> the goal should be to ensure that anyone who wants to do a thing can, with as few third party requirements as possible.
This is a good starting point, but if you have no barriers then you get abuse problems which is why email is terrible. I remember being horrified in the 90s about attempts to charge 1 cent per email. Now I long for a world where that actually happened.
I’m pretty sure I spend less than 5 minutes a week dealing with physical spam mail. I have a recycling bin right next to where the mail arrives and most days are 15 seconds of “these go into that bin unopened” and sometimes I have to open an envelope and glance at it to see if it’s something relevant to me.
Even with the best spam filtering on email, I’m well over 5 minutes a week of distraction from it.
You're paying that cent, but in the form of endless ads hijacking your consciousness.
Ironically, the amount of effort I expend dealing with spam from the postal service is much larger than the amount of effort I expend dealing with email.