[rescue] Spam (was: Perverse Question)

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

On Sun, Jun 08, 2003 at 12:15:24AM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> Yeah.  So far, the BEST of the Congress-generated "anti"-spam bills I've
> heard of all give any spammer a free license to spam me *at least* once
> *from each throwaway account and fictitious company they have*.  And
> you'd hope that by now, any Congress that didn't have big business's arm
> jammed up its ass operating the levers would know better than to let
> Microsoft help write laws about ANYTHING related to computers.

Amen.

I think maybe we need to be active in attacking congress critters with
the beast they are creating.  

The problem with our leadership in the house and senate is they have
insulated themselves from the pain of bad decisions and public bitching.

Fix that, and I bet things change.

Big battle there though.

> Having the DMA help write an anti-spam bill has got to be one of THE
> classic cases of putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.

Yep.  Same with M$ having ANYTHING to do with standards or computer
laws.

> > Tell you the truth, I don't just want to stop net-spam, I was *ALL*
> > unsolicited advertising to stop.
> 
> I am SO with you on that.

The other day I ventured into Walmart.  Besides remembering why I hate
the place inside of 30 seconds, they now have @#$%@# televisions all
over the place advertising the store.

I mean damn, I'm *IN* the freakin' store, so can't I be left alone now?

> > Do you realize how much we pay every day to support all forms of
> > spamming?  
> 
> I think I have a pretty good ballpark idea.  Got actual numbers?

I hear a lot of numbers of course, so I don't know.  But I've read that
advertising costs range from a few percent to over 75% of the cost of
the product.

Mass production and high technology has greatly reduced the costs
to produce goods and services, even after accounting for necessary
overhead, inflation, and personnel.

Advertising and executive salaries, plus executive stupidity, are a huge
portion of everything you buy now.

Costs on almost everything should actually be less now than it was 30
years ago.

For entertainment, Google for breakdowns of how much it costs for
companies to do things like this:

* process a payment
* answer the phone
* answer a letter you write
* send you a bill

It's pretty amazing.  Read that, and you'll know why no one wants to
give you a cell phone plan for $15.

Insurance rates and other crap have caused problems too, but I was
amazed when reading just how much advertising costs factors in.  In some
products, that is almost *ALL* of the product cost.

Case in point: Honda recently spent 606 takes on a single commercial,
and quite a few million dollars.  That's enough money to be noticeable
in the price tag of every car sold this year.

I mean... sure the commercials look neat, but do we need them,
especially when you consider how much they add to the sticker price of
the cars?



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