The cost is the transaction fee.
Discussion
"If they pay for the stamps they can send you as many letters with nonsense that they want"
What if I make it harder for those types of letter to be delivered to me?
BUT THEY PAID FOR THE STAMPS! YOU CAN'T STOP THEM FROM BEING DELIVERED!
This is a bad argument.
Yes, that’s why you have a block size limit.
Stop creating metaphors unrelated to Bitcoin as a P2P computer network and learn how it works instead.
Okay, here's a metaphor for you, my mempool policy filters 84+byte OP_RETURN data carrier entries. I advocate for very large hash producers (and distributors) to utilize DATUM to filter spam. And think this "if they paid it's valid" nonsense is childish and anyone with that opinion severely damages their credibility as an intelligent reasoned expert.
Yeah, I can still embed data with multisigs and your filter will be completely clueless.
How about that?
What do you mean "completely useless?" Yes a fence won't stop a tank but it will will stop the more common foot traffic. This isn't a hard concept to grasp. Deterrents are not panacea. No one claims "My node filter will stop ALL on chain spam!"
Please stop pretending that is the claim.