The reason I find it absolutely crazy is that you can't stop people from sending you messages. You can blacklist them (or use a whitelist) of course, but that's still "after" the offense. What happens if a millionaire prankster sends you 20 messages some day? You have t cough up something because of his prank? I find it unreasonable.
But I don't find paying more for calling a cellphone objectionable. A wireless call requires more resources and money for telco company than a wired one (they put wires in houses decades ago and have forgot about it (the maintenance cost is not huge), but they have to actively setup new towers for different locations in cities and change the old ones). It costs them more, so they charge more and I pay more.
> ... you can't stop people from sending you messages
I did. I grew weary of paying for text messages that I have no interest in receiving, so I simply called AT&T and told them to turn off SMS entirely. Since 95% of my phone messaging is via iMessage, and the other 5% is via free Google Voice SMS, I'm not giving up anything at all by turning off my carrier's SMS. I'm not interested in giving a single SMS-related penny to the telecom oligopoly.
Back when cell phones weren't ubiquitous, I once worked at a start-up where one of the really rich technical leads thought it was unfair that he got charged when people called him on his cell phone. I guess he thought that the peons who could only afford land lines were supposed to subsidize him. Which I could have forgiven as plain old selfishness, but he also constantly complained about how unfair society was to the poor.
That specific combination of attributes still bugs me.
