Even though I cancel and unsubscribe from everything I can, 95% of what I receive in the mail is paper spam. If I didn't still receive paper paychecks, it'd be even higher.
I recognize there's value in having a postal system, but in practice almost everything I receive goes straight in the shredder. It's been taken over by spammers. It's another system that provides real value to a lot of people, but seems to only be financially sustainable because of advertising.
(US resident). I haven't gotten one piece of junk mail in nearly 15 years (except for a few generics addressed to "resident", but even they are uncommon). Before that it was weekly shiny newspaper type ads and letter spam by the pound with a tiny bit of real mail.
It was an accident but here is how I did it.
I had a temporary job back in early 2000's so I got a short term lease in a different city and opened a PO box at post office. Then I unexpectedly got called back and was slated to return but didn't and neglected to close the PO box and forward mail. I was a road warrior for next 5 or 6 years and seldom at permanent address, so I didn't bother putting in address change back to permanent residence. Instead I got an online mail service (I don't know if was this, but something like this https://www.postscanmail.com/) that opened and scanned mail and I'd read it in browser, download scans, and have important stuff physically forwarded to wherever I was at the time.
Finally that all ended and I got a real address and stopped the online mail receiving. For whatever reason something in that process completely stopped the junk mail to this day and it's wonderful.
It's actually the other way around. The junk mail is paying for your mailman to come by every day. The $.50 for a stamp doesn't cover the cost of delivering a letter.
And a large portion of those spam are malicious scams. Mail that say "confidential" , "open immediately" in red ink, fake credit cards, fake checks ect.
When I was a residence hall advisor in college, one of my roles was sorting the mail, which has been useful experience years later: basically, you can ignore anything sent as “PRESORTED STANDARD”: https://www.thebalancecareers.com/how-to-spot-junk-mail-with...
I recognize there's value in having a postal system, but in practice almost everything I receive goes straight in the shredder. It's been taken over by spammers. It's another system that provides real value to a lot of people, but seems to only be financially sustainable because of advertising.
Where's the Plan for this Spam?