibility to the USPS.

Re:Mission creep

[Anonymous Coward]

I think your idea of turning the USPS into an ISP is probably the most lucid application of the intent of its constitutional mandate I've read in this thread. Maybe the laws against tampering with the mail could also be adapted to be laws against tampering with packets (*cough*6strikes*cough*). My hat is off to you, sir. Certainly new food for thought.

Think globally, act locally...

[Anonymous Coward]

Start by taxing all emails in Berkeley. Problem solved (at the next election)!

Very tiny tax?

[prisoner-of-enigma]

"Very tiny tax"? That's how they all start off. Just pay us a little more. It's not much, so you shouldn't complain. And then it becomes a little more. And a little more. And a little more, until suddenly you find more than a quarter of your annual income is going to fund all kinds of crap you never wanted in the first place.

No, no, no ...

[Rambo Tribble]

... this is so lame! Think how much better it would be to put a tax on verbs! Then you could derive income from speech, text, posts, signage, display, heck, even thinking!

Re:No, no, no ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't work. As it is more and more people are writing sentences in which they accidentally the entire verb...

Re:No, no, no ...

[WhatAreYouDoingHere]

... this is so lame! Think how much better it would be to put a tax on verbs! Then you could derive income from speech, text, posts, signage, display, heck, even thinking!

Dear Mr/Ms Tribble,
Please add $0.25 to your tax filing this year for five verbs at the rate of $0.05 per verb.
- IRS

Re:No, no, no ...

[Rambo Tribble]

Does this mean you're suggesting the city council go for the nouns?

More of the PO blaming email for its demise

[yt8znu35]

Only a complete moron would support this. Once a tax, always a tax.

Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Why not? Fedex and UPS have perfected delivery of packages so why not the mail? I'm not sure what magic the USPS possesses that private industry couldn't do better anyway. Barring that, how about mail rates that make sense ? I live in Maryland and it doesn't make sense to me that I can send a piece of first class mail to New York City and Nome Alaska for the same price.

Re:Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[Rude Turnip]

FedEx uses the post office for many local deliveries. Commercial carriers will not deliver everywhere. This is a national infrastructure issue.

Re:Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[thoth]

Why not? Fedex and UPS have perfected delivery of packages so why not the mail?

FedEx and UPS both use the post office for delivery of small packages, the expensive "last mile" cases.

I'm not sure what magic the USPS possesses that private industry couldn't do better anyway.

How about Article I, Section 8, Clause 7 of the United States Constitution.

Barring that, how about mail rates that make sense?

A flat rate for letters is a National Infrastructure thing. Kinda of like how a flat monthly rate for Internet access affects usage, versus metered connections.

Re:Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[kenh]

Fedex and UPS have perfected delivery of packages so why not the mail?

They don't stop at every house, and their business model falls apart if they had to.

I live in Maryland and it doesn't make sense to me that I can send a piece of first class mail to New York City and Nome Alaska for the same price.

You would prefer that the USPS adopt a weight/distance/delivery time model like FedEx and UPS? You really want to have to look up on a chart how much it costs to send out each holiday card? The flat-rate model is the best option.

Re:Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[sootman]

Read this. Seriously. It answers all your questions.

http://www.esquire.com/print-this/post-office-business-trouble-0213?page=all

Like this little nugget:

Over the past five years, FedEx and UPS have spent a combined $100 million lobbying Congress. Because neither company has a delivery network nearly as sprawling as [the USPS], they contract with the postal service to deliver the "final mile" of much of their cargo. For instance, more than 21 percent of all FedEx deliveries are dropped off by a postal carrier. Meanwhile, millions of postal-service letters hitch rides on FedEx flights every day, for which the company gets paid $1 billion a year. FedEx and UPS don't want the postal service to go out of business but to remain contained, out of the way...

> Fedex and UPS have perfected delivery of packages so why not
> the mail? I'm not sure what magic the USPS possesses that private
> industry couldn't do better anyway

Fact: you have it exactly backwards. The system that UPS and FedEx have "perfected" is... TO USE THE USPS! Can you believe that? A fucking FIFTH of all FedEx deliveries are actually done by the USPS. Abolish them and FedEx will DIE.

FedEx and UPS are perfect examples of the 90/10 rule. You can service 90% of the people with 10% of the total effort... and serving those last 10% takes 90%. But you should NEVER look at something like that and come to the conclusion "Why don't we just ignore that last 10%?" I guarantee you, yo or someone you care about is in the lower 10% of something -- schooling needs, medical needs, etc. Everyone subsidizes someone, and everyone benefits from a subsidy at some point.

That said, I wish the USPS wasn't in the junk mail business. It is a disgusting waste of time, energy, and natural resources. Literally 90% of my mail (by weight) goes straight into the recycle bin, unread.

Re:Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[Anonymous Coward]

As has been pointed out numerous times, the main problem is that the Republicans are actively trying to kill the Postal Service with things like requiring pre-funding 75 years worth of pensions, and the package delivery services are simply not equipped to handle mail. Mail is *not* simply smaller packages in terms of volume and handling, although I suppose if it's privatized and the price shoots up -- as it inevitably would -- then this new, barely used and not available to everyone form of mail would be.

The USPS would be just fine if not for Republicans do everything they can to kill it. Even if you don't care about the USPS, you might care that they're trying to figure out how to do the same thing with public education.

Re:Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[Anonymous Coward]

FedEx uses the post office for many local deliveries. Commercial carriers will not deliver everywhere. This is a national infrastructure issue.

The local post office will not deliver here either, but they still accept packages for me from FedEx. Where's the logic in that?

Note that FedEx delivered locally here in the past. They only recently decided to stop doing their job.

Re:Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[Anonymous Coward]

Unraveling the myth that the Postal Service must fund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future

Re:Here's a better idea: deregulate the mail

[Anonymous Coward]

Any publicly owned private enterprise has a fundamental inefficiency known as "profit". That is, a private entity can never deliver a product or service at cost because any management allowing that would quickly be replaced with one that wouldn't.

Uhmmm... NO

[MitchDev]

Stop making the PO pre-fund pensions forpractically hundreds of years in advance, and get rid of the pension plan and go to 401ks like most of the people have instead and the PO will be fine. Don't try slapping another tax on people to support the bad business decisions the US Congress forced on the PO.

Re:Uhmmm... NO

[kenh]

Seventy-five years - that means they are putting money away for future USPS employees that haven't even been born yet!

Re:Uhmmm... NO

[MitchDev]

What happens to that money then when the PO folds under the weight of this ridiculous rule?

Re:Uhmmm... NO

[Anonymous Coward]

Unraveling the myth that the Postal Service must fund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future

Government is eternally greedy. Status: True

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

Looks like Snopes spoke too soon.

How will it slow spam?

[Anonymous Coward]

So who would pay the tax on the spam emails?

If it is the recipient then that will not curb spam. Why would I pay for unsolicited emails.

If it is the sender, well that does not fix it either. Spammers will send email outside of anywhere that supports this tax.

Per usage does not work either for curbing spam. If I pull up my mailbox and it pulls in the spam, then I still pay for unsolicited data.

Spammers don't follow the laws in place now, why would anyone think they would do anything that cuts into their bottom line?

This is like...

[Anonymous Coward]

Digging a hole to get the dirt to fill another hole.

Re:This is like...

[Chrisq]

Digging a hole to get the dirt to fill another hole.

