Writes Chin Fang: Early last week, I had an opportunity to see Burt Blumert. During our conversation about your book Speaking of Liberty, I mentioned to him in passing our recent spam reduction experience and how our case really echos what you elaborated in your mises.org article “Why The State Is Different“. Burt immediately encouraged me to tell you about our experience, providing, if nothing else, a real-life case that supports your views.
I actually happened to run across the article this past New Year’s Eve. What caught my eye specifically was the fact that you cited the CAN-SPAM Law to illustrate your points. I run a Web hosting business, and the onslaught of spam has always, and still has, had a direct impact on my business. It goes without saying, I read your article with intense interest. Indeed, at least to us, anti-spam laws, whether state or federal, have not had any beneficial impact at all. None of the spam laws passed in previous years have helped anything. In fact, I would venture to say that rather than ebbing, the flow of spam has steadily increased, as spammers become more aggressive and more daring.
Spammers almost never send out mail directly from their own computers. Most often they spoof email addresses, infect other computers with a mass mailing worms and viruses, and exploit “spam friendly” mail servers. For the sender, the spams are nearly free advertisements. Most of the cost is borne by the recipient’s end. Overflowed disk space, clogged email boxes, and overloaded servers can all be caused by the relentless flow of incoming spam. It should be evident to any sensible person that none of the above could be easily policed by a central entity. In addition, we incurred customer loss due to spam problems, the manpower cost for the time taken to placate complaining customers, unexpected server operational difficulties caused by spam attacks, and the frustration that comes from receiving something you never wanted ad nauseum.
As a struggling entrepreneur, I couldn’t wait for laws or law enforcement to come to my “rescue”, neither could my customers. Given the flood of spam that we faced, and the limited resources at our disposal, I was forced to devote significant resources of our business to spam reduction for both ourselves and our customers. There was a risk in making such a decision. Web hosting is a fiercely competitive business. To stay in this business, constant service improvement is a must. Email, as important as it is nowadays, is not the main focus of a hosting provider — as publishing web pages and sending email are two different mechanisms, and a hosting provider strives to do well in the former category.
Nevertheless, my hunch was that by putting off other service improvement tasks and focusing on spam reduction, the pay-off would be much better. I made the decision based on incomplete information (mainly observation of the impact of spam to “our” business), but I decided to risk our resources (and capital) to this endeavor, to “chance it”, so to speak. I had no assurance that the outcome of my decision would be good, although luckily it turned out to be fruitful. In fact, quite a few customers were so pleased with the outcome, they wrote in notes of profuse thanks within hours after our announcement.
To me, our case reflects, in a small way, how the “market” plays out for everyone’s benefit. I hope this note will be helpful to you in case anyone raises questions about the December article of yours in particular, or your views in general. It’s also my token “thanks” for giving me the opportunity and pleasure of reading both your book and the aforementioned article.
