TO THE conventional wisdom that there are but two things in life that are certain -- death and taxes -- junk mail should be added to create a trifecta. Some say that cockroaches will carry on after all other life forms have expired on earth. That is wrong; direct mail marketers will be the last ones standing.
One of the great frustrations about returning from break is resuming the daily grind of classes. A close second is the explosion in your mailbox of circulars, catalogs and credit card solicitations. Adding insult to injury this year is the time you must waste trudging to the post office for those pesky two-cent "make-up" stamps in order to use your left over 37-cent stamps. The postage rate hike would be tolerable if it weren't for the sneaking suspicion that we hapless and helpless individuals are being fleeced to subsidize the huge direct-mail industry. Their lobbyists keep bulk rates low while the general public pays through the roof. More on that later. For now, just consider the terrible environmental and social costs junk mail imposes.
According to the Privacy Times -- a newsletter devoted to personal privacy law -- Americans received an average of 553 junk mail pieces per person in 1997, or 4.5 million tons for the entire country. Unless one employs servants and secretaries, the same source estimates that each of us will spend approximately eight months of our lives acting as uncompensated sorting machines -- separating junk mail from legitimate letters.
Aside from the human cost, 100 million trees are cut down each year to create junk mail, which in turn fills three percent of the nation's landfill space, according to the Native Forest Network advocacy group. Even if recipients threw all their junk mail in the recycling bin, the process still entails the expenditure of costly energy resources and the emission of filthy sludge into water streams. It's enough to make a tree-hugger want to commit eco-terrorism.
Individuals can theoretically opt out of receiving junk mail by contacting registries such as the Direct Marketing Association's Mail Preference Service. However, St. John's University law professor Jeff Sovern has noted in the Washington Law Review that these registries are multifarious, decentralized, non-binding and useless. On top of all that, they are run by direct marketers themselves, which is like posting the proverbial fox on guard duty.
One might wonder why direct mailers would continue to harass individuals who have expressed an utter lack of interest in their marketing. It is, after all, their dime that they are wasting. But perhaps for direct mailers a dime is not a dime.
Most media services and content are subsidized by advertising. Broadcast radio and television and most Internet Web sites are free, courtesy of commercial sponsors. Even the magazines and newspapers you pay for are subsidized. You can bet your bottom dollar that the 35 cents you pay for The Washington Post is far less than what it costs to produce and print that copy. Thus, junk mail would be justifiable -- welcome, even -- if it helped pay for our nation's postal service. The dirty little secret is actually the opposite. Welcome to the world of special interests and government.
Testifying in 2003 before the Postal Rate Commission, the U.S. Postal Service's own former chief financial officer stated that first-class postage rates subsidize bulk mail service. In fact, the USPS first noted this problem some twenty years ago. But through the years, the bulk mail industry has hired lobbyists to prevent them from paying their fair share for postage -- lobbyists like the infamous Jack Abramoff, who paid the wife of a former congressional staffer for the aide's help in scuttling a bulk rate increase.
Just last month, Sen. Kit Bond, R-Mo., renewed efforts to prohibit first-class postage from subsidizing bulk rate service. However, when faced with fierce opposition from the senator from L.L. Bean -- Susan Collins, R.-Maine -- Bond relented on his bill. (Full disclosure: Bond was not batting for the little people, but for Missouri-based Hallmark, whose business indirectly depends on affordable first-class postage.)
So the next time your mailbox explodes into a sea of snail-mail "spam," what can you do? Opting out of junk mail lists does not seem to work, and bulk-mail lobbyists keep blocking postage rate reform. Still, do not despair. Do not get mad. Get even. Mark your junk mail as undeliverable (who, after all, is "Current Resident?") and send it back. Make the USPS eat the cost of its own cockamamie price structure.
Eric Wang's column appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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