That can look remarkably successful as long as you concentrate on one hole at a time. I think its the way many politicians work.

Road tax can reduce drive-by shootings

[captainpanic]

It might work, but there may be a bit of collateral damage.

Re:Road tax can reduce drive-by shootings

[chrismcb]

Considering the constitution requires the US to build post roads... perhaps a portion of the road tax should go to funding the PO.

Contact address

[the eric conspiracy]

Here is the email address of Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak

gwozniak@cityofberkeley.info

You know what to do.

Re:Contact address

[isorox]

Here is the email address of Berkeley City Councilman Gordon Wozniak

gwozniak@cityofberkeley.info

You know what to do.

I can't afford to send him an email I'm afraid.

Now if he'd proposed a facebook tax, that could actually work!

no way

[Anonymous Coward]

Why fund a dying defunct business model with a business that has nothing to do with it.
Raise the cost of the mail to the people that send the SPAM MAIL in the regular mail.
Duh!
And I think the reason why post office is broke. Its about paying all the retirements.

Ive worked all my life. No one is paying my retirement.
The only thing I need in mail is ...... can't think of one..... I gave up netflix a couple years back. Maybe the post office should tax online streaming services. Netflix was a huge part of their business. Now that's gone.
Ups and fedex deliver better than the post office too.
Maybe they should pay a tax too....
Or perhaps the post office should start being run as a business. That's responsible to its shareholders to create a profit.

What about the cost to implement it?

[dsvick]

Sure charge everyone a hundredth of a cent for each email, assuming my account doesn't get hacked, I'll need to pay a penny or two each month. No problem.

But wait .... who's going to pay to set up the monitoring process, the billing process, the dispute process, the collection process, and the method of getting the money to where it is that it's supposed to go? So my $.01 per month just turned into $1.00 or $2.00.

Politicians should be required to prove they have a minimum IQ and a certain level of common sense before being allowed to run in an election

No new taxes -- you clowns waste the money.

[hessian]

I don't think our problem is a lack of revenue; it's bad spending.

First, government is massively inefficient at every level thanks to the "government job" mentality and the tendency to over-hire bureaucrats.

Second, many government programs are pure pork barrel designed to appease certain special interest groups or make cronies rich.

Finally, government is a self-justifying agenda. In order to justify its cost, it needs to constant invent new mission creep in order to give a "legitimate" need for increased and continuing funding.

Let's do this like we would do in a private business, and get out the red pen and go over the books and cut the fat, not tax people even more. Even if this is a tiny tax, the mental outlook on which we embark with it is a bad precedent and will only get worse.

Re:No new taxes -- you clowns waste the money.

[geekoid]

"First, government is massively inefficient at every level thanks to the "government job" mentality and the tendency to over-hire bureaucrats."
false. Government employees, and agency are very much aware they use tax payer money and consistently work on efficiency.

"Second, many government programs are pure pork barrel designed to appease certain special interest groups or make cronies rich."
Extremely rare.

"Finally, government is a self-justifying agenda. "
also extremely rare.

First off, your delusion the private corporation cut fat is wrong. Secondly Private companies are far LESS efficient then the US Government.

The VAST majority of government project, at every government level are on time within budget.

There are a couple of factors at play here:
1) The Government is staffed by tax paying Americans.
2) Keyhole effect. Someone see one tiny bit of complex projects or systems, and they complain about stuff they don't understand.
3) The media. In a private corporation 80% of all project fail. 20% succeed. However private corporation control their press access so when a company had a project fail, no one hers about it. With the government well OVER 80% of all projects succeed, and 10% or so fail the media focuses on that 10%.
Now that's fine and it should BUT people need to be aware of the 10's of thousand of projects that go on as planned.

Full disclosure:
I spent 30 years in the private sector.

One of my jobs prior to working a government job was creating a system that compiled federal and state budget information, production, timeline, and over run information. Quite a pleasant eye opener. We where all sure we would find monumental waste. Turns out, there is very little.
Another one of my jobs was to write software that took complex Budget and planning numbers and put them neatly in a spread sheet that could be distributed to project managers. Setting up this system, meant that the consultant would need to figure out the companies books and then we would create the link from their system to our system.

I can not tell you how many time there where line items that the CFO had no clue what they where for, or who was getting the money. On time there was a line item with a code next to it for about 10 million dollars. No one knew where it was actually going to.
Heads would roll if that happened at a government agency.
Ever been to a upper management Dinner? I've seen dinners for 8 people break 1000 dollars. Again there would be hell to pay in a government agency.

The fiscal information for the federal and local governments is available tat most libraries. I suggest you read it.

I am current working for a City government agency.

Councilman, know about the unfair USPS obligation?

[jrifkin]

From the Huffington Post

There are many reasons, but by far the most important is that the Postal Service's losses are largely the product of a congressional mandate imposed on no other public or private enterprise in America. Since 2006, Congress has forced the Postal Service to make enormous annual contributions into a fund for future retiree health benefits, including the $5.5 billion and $5.6 billion mentioned above. In fact, since they began, these payments have accounted for more than 80 percent of the Postal Service's losses.

Berkeley needs a new council member...

[Anonymous Coward]

Berkeley is a city with a LOT of really smart people who "get" the Internet - they need to boot this pinhead out of office! The only reason why the USPS is in financial dire straits is because the US Congress keeps robbing them!

Re:Let it die. Seriously.

[Rude Turnip]

The post office can be completely self-sustaining. The problem is that the idiots in congress are forcing it to pre-fund pensions for the next 75 years. It is a completely political, and not business model-related, constraint that is hurting it.

In the long-term, however, I would replace the post office by doing the following: shut down all television and radio broadcasts and reclaim the spectrum to implement a national wireless infrastructure. The replacement for mail would be a secured messaging system, along the lines of iMessage, BBMessage, Tiger Text, etc., but with legal protections.

Flat Tax

[HeLLFiRe1151]

Wouldn't it be more prudent to charge an address with a flat tax to receive snail mail? Charge a flat tax for individuals. Charge corporations based on volume received.

Re:Flat Tax

[kenh]

That is nuts! You do understand the entire model of the USPS is the SENDER PAYS, right?

Spam snail-mail isn't a problem, in fact it's helping support the USPS (remember, the sender pays cash money for every piece of mail sent).

Parcel delivery is on the rise while first class mail volume drops - the USPS makes significant money on thier parcel delivery business.

Re:Flat Tax

[bobstreo]

Wouldn't it be more prudent to charge an address with a flat tax to receive snail mail? Charge a flat tax for individuals. Charge corporations based on volume received.

Nice try Sprint/AT&T/Tmobile/Verizon

pay to send and receive Text messages?

An energy tax would be more logical

[VernonNemitz]

There is a fundamental minimum amount of energy associated with flipping a bit. So, the more flipped bits that are involved in communications, the more energy needs to be generated to make those communications possible. Logically, therefore, an Information Economy is also an Increased Energy Usage Economy. Equally logically, since taxing energy usage is already done, the most simple way to do a data-usage tax is to designate a portion of existing (and growing) energy taxes as being associated with data usage. Then use that money for data-associated projects.

No it inst?

[geekoid]

"We all know an e-mail tax is infeasible,"
Do you not know how email works?
The tax would go to your ISP would would pass it to the consumer.
1 penny per 100 email. So not much at all.

" and sales tax for online purchases and for digital purchases are likely unavoidable forever,"
Good.

