[betaclass]

You haven't demonstrated convincingly that she is wrong. At best you've explained why ad blockers don't serve the short-term interests of those who consume the NYTimes. Your mistake is that you extrapolate that the short-term interests of consumers are aligned with their long-term interests.

I suggest you read Garrett Hardin's writings about The Tragedy of the Commons, so you can see how one's short-term and long-term interests are not always aligned and that finding mechanisms to curtail one's own and others' short-term interests might be in most's long-term interests. You might also be interested in Elinor Ostram's work on managing the commons, for which she won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.

(Of course examples of short- and long-term interests not being aligned abound -- high tobacco use, high alcohol use, high-cholesterol diets, etc.)

I think the key question is whether NYTimes' readers' long-term interests are closely aligned with the NYTimes' long-term interests. I suspect they are (disclosure: I pay monthly for online access). Many of us believe the NYTimes produces quality content, primarily news reporting, that's expensive to produce. And we realize if we want to have long-term access to it, the NYTimes needs to generate income by various means, which can include subscriptions and advertising.

Furthermore, your use of the term "customer" for those who neither subscribe nor view the ads is problematic and defies the common definition of "customer".

[hackuser]

Interesting points. One observation I'd make: The New York Times is not the Commons; it's not a shared public good like a public park. It's a business, owned by some people in particular who are responsible for it.

They do provide a public good, but so do GE, Hacker News, politicians, and a hot dog vendor. (I happen to particularly value the NY Times' goods.)

[betaclass]

I was not claiming the NYTimes is a commons. Rather I was using the commons as an example of a) how one's short- and long-term interests are not always aligned, and b) how mechanisms that curtail one's own short-term interests can benefit one's long-term interests.