The evil little imperfection in the U.S. Mail system
Do people have the right to refuse something that someone wants to give them? If a person walks up to you on the street with a flyer, or a sample of a product, say cigarettes or cereal, and they want you to take it, is it within your rights to say no and walk on?
Most of us would say of course it is.
In the above photo, Economy-Arcade-Man-About-Town Lyle McBride refuses a faux-leaflet offered by an aggressive leafleteer, thereby demonstrating the natural-law and universal right of people everywhere to not be given things against their will.
Would you be surprised if, right when you were waving away a leaflet, like Lyle McBride, a policeman stepped in and said, "Sorry, sir or maam, you can't refuse that--you're legally required to take anything that guy wants to give you."
Most of us would be!
Above is a package I got from AOL in November of 2005. Of course I didn't want it
But that's exactly what happens every day when the U.S. Post office delivers you mail. You are essentially forced to take the leaflet. It doesn't matter if you don't want it, if you have deep objections to the content of what is sent, or even if you have already tried to get off the sender's list. The mail system forces it on you and now it's your responsiblity to dispose of it, which will cost you time, or money or both. (Garbage is not yet fully metered by bulk or weight, but in Seattle you can opt for larger or smaller garbabe containers that cost varying amounts of money. If you make a special trip to the dump, your garbage is metered by weight. Clearly, Garbage removal is heading slowly toward a metered system.)
If you look closely at the bottom of our trash can, you will see the AOL package they sent us.
The result of this policy is massive waste. The 17 billion catalogs (many of which are shipped to willing customers and would still be shipped under the proposed change) shipped in US each year use enough wood to build a 6 foot high fence around the Earth 7 times, according to Environtal Defense. Sending catalogs, cds, and credit card offers to people that immediately toss them therefore costs the environment dearly, but also costs the recipients and even the senders money that could be used for meet real needs or desires. (I.e, I'm not against catalogs, and this change wouldn't hurt them but actually help them to identify the people that are interested). The Post Office could change all this quickly, by instituting a double box system. Anything I don't want, I put in the return box and the sender has pay the Post Office--at a nice profit to them- for carrying it back home. It's our right to do as Lyle McBride did to me--wave my leaflet away--and it's a good thing this web site doesnt have audio!