As a philatelist, you shouldn’t have much to say about dignity. You’re a friggin’ stamp collector.
In fact, since the Postal Service is an independent agency that takes no tax money and is supposed to support itself through revenue only, it MUST find ways to make money.
Of course, it helps if the USPS has an idea of just how popular a stamp will be.
Two cases in point: the Peanuts stamp (with WWI Flying Ace Snoopy) sold out rather quickly, and, for whatever strange reason, was never reprinted; on the other hand, the Simpsons stamps did not sell very well (probably because somebody decided to use Matt Groening’s own drawings of the characters rather than the “standardized” ones), and USPS lost quite a bit of money there. (At one point, I posted a list somewhere of all of the states with Springfield post offices, in case anybody wanted Springfield post marks for them.)
And when did the Universal Postal Union authorize international mail using stamps where the denomination is not printed on the stamp?
It was authorized before the first USPS Forever Stamps were issued.
The authorization was in response to the non-denominated “letter (of the alphabet)” rate-change stamps, but the same ruling applies to the Forever Stamps.