" but here's hoping talk of taxing data usage doesn't work its way to Washington."
hmmm. I don't know. We may be in a situation where a tiny tax could go a very long way.

non-story

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Find a person advocating a wacky change, even though that person will never come near the power needed to actually implement the change.
2. Report the story as if it's something that might actually happen.
3. ???
4. Profit!

- 24 hour news media, local news at 11, and Slashdot

More scraps for the private sector

[Anonymous Coward]

Drop the middle man; on Saturday we have GooglePost. They have us pretty well mapped, people need jobs, so let them hire people (something the USPS never does or will do again). Makes way more sense than the 'personal and horribly unsecured drone delivery service pad', which can still find a use behind the gated communities. Sounds like a double win for a lucky CEO.

Re:More scraps for the private sector

[Anonymous Coward]

Because the private sector owns our privacy anyway!

How about a masterbation tax?

[Anonymous Coward]

To put a stop to W..... people like Gordon Wozniak.

Re:Councilman, know about the unfair USPS obligati

[geekoid]

Yes, preparing for future retirement that you agreed to is SOOOO unfair.

It's a cost of doing business. But it involve retirement benefits, so it WRONG!!!!

Pension is what everyone should get.
I say that as a middle aged man who has seen his saving disappear twice, through not fault of my own. Financial Companies doing illegal things then going out of business.

why does the post office need to make money ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Remind me again why the Post Office needs to be financially solvent. The police department doesn't make a profit. Neither does the fire department, the military, the public library, or any other essential service. Universal mail service is one of the foundations of democracy. Granted that most of what they do doesn't really support that end, but let's not through out the baby with the bath water.

Can you imagine if every government function had to be in the black?

  - The IRS isn't covering its costs, better increase the number and aggressiveness of tax audits.
  - The military is over budgert, time to invade another country so that it can be looted.
  - The police are having trouble making ends meet, so now it costs $10 to call 911.
  - The fire department is in debt, maybe they should sell fire medalions that you can put on your house, to help them find it faster in an emergency. Only $1000.

Some things are better left to private businesses, and some should only be handled by government institutions.

Don't tax the new thing replacing the old thing!!

[BigIrv]

Never, ever, never but never, tax the new technology to fund the outdated technology it's replacing! That would be like taxing cars to fund horse and buggies, like taxing MP3s to keep the audio cassette industry solvent, or like taxing online commerce to prop up brick and mortar stores. Horrible backwards thinking that only a politician could spew.

The post office needs to fend for itself.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should the tax go to fund the post office? Its their fault they are struggling and dying a slow death. Why should I have to pay for their mismanagement and incompetence? If the post office would simply do a few things they wouldnt make more money. Like....

Have better customer service in the actual post office. I always have to deal with mostly grumpy, rude, dismissive people at the post office that look like folks drug in from a temp agency and dont act professional. While UPS workers all have uniforms that match, they have clean store fronts, their trucks are all clean and nice looking while the post office here uses rusted out shitboxes, most UPS delivery guys arent the most friendly but they are generally fast and professional, they have reasonable rates and they offer a ton of services. Post office offices around here look like crap as well, old building that arent kept up at all with clutter around and any "new" post offices they have been built are so poorly designed the lines of people get in eachothers way and nothing makes sense.

Have more reasonable rates. For christ sake I tried to ship a box no bigger than a "average sized" dvd player box that weighed a couple pounds to a friend last week and it cost like 14 freaking dollars just to send it the slowest. That was more than what was inside was worth. Yeah UPS isnt much cheaper but it is a little bit cheaper and that box got there in like 2 days vs the post offices 5 day delivery time and it had a tracking number on it which the post office wanted to charge me extra for.

Stamp prices. Stop raising the prices so damn much and more people would be willing to use them and thus youd get more sales. They just call them forever stamps now because they try to trick people. Remember when prices went up and people would complain? Well now with forever stamps none of them have prices on them so people dont notice when the price goes up.

Re:The post office needs to fend for itself.

[moeinvt]

Actually, the USPS was forced, by Congress to make a huge and unusual contribution to their employee pension plan. While not a bad idea in and of itself, it did give the wrong impression about the organization's finances.

I'm not a government cheerleader and not saying that the USPS doesn't have problems, but the state of their finances last year badly misrepresented the actual picture.

At least the post office is a power explicitly delegated to Congress in The Constitution. I can name a dozen agencies I'd prefer to see go away before them.

go for it

[slashmydots]

Yeah, they can legally tax every single e-mail server that resides in Berkley, California. Good luck with that.

Re:Wealth Tax

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk about a 0 sum game

Great Idea, Not

[biggaijin]

What a wonderful idea. A teeny, tiny tax that would be incredibly difficult and intrusive to enforce and collect, all so that we can prop up an old business model that cannot seem to support itself. It would be a lot better to privatize the post. As it is, there are a lot of retired postal workers about 50 years old living in trailer parks in northern Florida on post office pensions.

... sigh ...

[ultracompetent]

Why should we prop up old industry with new?? Old industries don't have a right to exist just because they existed in the past ... as a prior poster said, better just to try and "save the buggy whip"

economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[Geoffrey.landis]

And our tax dollars already go towards the up keep of the internet's infrastructure.

Ah, I love slashdot, where people simultaneously advocate anarchy, libertarianism, and socialism.

Yes, that's correct: we pay for the infrastructure with tax dollars (which would be socialism). Also, each person who pays for their connection also pays their ISP (which would be capitalism). This is true. So?

OK, here's the introduction to economics lecture. As a general rule, economic systems run more efficiently when people pay for the resources that they use, and run inefficiently when other people pay for resources that somebody else uses. Just a general rule to keep in mind.

Indeed, economic systems do not always run on this model (no, not even in ideal free markets). One example is the "all you can eat buffet." People don't pay proportionally to how much food they, primarily because the cost of the food itself is actually only a small portion of the total cost, and detailed accounting for the food eaten costs more than the trivial economic benefit gained. Yes, you can argue that e-mail is similar to that: the incremental cost of an e-mail (economists would say "marginal cost") is small compared to the cost of just keeping the network alive (however, email by nature goes through a series of computers between the sender and the recipient; so accounting would be less expensive than paying human waiter writing down orders on a pad.)

But the "all you can take" model relies on the implicit assumption that individual consumers do have a limit. If a semitrailer backs up to the all-you-can-take buffet, loads everything on the buffet into the trailer, and says to the cook "just keep it coming," the model will fail.

Like most of economics, then, there isn't always one price structure that works for all situations. There's always a trade-off of cost against benefit.

However, the knee-jerk reaction "put a cost on email! How dare anybody suggest such a thing!" seems a bit extreme. There are advantages in people paying for the resources that they use. There are also problems (which in economics, translates to "costs").

So, thanks for all the criticism, but I'll stick by what I wrote originally:
Good idea. Only problem: how could we implement it?

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[Anonymous Coward]

Now days, there is very little capitalism in the ISP market.

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep saying that our tax dollars pay for the infrastructure. I keep thinking [citation needed] whenever I see that. Really. Yes, we typically pay sales tax on the charges from our ISP. The ISP itself pays all sorts of taxes that businesses normally pay. There may even be some regulatory fees that our ISP must charge us. But that by itself doesn't mean that those taxes and/or fees are used to maintain the infrastructure, rather than for the most part going into the general state/federal funds. I mean, the cable, phone, and fios that's on the right of way is still paid for by the ISP, which in turns charges customers. Where's this huge "infrastructure" that our tax dollars are paying for? So from that, way should there be a tax on emails or data? We're already paying for the infrastructure, via our ISP. In any case, the councilman was advocating taxing one "service" to help pay for something else.

