If the USPC is anything similar to our Canada Post (I suspect there is little difference between the two), you’re eventually going to get the following story…

"Commercial advertisers have prepaid postage accounts these circulars, etc. are sent through. It would be illegal for us to NOT put this mail in your box. The individual postman as well, whether he/she sympathizes with you or not, cannot be asked to stop delivering the bulk mail advertisements, as it would be a direct refusal to perform duties he/she is required to do. And, because it is illegal for the Post Office to refuse delivery of any mail sent with the proper required postage, therefore the Post Office cannot create/keep/maintain a ‘Do Not Mail List.’"

Notice there is no provision in that explanation as to why junk mail is included as "legal mail," or as to why Private Property Law doesn’t apply to your own mailbox in the first place. Maybe the real question here is "Why does the Post Office seem to automatically accept such revenue in the first place?" After all, if they didn’t take the money for these things in advance, it would change the whole "legal" quality attached to junk mail.

Personally, this arrangement offends me, as it does so many others. Just because companies are willing to pay for the print and mail campaigns, that shouldn’t give them "automatic rights" to send me anything. I also think un-addressed mail shouldn’t be given the same "status" Advertisement

[ Shred and Go ] — legally or otherwise — as mail that has a specified recipient.

Theoretically, if a piece of mail is not addressed to anyone in my household, I should automatically have the right to tell the Post Office where to stick it.

In addition, I should be able to refuse addressed mail from any specific mailer as well, providing the mail is purely unsolicited, whether it be promotional or fanatical. Naturally, if I have an obligation to the person/party sending something, that right would have to be forfeit.

The "unsolicited" principle, technically, is already being applied to e-mail and other forms of communication — why wouldn’t it apply to one of the oldest forms?

Another thing I find disturbing about the whole "Bulk Mail" practice is that everyone involved knows full well:

1) What percentage of this type of mail ends up going straight to the trash, without being read.

2) What percentage of this type of mail ends up in the trash even when it is read.

3) That the ENTIRE run is destined for the trash, no matter what purpose it may serve anyone.

4) How much time and paid resources are wasted dealing with junk mail — collecting it, cleaning it off the property, cleaning it off the streets.

5) The volume of trash it amounts to.

At a time when the environmental impact of everything is being discussed at such length, you’d think bulk mail would have been frowned upon by now.

(My two cents.)