My best answer to both is that humanity has not advanced to the stage where the government or (worse) un-appointed mail carriers, electronic or otherwise, who w

My best answer to both is that humanity has not advanced to the stage where the government or (worse) un-appointed mail carriers, electronic or otherwise, who were not selected by the market for their moderation skills or evenhandedness, can be given that kind of power. Instead, we make smaller forums and voluntarily submit ourselves to small scale powers like dang directly on the basis of their fairness and effectiveness. Could AT&T pull a dang out of their inner workings? Probably not... and definitely not the several thousand that would be necessary to limit spam.