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[Anonymous Coward]

I would suggest that advocating taxing a new business product to subsidize an old one that is having trouble surviving because people are moving to the new one, is inherently regressive, and generally not a good idea.

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[jesset77]

> As a general rule, economic systems run more efficiently when people pay for the resources that they use, and run inefficiently when other people pay for resources that somebody else uses. Just a general rule to keep in mind. Hmm. Does it run efficiently when the significant segment of the population (children, elderly, ill, disabled, mentally unbalanced) that cannot earn *any* revenue to pay for their own weight are left to slowly starve? õ_O I know you're saying it's just a general rule, it's hard to balance systems on rules that require as many presumptions as this one to find balance, and slide out of balance as soon as those presumptions fail.

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[mjwalshe]

The problem is how do you bill efficiently for such tiny transactions (i used to write billing systems for the dialcom platform back in the day and that was tricky charging for a much smaller traffic load - we used map reduce as the core of the billing system back then) and how do you charge the spammers.

Also would you charge only between AS to AS or would you tax companies sending email between offices (ie replacing post services)

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[stenvar]

OK, here's the introduction to economics lecture. As a general rule, economic systems run more efficiently when people pay for the resources that they use, and run inefficiently when other people pay for resources that somebody else uses.

Both my ISP and my hosting company are effectively paid for by data volume and amortized hardware cost, so I pay for what I use online.

I don't use the post office, so I don't want to pay for them, through any form of tax.

So what exactly is your point?

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[Anonymous Coward]

"Yes, that's correct: we pay for the infrastructure with tax dollars (which would be socialism). Also, each person who pays for their connection also pays their ISP (which would be capitalism)."

Neither of those statements is even nearly correct...

Taxation for the provision of infrastructure is not a definition of socialism.

Payment for services is not a definition of capitalism.

But thanks for the introduction to economics!

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[Kreigaffe]

Could be the hundreds of millions that were given to telecoms in the 90s to build the infrastructure, our nation's intarwab backbone, which they certainly did yeeeupp.
Could also be the markets that have legislated monopolies for some of the companies, which is as good as handing them tax dollars.

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[Rakarra]

Ah, I love slashdot, where people simultaneously advocate anarchy, libertarianism, and socialism.

Why can't they be different people? Slashdot, although some people sometimes like to try to make the argument, is not a hive-mind.
I like the diversity of opinions. Discussion areas that have only one opinion suck.

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[chrismcb]

I've already got limits to how much I can use the internet, pretty much everyone does. So why single out certain packets, just because those packets contain email?
Thats like going to the All you Can Eat Buffet, but having to pay extra for each oreo cookie you take.

Re:economics lecture [Re:Good idea]

[LordLucless]

There are advantages in people paying for the resources that they use.

People already do pay for email. They pay for it in form of the bandwidth they purchase from their ISP. Most people also pay someone (either their ISP in money, or a free provider in demographic data) for access to an SMTP server. This is all fine, because the money they pay is addressing the cost of delivering the service they are using.

The problem with the proposed tax is that it doesn't. It's simply somebody looking for a way to skim money off a popular service, to funnel it back into an unpopular one (presumably, if the mail service was popular, it would be self-sufficient. Either that, or it's got an unworkable price model). It's like levying a tax on fast-food so they can give it to the cafe down the street from their chambers so it doesn't go under.

Why not USPS email?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why doesn't the Post Office switch to a more electronic centric form of delivering post? They could make an account for every address or legal resident then charge per email sent. The upside would make it useful is if I send it to Joe.Edwards.79@USPS.gov it's guaranteed to make it to my friend Joe Edwards who can read it free of charge and save/print it to his hearts content (unlike snail mail since delivery isn't guaranteed). Hacking a USPS.gov email account would become a different federal crime from hacking gmail.com accounts. Offshore spamming would end or slow due to cost. Krogers, Best Buy, etc could send their sales catalog via bulk email in a similar way they do with snail mail. It would save them costs since there's nothing to print and they could target it to areas that actually have a store in driving distance.

It wont replace regular email but it would make it a hell of a lot cheaper to run the post since we could go to 2-3 day a week delivery for regular mail.

Re:Why not USPS email?

[Khashishi]

What would the point of that be?

lolno

[JustAnotherIdiot]

He says a one-hundredth of a cent per e-mail tax could discourage spam

Because the amount people who send snail mail pay has totally stopped them from spamming the shit out of every single person over the years.

Amusing Liberals

[Anonymous Coward]

It always amuses me seeing these cretins find new ways to tax their citizens while they have life guards and prison psychologists running around making high ball six figure incomes.

Re:Amusing Liberals

[Anonymous Coward]

Flamebait from an AC and I still wanted to mod you up!

Who IS this cretin who suggests taxing email ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I know who he is, the article explains that.

I think a better idea is to tax the speech of idiots like
the guy who proposes a pointless tax. Fuck him,
fuck his stupid ideas, and I hope he gets cancer and
dies this year.

Airline Tax!

[Vrallis]

In other news, it was proposed to put a new tax on airline tickets in order to help sustain the horse & buggy industry.

Re:Airline Tax!

[roc97007]

This.

Re:Let it die. Seriously.

[pla]

The post office can be completely self-sustaining. The problem is that the idiots in congress are forcing it to pre-fund pensions for the next 75 years.

An unfunded pension liability merely externalizes the risk of default - Company goes under, bam, you have tens of thousands of retirees and near-retirees on welfare until the mercy of death gives them back the dignity they worked fair 'n square for. Forcing a company (including the post office) to fully fund their pension system does not count as frivolous political posturing, but sound and necessary fiscal policy.

That said, we can certainly agree that congress deserves its share of the blame, for example by not allowing the USPS to raise rates, close offices, and shorten their hours as needed. Though even then, as I said, the USPS brings me nothing but crap; I would honestly prefer it go under even without any financial savings.

oxymoron

[CarlosHawes]

"tiny tax" yesh right. Even if it starts tiny, not tax ever stays that way. And once implemented, even a "temporary tax" never dies. Don't ever fall for it. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.

The Post Office is currently doomed.

[sesshomaru]

The reasons why the Post Office is currently doomed are mainly that a fairly large portion of the government believes in privatisation. Therefore they are using the same kind of tricks (and some new ones) to destroy the Post Office as were used to destroy Streetcar networks throughout the country. (Mainly this boils down to increase the price, while decreasing the service.)

It's not a funding problem. Find a new way to fund the Post Office (and there have already been some more creative ideas than a simple tax such as allowing the Post Office to offer Internet or banking services), and the people trying to eliminate it will simply figure out ways to send that money into the general budget via various tricks. The problem is that currently the goal is not to save the Post Office but to destroy it, and eliminate a low cost competitor for Fed Ex and UPS.

So, in order to keep the Post Office from being destroyed, you need a large, well funded lobby determined to keep it open to counter the large, well funded lobby determined to close it. (I thought a coalition of large and small businesses who are going to be the source of Fed Ex and UPS's windfall profits as soon as the Post Office is gone would be a place to start, but I'm not much of a political person.)

the problem is not funding pensions

[Chirs]

the problem is funding pensions for people that haven't even been hired yet

Re:Let it die. Seriously.

