> I have not received a single unsolicited call from a reputable company.
Yet you receive 20 spam calls a day through a known company, namely your phone provider. The way to solve this is to forcibly draft the providers into this; for example: any time you receive a spam call, you can dial a special *# number after hanging up. This message will have the effect of crediting $5 on your next phone bill, and allows the provider to recoup that loss from the originating provider, etc, all the way to the caller itself. The first company in the chain not cooperating in this scheme is out $5 per spam call through their network.
Of course, something like this needs the usual protection against abuse, but that's equally manageable.
The backtrack chain of accountability has to apply to each telco transiting a given call. We can argue about how much that penalty should be (I'd prefer a heftier one), and details over how to address abuse and whatnot.
California has (recently?) introduced a bonding requirement of telemarketers. I'd like to see a far stiffer bonding obligation to telecoms providers, probably in the deca-to-mega millions amounts.
As that's bonding, the rate is based on risk (business assessment plus history), and would likely be a small fraction of the total amount for legitimate providers, but would be substantial for bad-actors, and the Surety (bond provider) would be strongly incentivised to limit their risk through bad behaviour on the part of the Principal (bonded entity).
Yet you receive 20 spam calls a day through a known company, namely your phone provider. The way to solve this is to forcibly draft the providers into this; for example: any time you receive a spam call, you can dial a special *# number after hanging up. This message will have the effect of crediting $5 on your next phone bill, and allows the provider to recoup that loss from the originating provider, etc, all the way to the caller itself. The first company in the chain not cooperating in this scheme is out $5 per spam call through their network.
Of course, something like this needs the usual protection against abuse, but that's equally manageable.