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@ Laeserin
2025-05-06 05:07:04
I'm actually sort of okay with that, as I'm a fren of freemium models, since the Church runs the same way and that's worked for millenia.
The people who pay (through subscriptions and/or zaps) are the most influential users and everything is fitted to their tastes. They tend to pay a lot, at the beginning, but the more people join them, the lower the price per member is.
They're like the group that meets every Thursday and Saturday night at the pub for burgers and poker. The pub owner knows who exactly is paying to keep the lights on, and nobody else may sit at their table.
Universal licenses, like taxes, are actually an attempt to get away from the freemium model that markets tend to naturally fall into, so that a minority doesn't get to be overly influential. Freemium is at the opposite end of democracy. It's more like aristocracy.
I'm okay with that, tho. Some people are naturally aristocratic, and some simply aren't. And it's not purely about money, as there are very poor people who end up influential because of volunteer work they do, or being unusually productive or generous, and stuff. It's more like a personality type. And there are very wealthy people who refuse to pay for anything they can get free.
Humans fall into the pareto principle and markets follow along. Leadership is always earned in some way.