[geekoid]

203 billion pieces of mail, the vast majority of which is 1oz envelopes.

So, as shocking as this will be to you, many people find the post office really useful.
You DO know you can opt out of junk mail right? or did you just complain about something you actual know nothing about so you can be a whiny bitch?

How'll he impose it?

[Todd Knarr]

How will he impose it? On ISPs? My e-mail doesn't go through my ISP. On services like Google? That's going to be fun because most people don't access Google Mail as an e-mail service, they access it as a Web site. How do you determine how much traffic is e-mail and how much is Web site? Nobody's going to want to pay a tax on the traffic spent refreshing a Web site with no e-mail sent or received. On individual users? How does he propose to track their usage given that their systems don't have any internal accounting for stuff like this? And how's he going to deal with non-Windows OSes? I doubt he'd have any legal authority to tell people they must run Windows just because that's the only one he's had software written for.

I see so many technical problems here that I don't think it'll fly even if it manages to get past the political issues.

this is not the tax you are looking for

[roc97007]

Ok, you may put Yesmail out of business (which is not necessarily a bad thing) but you will never collect from the worst of the spammers, because they're offshore and don't want to be found, and let's face it -- the tax collectors are going to go after the easiest marks, which is us.

We need to face this -- what is being proposed is not really a big industry-destroying tax on spammers. That's just marketing. It's a tax on the legitimate users. And the delicious part is that the purpose of the tax is to prop up a service we no longer use, apparently so that we can continue getting junk mail made from dead trees.

The fundamental question is, do we really need to "save" the US post office? That service was so last century. Cue discussion on buggy whips.

Seriously?

[kenh]

First off, this fellow in a city council has no responsibility for the funding of the USPS.

Second, he has no ability to tax anyone outside his city - does he propose that Berkley alone fund the USPS?

Third, the issue with USPS solvency is, for the most part, inflicted upon the USPS by Congress, which has decided that since the USPS was profitable in 2006, that it should fully-fund 75 years of pension obligations by the end of 2016. This has resulted in over-funding the pension fund beyond any reasonable requirement by any conventional funding formula, and if you look closely, the losses the USPS reported these last few years is only slightly more than the annual over-payment of the pension system.

• HuffPo piece on USPS over-funding it's pension plan, as required by federal law
• CNBC piece on how USPS pension fund required to have funds to meet 75 years of benefits by 2016
• Inpector General Report the effects of the over-funding of USPS pension

What is cost? What is a good price model?

[Geoffrey.landis]

Hard to calculate that cost

No it isn't. Amazon charges $0.10 per thousand emails.

Yes it is. You're quoting their price to send. So that will not include the cost of the internet infrastructure (once it's left Amazon's servers), or receiving, nor the cost of spam filters; nor the pro-rated cost of your computer and internet connection. And most particularly, you're not accounting for the recipient's time spent receiving and dealing with it. (And finally, note that you quoted price, not cost. Price is not necessarily cost, particularly in situations where the fixed cost is large, and the marginal cost small.)

The post office operates on almost the opposite model: the costs (including infrastructure cost) are paid for by the sender, not the receiver. Interesting thought experiment: maybe that model doesn't work any more. What happens if we make sending postal mail free, and support it entirely with taxes (to support the fixed-cost, that is, the postal infrastructure), and a fee on people who receive mail (to support the variable cost, that is, to support the delivery)? --Well, yes, that would be a bad idea. It is, however, much closer to the price model that e-mail uses.

This is like the tax on illegally obtained goods

[Khashishi]

Spammers already don't care about the law. Who in their right mind would think they would pay the tax? The lusers of the zombied computers will be ones stuck with the bill.

Re:Councilman, know about the unfair USPS obligati

[kenh]

Yes, preparing for future retirement that you agreed to is SOOOO unfair.

Congress has decided that the USPS must have 75 years of pension money IN THE BANK by 2016, and their shortfalls each year nearly match the size of the over-payment Congress requires the USPS to it's pension fund each year.

The USPS Pension is over-funded simply because in 2006 it was profitable, and Congress siezed upon that opportunity and decided to REQUIRE the USPS to over-fund it's pension to a level no other company has ever been required to do - 75 years of benefits in the bank! They are required to have pension money in the bank for employees that haven't even been born, let alone hired by the USPS.

Well, it's a city council position.

[BrianH]

Any idiot can get elected to a city council, especially in a smaller city like Berkeley, just by hobnobbing with some neighbors and getting his name out there. I used to know a city councilman who was LITERALLY a used car salesman by trade. The guy lacked any political skills whatsoever, and he wasn't exactly "intellectually gifted", but he had the whole schmoozing thing down pat. He ran in an off-year election, and got in with about 500 votes.

I'll get worked up when I hear a state legislator, or a governor, or a congressman advocating something like this. But I'm not going to worry about the personal opinion of a two-bit councilman who represents a few dozen blocks from one unimportant city.

Solution: Modernize USPS

[David_Hart]

As rightly stated by other posters, the mandate of the USPS has been to facilitate communications through delivering mail. My thought is that for USPS to survive, they should be working on modernizing. What I mean is that they should be offering ISP type services such as Email, IM, etc. Personally, I would pay for an email account that has the same privacy protections as the US postal system.

If the people of Berkeley want a data tax...

[Thrill Science]

If the people of Berkeley want a data tax, I suggest they move to China.

Re:Freedom of communication

[hoboroadie]

My use of the word socialist was a facetious reference to the common abuse of that word, or something...
As far as I am concerned, universal public access to a postal service, as well as all current modes of communications like the internet, is the least of our requirements if we wish to attain something resembling Liberty.

As a state worker...

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh my god no.

Don't do this.

You understand that to get a mailserver you need a purchase order and a bid? To update cheap software, you need a PO?

Look -- I don't /want/ a discretionary spending account. And I don't want to get a fucking P/O signed 35 times a day...

As a cypherpunk....

Look, I don't want my fucking proxy servers taken down for aiding and abetting tax evasion.

This idea and piss off and die.

People want to fight spam, that's fine. Use RBLs, bayes filters, google, opt-in, opt-out, legislation, white, black, grey, and goldlist. Use reputation, bonded sender. Hell, I once turned backscatter *ON* on a mailserver when I validated a host without a relay was an origin of some marketer that got a "aaaaaa0-zzzzzz" "list" of my domain. Every single piece went back to their sender, their postmaster, their abuse ....

I support fucking killing spammers. Go all mafia on them. Go all mafia on their family. Kill their dog, their wife, their kids just to make a horrible message.

But keep your grubby fucking taxes off of email.

Re:This is like the tax on illegally obtained good

[Skapare]

The spammers would just move out of Berkeley. Think of all the economic loss that would bring about.

Re:Solution: Modernize USPS

[hoboroadie]

I would pay for an email account that has the same privacy protections as the US postal system.

Stiff penalties for wire fraud, and civil/criminal penalties for perpetrators of SPAM could be legislated for all users, if we elected some one whose interests resembled our own. The fact that security promotes commerce is the principle behind the foundation of the F.B.I.

gigakook rate

[coyote_oww]

Berkley, aka The Peoples Repulic of Berkley, aka Bezerkly has only kilokooks, so the math really doesn't work until you get to say, $1,000,000/kilokook, or 1 quadrilion dollers per gigakook.

It's so damn easy to 'save' US postal service...

