Debating Myself

You may or may not be one of the millions of Americans who receive junk mail daily. I personally am still young enough to enjoy the novelty of receiving mail every single day, even if it is only another of the countless pleas for me to apply for a United Mileage Plus Visa. Yet for many Americans these daily mailings are not only a nuisance, but wasteful and a potential privacy risk.

Some sensible people have created some grassroots movements in state legislatures to allow citizens to opt out of junk mailings through a “do-not-mail” list similar to the national “do-not-call” registry. Remember, they are not banning the sending of junk mail, just giving consumers the option to opt out of it…

It is fair to say I was shocked when I read in the Washington Post that:

Then came the pushback from the postmasters, who told Pearson and other lawmakers that “standard” mail, the post office’s name for junk mail, has become the lifeblood of the U.S. Postal Service and that jobs depend on it.

Yes, that is the United States Postal Service attempting to block some perfectly sensible legislation for the preservation of jobs that it claims only exist to pass on useless junk mail to consumers! So, we pay for the salaries of postal workers with our tax dollars in order to receive superfluous mass mailings directly to our mailbox every day? Now that’s government service for you.

The article is full of little nuggets of madness. Here are a few choice selections:

Barred by law from lobbying, the Postal Service is nonetheless trying to make its case before a growing number of state legislatures… The agency has printed 3,000 “information packets” about the economic value of standard mail, with specific data for each of the 18 states that have considered a Do Not Mail Registry.

The Postal Service is working closely with the Direct Marketing Association, the trade group that represents retailers and the printing industry, in its new campaign — Mail Moves America — which is designed to quash the Do Not Mail initiatives.

Right, this sounds nothing like lobbying…

So far, their efforts appear effective. None of the states where Do Not Mail legislation has been introduced since 2007 has approved a law. And no similar legislation is pending in Congress.

Let’s step back here and consider some of the bigger issues:

Government Jobs

Every government job should in theory, by virtue of it being funded through the tax dollars of all, provide a public service. In this case postal workers supposedly hold together a mail system that delivers us mail in a timely and orderly fashion. If the creation of a Do-Not-Mail list threatens some jobs, admittedly government jobs with strong pension plans, doesn’t that mean that those jobs really only exist to support junk mail? Yes. Is junk mail really a public good the government should be providing?

The Environment

Anyone who knows me knows that I am about as far from an environmentalist as they get–I’m much too lazy to recycle normally–but shouldn’t environmentally conscious people be able to reduce their environmental impact by getting rid of unwanted solicitation? Phone solicitation has no tangible environmental impact, but not only do the mailings waste paper, but they also lead to greater landfill usage and increased emissions and fuel costs from the transportation of that trash to landfills. Perhaps we should tax direct-mail advertisers to cover this cost instead of allowing people to opt-out? I’m sure if that proposal is made an opt-out by consumers will start sounding really appealing.

Economics

Local governments, as I have mentioned, are already stretched pretty thin… so why should they have to continue to bear the burden of hauling around this useless garbage? It may not be a huge cost, but with rising fuel costs every trip to the landfill becomes more and more burdensome.

Government and Lobbying

Is it really appropriate for the Postal Service to make such intimate ties with industry lobbying groups? The Direct Marketing Association gave a modest $800,000 to lobbying firms in 2007, but certainly is targeting specific individuals–including including $6,610 to Sen. Thomas R. Carper (chair of the Postal Services subcommittee).

Government agencies lobbying lawmakers constitutes not only a direct conflict of interests–by driving a wedge between voters’ interests and the actions of policymakers–but it also makes the government more inefficient. The Postal Service already enjoys a monopoly and by shaping legislation that controls the agency the Postal Service can prevent even reasonable democratic pressures from forcing it to become moderately more efficient.

Obviously impeding the ability of citizens to control branches of the government is particularly dangerous in an unwieldy bureaucracy where many decisions may already be made through processes that are far from transparent. The Postal Office may be a rather benign example, but if the Post Office is so efficient that only $250 million (just a guess) is wasted each year—why should we accept that?

The Bright Side

I’m stumped. This hurts everyone except a small number of postal employees who could probably find another job–even in today’s unstable economy. The big shipping firms always seem to be hiring and would probably gladly take workers with package handling experience.

So, I guess all that is left to say is that if we can’t get rid of our junk mail, we should all do something useful with it and raise up arms to make the government hear our demands for a “Do-Not-Mail” registry. Here’s a start–