I'm sick of playing games with email because some anti-spam fascist dictates how we are allowed to use email.
Erm, all you need to do (if you actually need to set up your own SMTP server) is make sure your SMTP server is set up to only relay depending on your requirements, and test it a few times. If you're still not 100% confident in your work, then most anti-spamming organisations provide a test mechanism to test your server. It's not difficult. With all Windows mailservers I've used, it takes about 10 minutes tops to configure and test. If that is too difficult or too much time for you, you shouldn't be setting up your own server.
I hate receiving spam but it takes a few hours per year
What used to be my primary mail domain (legolas.com), on average used to receive about 200 spams a day (and about 100 non-spam). The problem is a LOT bigger than you think. I remembering reading that over (way over, but I don't remember the exact figure) 50% of the world's email was junk mail. How many emails do you think are sent every day?
Or to when one ISP blocks email from another ISP for an arbitrary reason
This does suck. As does a recent tactic by virgin.net by blocking all attachments as an anti-virus measure.
And on top of all of that most filters just drop emails so you can never be sure something was delivered in the first place
Hmm. Not in my experience.