[superdave80]

Let them set their prices and operate as they see fit. If they need to charge 75 cents a letter to operate instead of 50 cents a letter, let them charge 75 cents. I could understand controlling costs decades ago when the post office was about the only option, but with fax, email, UPS, Fedex, etc. as alternatives, let them compete!

Ridiculous

[Bretski]

Cool, let's tax car sales too, and give it to the horse and buggy companies - they are really struggling!

Re:Raise the rate

[hoboroadie]

Junk mail should pay a higher rate than non-commercial mail.
Un-solicited email should be opt-in only, I'd willingly take SPAM @ a dollar per page-view, but I work cheap.
Criminal abusers and violators of my system should serve suitable jail terms. (This shit was not a problem before businesses used computers.)

Re:What is cost? What is a good price model?

[Anonymous Coward]

What happens if we make sending postal mail free, and support it entirely with taxes (to support the fixed-cost, that is, the postal infrastructure), and a fee on people who receive mail (to support the variable cost, that is, to support the delivery)? --Well, yes, that would be a bad idea. It is, however, much closer to the price model that e-mail uses.

Amazon "charging" for e-mail? do they do a bulk email service or something? This proposed tax isn't just on businesses sending tons of e-mail but also on regular people.

As just a regular guy: to me e-mail is data. I pay for a data connection to the internet and send my e-mail over it. There is no "price model" or "infrastructure" for e-mail. The price I pay for internet service is what keeps the computers all hooked together and talking to each other. After that whatever data I want to send to those computers doesn't matter, it could be an e-mail or just random packets.

i am fully aware running e-mail servers costs money. that's why e-mail providers find a way to make money (charging or advertising, etc)! ISPs give you e-mail service as part of your account since people want it. they are perfectly fine runnning their mail servers without getting any extra money for this special "e-mail infrastructure". servers are servers and they keep enough running to give their customers what they are paying for (unless they are Comcast).

tl:dr: e-mail is data on the internet. keep the internet running and you've paid all the "costs" for e-mail.

Why this could work!

[Skapare]

Set up a tax on all email (sorry, no technical details available). People get pissed off over the tax, stop using email, and start using IM, Twitter, etc, instead. No one reads email anymore. Spammers stop making money on email and move on over to IM, Twitter, etc. End result: no more spam in your email box. Mission accomplished.

Re:Let it die. Seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

USPS is about the only courier I trust to deliver packages that I can receive with a minimum of fuss. I have this thing called a job where I have to be between the hours USPS, FedEx, UPS, DHL, etc deliver. With USPS, I can drive a half mile down the road after I get off of work and pick my package up. At least with UPS I can do similar, but I have to wait for their desk two towns away to open again at around 7 or 8 o'clock.

So here's the thing. What I hear from these arguments is that congress is trying to bankrupt USPS. Since USPS is being bankrupted, then the conditions bankrupting it are necessary to protect against what might happen if it goes bankrupt. It's purely circular reasoning.

Now, if UPS, FexEx, DHL and whoever else were to get their acts together and provide better service than USPS, that'd be great. However, if players in the market are unable to do better than a government service, I have little faith that the invisible hand could do much more without competition from the government.

The Pony Express v2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

I say we volunteer these councilmen who sit around breaking their oath and pushing agenda 21 all day long to ride horses and deliver the mail that way.
If they finish the chores there, they can be volunteered to work as fire fighter on the front line, prison guard, garbage man, road work, homeless shelter.
That way these UN punks don't have time to push their treaty and global warming, global bankster, global government bullshit.

How about he forfeit his own pension?

Berkley is a member of ICLEI (http://www.icleiusa.org/about-iclei/members/member-list) , as long as this is so nothing but hairbrained UN king and queen dictator shit will come out of this shity council.

Post office needs to fix their own crap internally. They promised more benefits than they can deliver.
This is what happens when you have no money coming in but still have obligations going out. Specifically in this case, pension obligations regarding health care benefits for retired Postal Workers.

Now this fucker want's us to pay for it again.

Re:The Pony Express v2.0

[Anonymous Coward]

Funny how predictable these fucking ICLEI council member's who pushe for "sustainability" can't do basic math, exponents
Upholding only his oath to ICLEA (not the constitution), these city council members need to resign for incompetence.

And as far as this Too Big to Fail vs the DOJ shit, I say take the fucking money from JP Morgue, Goldman sack, Shiti, Wells FartGo, Corzine, and all these pieces of shit who are above the law, laundering money for terrorists and drug dealers. (Take the money from their CEO's segregated accounts, claw the shit back) Or as per the constitution the Senate regulate the monetary system.. e.g. Take Back the Federal Reserve (make it Really Federal, not just in name) and print their OWN fucking money without interest. Unwind all the old fictitious interest debts.

DDoS could discourage taxes

[John Holmes]

Catch my drift?

Stupid dirty hippie shithead

[gelfling]

Die screaming, retard. Go sell your shit in North Korea.

I'm sure

[sjames]

I'm sure those botnet operators are quaking in their boot now! Subverting thousands of machines to become members of their botnet on the Russian Mafia's payroll=cool. Evading Berkeley's email tax OMG that's like a crime or some junk!

Meanwhile, the effort to asses and collect the tax will easily exceed the revenue collected by a factor of 10.

Luddite?

[mpfife]

While I love our post office system - this smacks of protectionism and not re-orienting with the times.

We don't have the Pony Express around because the telegraph came along. The telegraph was universally better in terms of speed, efficiency, etc. Should we have taxed telegrams more just to keep around an obsolete system for ???? not sure what. Physical delivery of mail is wasteful from a fuel, resources, and time. Granted, there will ALWAYS need to be package delivery of goods (even more so in an internet economy) and a system that works when crises' happen; but it sounds to me like it's time to do what every business and natural/biological system does when the fundamental environment changes occurs in some way - you must change too. Find the things our society still needs from a postal service.

Yes, this is painful, and all efforts should be made to help transition workers and the systems. However, it's just prolonging the problem and compounding the pain later when this will have to be addressed. It sucks - but life is change. Change is challenging and difficult and we should help ease the transition for people as best as we can. But when gently moving with the shifts in our economy and way people work is MUCH better than trying to iron-fistedly stick to the past.

Tax Stupid Politicians

[pubwvj]

If we were to tax stupid politicians like this one then we would be able to easily fund the entire government without any other taxes.

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

[Anonymous Coward]

Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra.

Re:Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra

[Rambo Tribble]

Do you think this is how that started?

Re:Let it die. Seriously.

[pla]

203 billion pieces of mail, the vast majority of which is 1oz envelopes.

Bzzzt..

First of all, the USPS delivered 160 billion total items last year. It would seem your 203B comes from 2008 (page 5), so I'll use that year's data for the rest of this response. Of that 202.7 billion, it breaks down as:
17.5% (35.4B) "real" first-class items (stamp-bearing single item)
1.6% (3.3B) packages
27.8% (56.3B) spam (first-class presorted, 91.7B total first class minus 35.4B single-item gives 56.3B )
48.9% (99.1B) outright crap (3rd class advertising)
4.2% (8.6B) other - periodicals? (they don't break this out here but do elsewhere)

Now for fun, let's compare that to how they describe their revenue (page 4), shall we? (For 2012 instead of 2008, but we can likely assume the overall ratios tend to hold steady over time):
44.5% ($28.9B) first class mail (including presorted which actually costs less than "real" first class, but they don't separate that out for revenue)
25.2% ($16.4B) advertising mail
17.8% ($11.6B) shipping
2.6% ($1.7B) periodicals

See a trend there? Almost a perfectly inverse relationship between "I want it" and "how much the post office charges to send it". And you wonder why I won't cry to see them cease to exist?


