Re: [PLUG] [OT] Postage on EMail?

["William H. Magill" <magill@mcgillsociety.org>]

On 12 Mar, 2004, at 10:03, George Gallen wrote:
> So are there any exemptions from the fee? Say a grade school?
> or if sending to a .gov address, impovished countries trying
> to send real mail. Since they will not have an estamp, you now
> have created lots of emails back and forth to accept, thus
> tripling the # of emails.
>
> Should Maillists have lower fees?
>
> Non-profit orgs?
>
>  I see so many problems, and too much $ changing hands. Imagine
> the underworld wants to launder money, all they will need to
> do is send out a crap load of emails to people, spreading the
> money trail over thousands of accounts.

As a model, just look at the USPS (and International Postal Union) fee 
structure.

That particular model is based upon type of handling... aka service 
provided.

ANYBODY who sends first class mail pays the same thing. If you want to 
write to the President or Prime Minister, you put a first class stamp 
on it.

If you want to make certain it was delivered, you pay more for a 
Certified Delivery.

If you are a commercial mailer, you can use a Bulk Rate.

If you are a Non-Profit, you can use a Non-Profit bulk rate.

While you might think it is possible to launder money through 
micropayments, the math just isn't there. While it is possible for one 
individual to get rich over time by skimming the "rounding error" in 
interest calculations for many accounts, we are talking about a lot of 
accounts and a long time.

To launder the sums of money associated with organized crime, you are 
talking about HUGE amounts of money in very short times.

And more importantly, since all of this is electronic, there is no way 
to avoid the existence of audit trails.



T.T.F.N.
William H. Magill
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magill@mcgillsociety.org
magill@acm.org
magill@mac.com

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