One fee, shared by attention

Most of what we read online is paid for by advertising, and advertising is a strange way for anyone to fund good work.

It rewards whatever holds the biggest crowd for longest, which tends to mean broader, louder and safer. Or it rewards the narrow corner of readers who are about to buy something. And it is wasteful, because nobody can know in advance which piece will work, so much of the money is spent on guesses, and only a thin slice reaches the person who made the thing.

The obvious fix is for readers to pay directly, the way they pay for bread. Charge a tiny sum per article and let the reader choose. It has been tried and it keeps stalling, for two reasons. Something has to move very small amounts of money cheaply. And the reader has to decide, over and over, whether the next paragraph is worth a coin. That is tiring enough that most people simply stop.

There is a simpler shape. One modest monthly fee that opens a whole group of independent sites. Read as much as you like, wherever you like, with nothing in the way. At the end of the month, the pool is divided in proportion to where your reading actually went. The site that signed you up keeps a share for bringing you in, so every member has a reason to sign readers up.

Nothing to weigh at the moment of reading, nothing to count beyond a visit. And the incentives finally line up. The person paying is the person reading, so the work gets made for them.