Just a thought for readers. We all get direct mail at home. My guess is that 80% of postal mail we receive every day is so-called junk mail. This junk consists of promotions for a variety of goods and services. My second guess is that about 1% of the junk is actually read.

Let's turn to spam. My email is about 70% spam. I never open junk email. And I can delete it faster than I can flip through my junk postal mail. Perhaps we are always going to be plagued by spam (just as we are always going to be plagued by junk mail)?

There are differences of course. It is rare if not impossible to get x-rated junk postal mail (or any such offensive postal mail).

I am not condoning spam, but suggesting that history might be on the side of the spammers. I get the feeling that whatever is done to eliminate it in terms of charging for email, spam filters or whatever, we will still have spam as part of our everyday life just as we continue to have junk postal mail.