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The thing with email is that it does not require much of a time commitment from even the sender. Older methods of communication like a phone call or in person
by dkokelley 19y ago
The thing with email is that it does not require much of a time commitment from even the sender.
Older methods of communication like a phone call or in person meeting require the person who initiates the conversation to invest some time in getting what they want from the conversation.
Let's assume that the majority of the emails received are primarily for the sender's benefit (ex. "please tell me what you think about x for my project" "Could you do an interview for y?"). These messages should get the lowest priority and could even be deleted if they can't be answered within a week or two.
The next set of emails are of mutual benefit to the sender and receiver (such as conversations between clients and companies, friends to friends, and productive internal corporate communication).
The final category is emails for the receiver's sole benefit. Automatically generated emails should be in this category, if they are to inform you that your credit card may have been compromised. Most emails here don't require a response from the receiver. Spam and marketing materials do not fall into this category.
Of course in each category you could drill down by priority depending on the situation.
- mleonhard 19y agoIf we had a good way to send and receive money through the Internet then it might make sense to charge a fee to accept an incoming email. One would have a whitelist of senders who get automatic refunds. Everyone else will be spending real money to send you email. A tiny "postage" fee might also solve spam.
- dkokelley 19y agoI think that you might be on to something with the fee in the sense that you could apply a solicitation surcharge to unapproved senders. It would only work if it was guaranteed to get your response, otherwise it's not worth it. What about a separate email address (or even domain) for premium email? You could set the fee to receive an email (and adjust it to restrict flow to what you can handle), and refund people who don't get a response from you within x period of time. Certain senders could be excluded from paying. The senders could even choose how much to pay (These emails were sent without payment. Those were.) You then publish only that address on your site/blog/whatever, and give your personal address to friends and family. This idea needs a lot of digging into to really see if it's viable but I like the concept. The potential downside is that the government might like the idea of email tax.