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Comment by exabrial | Hacker News Reader

There'd be enough to do that if the USPS wasn't busy burning thousands of tons of Diesel fuel to haul Verizon and Citi card advertisements to everyone else.

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Or the 5+ oversized "vote for me" flyers that have been coming everyday for weeks (even after doing the early in-person voting). If one didn't change my mind, 10 from the same candidate isn't going to change my mind either. Election season is terrible for USPS and my phone's text messages.

Academic and electrical evidence does correlate high numbers of flyers with higher vote shares.

https://www.markpack.org.uk/159114/leaflets/

Luckily my apartment has a recycling bin next to the mailboxes so all of the oversized stuff like that ends up there immediately, the rest I keep in a box until it's shredding time.

Supposedly mail is so rare now that those bulk mail advertising items are the only thing sustaining the USPS' daily delivery operations. Without the, stamp price would have to be far higher.

Perhaps they should increase the stamp price then? I don't think I get ANYTHING of value in stamped/prepaid envelopes at this point (I just throw all my mail in a box and shred it when it fills up). In the past year, I think the mail I actually wanted to receive could be counted on two hands, far outweighed by credit card offers, political flyers, and other crap.

In the stamp area, there is a note for either "first class", "non-profit", or "presorted standard" aka "PRE-STD". Normal mail is first class. Standard is spam.

Once you figure that out, it makes sorting the mail real quick. Never has standard ever been important, even if it comes from a company that I do business with.

Yup, I basically never get anything sent first class. Greeting/holiday cards are about the only thing, and my parents these days just throw them into a priority mail care package anyway (and I'm past the age for the rush of wedding invitations).

What about the Pre STD ?

Presorted Standard is cheaper than First Class. First class is sent with some expectations on whether it will be delivered and how quickly. Standard is "best effort". If a company wants you to pay a bill, then they want to make sure you get it, they pay extra for that stamp. If a company wants to send an advert that they know you are going to throw in the trash anyway, they cheap out.

But for the life of me, I have not been able to figure out the price of a Standard stamp. USPS sells stamps online, but you'd think it would be easier to find the price, but still I can't find it. I would love to know how much is spent on mail that no one really cares about.

that sounds like a win-win-win-win: instant huge cut to carbon emissions, less trees cut down, demand released on diesel market, I get less spam

Possibly. There may or may not be a national security resiliency offered by continuing to operate a 6 days per week nationwide logistics network.

Either way, it’s not in USPS’ hands since Congress would have to change that requirement.

Can they increase the digital stamp price for all the spam mail I receive?

The post office was in the process of switching to electric but T's postmaster stopped that.

The only method left where people can legally spam us, with no legal possibility of opting out.

You can physically remove your mailbox, but then you won't get other mail you might want.

Attach a shredder to your mailbox along with a camera and image recognition. Shred everything that you don’t need.

Sure, and tell us how/if you don't care about email providers generating "interest" for commercial reasons when half of anyone's inbox is full of crap no one wants or requested.

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