You DO know you can opt out of junk mail right?

You DO know you can't opt out of mail from companies with whom you have an "existing business relationship", right? So that order you placed with LL Bean 15 years ago makes you their bitch forever. And, the DMA "opt out" doesn't actually work like the telemarketer opt-out list - It has essentially no teeth. Want proof? Send in a new opt-out request (even while having one already in effect) - You'll get a huge batch of crap from "member" companies taking advantage of a verified-good address in the "60-90 days" it "may" take before your request goes into effect. And I say that from personal experience.


or did you just complain about something you actual know nothing about so you can be a whiny bitch?

You mean, kinda like responding to Slashdot posts just to sound clever while spouting factually incorrect nonsense? So, do you work for the APWU, or just belong to it as a member?

The ways I wish email was more like snail mail

[Darwiniac]

1. It costs people something to send me crap (deters spam)
2. Certified mail (I can know that someone got it and acknowledged getting it)
3. All the force of law (satisfying legal requirements of official notices, putting official timestamps on documents, etc...)
4. Everyone has an official address

My guess is the USPS could provide those services in a model where revenue from #1&#2 pays for the servers and operating costs of #4. And they justify it by #3

Then provide a way to work with independent third party encryption services and a way to designate favorites who can send me email for free and I might funnel all my email through it.

I'm sure they are reading it anyway.

Re:The ways I wish email was more like snail mail

[jxander]

But it wouldn't cost the spammers anything, just like snail mail

Right now, you and I pay $0.46 per letter we want to send. How much do you think PennySaver, Best Buy, etc pay to send you spam? Check out the USPS Price List, paying special attention to page 28. You'll notice that bulk mail classified as Carrier Route, Saturation mail costs the sender $0.032. Just a bit over three freaking pennies.

If the USPS wants to make more money, charge Snail-Mail spammers full stamp price.

Re:The ways I wish email was more like snail mail

[Darwiniac]

Good point.

Although I suspect that the USPS arrived at those rates because they do optimize their profits by hitting the right price points for bulk mailers. But that does present a conflict of interests- the USPS will want more people sending you stuff if they can charge people to do so and you want them to charge people enough to prevent them from sending you crap.

From the user's perspective the best thing would be to let the user set the cost. Of course, if a user sets a bill of $1000 then they don't get anything and that kills the utility of it being a delivery service.

A fair compromise would be if they hit a price point that results in the same average number of spams arriving as the average number of junk snail mail. The prices would have to be higher per email than postage per junk mail to reflect the savings in paper, but for the USPS I'm sure the overall reduction in delivery costs would put them back in the black.

It would also result in much more relevant, targeted spam that more closely approximates the kind of junk snail mail people get now. But I still probably wouldn't read it.

Re:The ways I wish email was more like snail mail

[jxander]

You're giving *FAR* too much credit to the post office, and business practice in general

I suspect that the USPS arrived at those prices because some lobbyists bought the proper amount of hookers and blow for the USPS upper management. You talk about conflict of interest like it's something to be avoided. Right now, conflict of interest is standard operating procedure for big business and government.

Re:The ways I wish email was more like snail mail

[Darwiniac]

My understanding is that as a quasi-governmental business the USPS is mandated to have a conflict of interest.

If it was just about profitability it would charge more to send letters to BF, Alaska, but it is required by law to provide all citizens equal access to the system. So in that respect it is more of a government service. That's also why they can't raise their stamp rates anytime they like. So it is not my assumption that they are a lean, mean capitalist machine that leads me to conclude their bulk pricing rates are optimized. Rather it is the observation that I don't have a metric butt-ton of junk mail. I get more than I want, but about as much as I would expect given the costs to business to print and mail the stuff.

I don't doubt at all that there are lobbyists trying to move things their way, but I don't think there is that much room to move with respect to bulk mailing prices. I could be wrong, but I don't think I could sustain the interest in an actuarial analysis of average advertising per customer acquisition via bulk mailing blah blah blah... in order to know that I am wrong, but that is really not my main point. I just think the USPS could find an email model for there service that could bring a lot of the pluses of snail mail to email.

Will they? No.

Sure it could be done

[LeadSongDog]

Require ISPs to vet the proof of payment signatures as a condition of licensing. Forging a signature can be prosecuted as wirefraud. Anything without a valid signature by inference comes from outside the participating countries, and goes into an "unverifiable" spambox. Reader could reject unread or pay to read spam, their choice. Of course it might be bad for business, so it won't happen, but it could be done.

Re:Freedom of communication

[dywolf]

my misunderstanding. people on here tend be vehemently one way, or vehemently the other, and their word usage tends to follow.

Typical response

[Anonymous Coward]

So, instead of fixing the underlying bloat, inefficiency, absurd pay/benefits and waste at USPS, the answer is to coercively extort more taxes from the public. Why is this not a surprise?

The power to tax - is the power to destroy

[Anonymous Coward]

And considering how our politicians are currently (in)capable of keeping budgets under control (or even MAKE one as evidenced by the funding resolutions which have been funding our government for the past decade if I'm not mistaken) - I can exactly see just that happening.

Lets take a look at what that (tax) would accomplish: It would allow the current USPS to continue functioning the way it does. And what benefit does that have? You're taking money from one group of users who by and large are NOT using a particular service because something far more efficient has come up, and using it to subsidize a group of users who are using something antiquated and inefficient. If you want the USPS to become profitable again (and we're talking profitable as in a function of volume of mail), how about we just ban online bill paying? I can guarantee that development ALONE has devastated the average monthly mail volume per person.

I remember 5-10 years ago, every month, I'd get bills in the mail, and then turn around and have to mail out a check. 5-10 pieces per month. Now, I just go online, click a few buttons, and my bills are paid. Do the math. 10 pieces/month = $4.00 per person x 12 times per year, times about 40 million households (not even counting small businesses or large businesses!) comes out to around $2 billion a year.

It's more egregious than that...

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Indianapolis - To get the Colts to come to Indiana, the city had to build a stadium for them. For that the city levied a 1% sales tax and to placate the nay sayers who were worried about runaway taxation wrote IN THE LAW that the tax would be cancelled once the stadium was paid off.

The stadium, the Hoosier Dome, was built later renamed to the RCA dome and then 20 years later a NEW stadium was needed so they had to raise the sales tax AGAIN but that wasn't enough money... so they went to the state and demanded a 1% sales tax from all of the surrounding counties... So the state modified the law to get them to enact it -they allowed the surrounding counties to raise the sales tax by 2% and keep half for themselves... 7 or the 9 surrounding counties happily did that.

So the Hoosier Dome was torn down.

But it's still not paid off... even after 20 years of taxes and no longer exists...

Why?

Well, they constantly renegotiated the loan and expanded the loan to pay for capital improvements for other things. So the loans not paid off... (and because the stadium loan was overextended already for other projects, they couldn't use that money for the new stadium)

Perfectly legal.

Why didn't we think of that earlier?

[choke]

What an idea! Tax technologies that replace old, wasteful ones to prop up the old wasteful ones. Oh my god the horse and buggy people should have thought of this, or the gas lamp makers who were so rudely displaced by light bulbs.

