It's Xmas season

I can tell it is now officially the Christmas season...Why? Cause my mailbox is filling up with all those ridiculous catalogs and other junk mail! I can't believe it when I think of all the money these companies are spending shot-gunning this tripe out to everybody and anybody. Given how poorly they are targetting me (most of this junk I could care less about), they are grossly wasting their marketing dollars. Sure the traditional hit rate on direct mail is 1%, so a 99% failure rate is I guess acceptable. But when you think about it, our entire society is essentially collaborating to create an industry or sub-culture dedicated to wasting 99% of the money involved in the process!

Think about it. Local optimization run amok. In the big picture view, it's stupid. We all know it. Yet it continues.

My opinion is: let's avoid the middle-man. Simply send all my catalogs directly to my land-fill, please.