[meric]

Maybe it's not so good to have people who read more to vote with other people's money in a capitalistic market.

If a person is willing to sign up to unlimited just to read one authors books once a month, that means those books are that much more valuable.

For the person who reads a lot - if he wouldn't have gotten unlimited unless he got that much volume in reading material that means each of his views are worth less than the other guys.

Utility of page views are not equal.

[kbenson]

Maybe it's not, but maybe it is. It's not a foregone conclusion. We've had the subscription model (albeit with many middlemen) in television for a while. It allows for more niche content to survive, which is a benefit, but it can mean that people end up paying for things they don't like.

There are lots of incentives and motives at play in a system like this. For just about every downside there's probably an upside, the question is which outweighs the other (and that may be relative to the person). For example, the person who reads a lot isn't just extracting content for a reduced cost, they are also (possibly) rating a lot of books providing more accurate market info. Their reading, if more eclectic due to volume, may provide more support for more independent authors, allowing for more variety to exist (and be rated). Now, that is a lot of maybes, but marketplaces live off information, so increasing market information is an important task, and this structure may be one way to help with that.

[meric]

>> end up paying for things they don't like.

That's what's happening now - you've got low quality viewing clubs scamming from everyone else. And that's a certainty. Remember in information one false bit can introduce a lot of havoc.

You've got a lot of maybes - and I'm unconvinced. But I don't work in Amazon.

I do know if I got an unlimited membership I will not be happy my dollars are worth less because I take my time to enjoy my material - pausing and contemplating about it deeply. ( think poems ).

[kbenson]

> That's what's happening now - you've got low quality viewing clubs scamming from everyone else.

I'm not referring to that. That's fraud, and it's entirely negative. I'm referring to subsidizing niche content. For example, niche channels[1] and the leeway for more esoteric work to attempt to define a new market. If you believe people always know exactly what they want, then this isn't needed. If you believe people sometimes don't know they like something until they've been exposed to it (and it may not exist without the ability for niche markets to form), then this subsidization of niche content may been a good thing.

Like most things, it's probably somewhere in the middle. Allowing for niche content is how we experiment, but subsidizing too much means that we have a very inefficient market. Put another way, sometimes it may worth it to decrease market efficiency for current options slightly to incentivize the creation of new options in the market.

1: http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/03/23/471633490/episo...

[sbov]

In an unlimited subscription model you aren't voting with money, you're voting with whatever Amazon decides you're voting with, which is currently the maximum page you reach.