This is such a fantastically brilliant idea that it could really only come from a California politician. They are truly unique in that regard.

There are so many things wrong with this proposal on so many levels, that it is upsetting that it has gotten as far as it has. The idea that we should further burden citizens with a tax rather than simply charge a sustaining amount for services is absurd, when a significant use of those services is used for bulk-rate distribution of shit mail that wastes resources and commercial mail.

This is public support of corporate welfare, again.

Why should we supplement a government department?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is every government jackass finding another method to steal money (err, tax) people into poverty to support an
obsolete method of delivering messages such as the U.S. postal service?

in other news...

[markhahn]

in other news, the National Association of Buggywhip Artisans has petitioned for a tax on automobiles.

this measure was also supported by the Federal Union of Handwriting Instructors, who have nearly succeeded in killing off the typewriter through years of heavy inforcement of the US National Typewriter Tariff.

the college of barbers and associated bloodletters could not be reached for comment.

Re:Let it die. Seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Unraveling the myth that the Postal Service must fund retiree health benefits 75 years into the future

A half baked idea at best.

[idbeholda]

Good luck with that, Councilman.

Nonsense

[Anonymous Coward]

This would be like me taxing everyone if I lost customers in my business. This makes no sense. Now if you wanted to blatantly say people will lose their jobs and we should socially /monetarily support them, well, we already have those supports on place.

Enough Already

[Anonymous Coward]

We are taxed in every direction and every activity. There is no way that additional taxes should be allowed by the feds, states, counties or cities. As a matter of fact I think that property taxes for many people should be null and void. The poor, the disabled and the elderly with limited means should all be exempt from property taxes unless they live in high priced homes. Sales taxes need to be capped at 3% as well. Income taxes on the rich need to be severely increased and the wealthy should not be paid Social Security at all. The Coast guard and Marine Corps should be closed down and near shore activity shifted to the Navy and Air force which hopefully will use drones to secure our ocean borders. The border with Mexico should be secured with lethal drones and simply execute any who try to break our borders. We also need to severely limit the wealth or retirement benefits of any person ever convicted of a felony.
                    Let me loose and I will balance the damned budget.

Well is it or isn't it?

[rnturn]

``I mean a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year And there should be, also, a very tiny tax on email.' . . . ' We all know an e-mail tax is infeasible...'

So is the email tax feasible or infeasible? (Damn... is this another `flammable' vs. `inflammable' thing again?)

If this guy wants to help the Postal Service so much, he ought to be working to repeal that completely asinine rule that the lame duck House Republicans put into place a few years back that makes the USPS completely fund -- over a ten year period -- their pension plan needs for the next 75 years. What other company funds their pensions (hell... how many companies even HAVE pensions any more) to cover employees that haven't even been born yet? I need to speak to my HS-age daughters and be sure and suggest to their future kids to work for the USPS... their pensions are going to be there waiting for them.

The Councilman's suggestion that the tax be used to build out the Internet is stupid as well. Republicans (for one) will never go for it. All politicians will think twice about giving their constituents access to high-speed sources of information about how their politicians are (mis)behaving in Washington. Besides, didn't we give the phone companies a little extra every months for a couple of decades or so with the idea that it was going to be used to build out the phone system to those hard-to-reach areas of the country? Look how well that worked. Who do you think would actually be doing the construction of this additional Internet access? Yep, those same phone companies that ripped us off the last time. (I would, maybe, agree to a small tax if the money was used by a Roosevelt-era styled work program operated by the Feds for the unemployed to do this build out. And, of course, if AT&T et al were loudly told to STFU when they inevitably complained about it.)

Re:No it inst?

[Christopher Fritz]

"We all know an e-mail tax is infeasible,"
Do you not know how email works?
The tax would go to your ISP would would pass it to the consumer.
1 penny per 100 email. So not much at all.

I'm aware of how e-mail works down to the protocol level, but you can consider this my looking at the issue at a macro level. You can't work it into the e-mail protocol, for example, because e-mail is used the world over (very macro view). You can try to tax the transactions (e-mails sent), but how do you enforce this? Your suggestion of the ISP doing the taxing would work very well for anyone who uses their ISP's e-mail. But what about free e-mail services? Do they need to now charge the tax? Would free e-mail services become illegal? What if an American citizen uses an Australian-based free e-mail service? What if you and I have e-mail servers running on our home PC's and I send an e-mail to you? Would this be tax evasion?

I do relent that an e-mail tax could be feasible on a small level, but at the same time it would be easy to get around. Of course, most people wouldn't even know that there's such a tax, and it would be small enough and hidden on their bill that they wouldn't care.

" and sales tax for online purchases and for digital purchases are likely unavoidable forever,"
Good.

I'm one of those who do pay use tax, and I'm against too much taxation, but will admit that a national sales tax for online purchases would make it easier to ensure I'm not overpaying. As it is, I'm tracking whether I buy something from a seller within California or not within California or outside of California but big enough to be forced to collect sales tax...

" but here's hoping talk of taxing data usage doesn't work its way to Washington."
hmmm. I don't know. We may be in a situation where a tiny tax could go a very long way.

The problem here is, a long way to what? How likely is the money to be spent on something worthwhile, and how likely to be spent on something that's certainly a waste? (Not that this is any different than many taxes and fees we already see.)

Just my thoughts on it. Feel free to point out any flaws in my thinking!

What is "email"

[chrismcb]

So what exactly is email? Is it anything that goes over SMTP? Then everyone will stop using SMTP, and "email" And they'll start using things like Facebook messaging, and skype, and anything else.
It is interesting to note, that the UN claims this would have "raised" 70 billion globally in 1996. As if that money would have just come out of thin air.

subject

[Legion303]

"I mean a bit tax could be a cent per gigabit and they would still make, probably, billions of dollars a year"

Nothing like solid math to really back up your argument.

That's a great idea.

[3vi1]

That's a great idea. If, you want Silicon Valley to move out of the state.

Even if it were possible, it would just motivate companies to get as far away from your legislative stupidity as possible.

Re:What is cost? What is a good price model?

[MacDork]

You're quoting their price to send

Yes, I am. You expect to stop spam by charging the recipient a tax?

So that will not include the cost of the internet infrastructure (once it's left Amazon's servers), or receiving, nor the cost of spam filters.

You just stated the tax, "would stop indiscriminate spam" so why do we need spam filters? Oh, right, because it won't actually stop spam. Tax on email is a stupid idea suggested by ignorant people who don't understand how email works. Please remember this before suggesting a plan that involves taxing email.

What does it say about Berkeley ?

[ToddInSF]

If this city councilman isn't voted out of office ?

Good luck with that...

[Anonymous Coward]

The USPS is the biggest source of SPAM there is, where as I can click to eliminate spam in my email, I physically have to take the PO's stuff to the trash and/or burn it. That where they make most of their money, is sending out unsolicited junk from other people. Last time I shipped something through them, came out damaged, it is much cheaper to send it once and get there in one piece (and even pay more), that do deal with the after effects of the USPS care and deliver...

If they did their job

[shadow431]

If the post office actually did their job they wouldn't be closing. With that said, why should useful things pay for not useful things? Let them go, lower out federal budget. After repeated items not being delivered correctly the only thing that the Post office handles for me is garbage. Everything else is via UPS, or email. If a business won't communicate with one or the other, they don't get my money.