[bit_savager]

> "I'm not reading your site if you paywall it. There are too many other free resources that are just as good if not better."

This really indicates what our economy has become. Everybody talks about the two business models companies employ; ad-supported or fee-based. These are the selling models Occasionally, piracy is discussed. While it may be a business model, piracy obviously isn't a selling model. It is a consumer consumption model though.

We do have another consumption model that is more difficult to see because it does not include any explicit agreement between a company and a consumer. This emerges from companies that begin using loss-leading (money-losing) models to gain customers, initially. They then expect that they will generate a network effect or be able to rely on inertia (what Malcolm Gladwell generalizes as "sludge") to retain those customers when they later change their model to something profitable. This fails because there is always another business trying something similar. Each of these companies has the same global reach and customers can switch easily between them so they just hop from one unsustainable bargain to the next optimizing their own costs. They are disloyal leeches. I don't say that to be derogatory; it just seems the best description.

[togs]

> They are disloyal leeches.

Consumers are mercenary, as are companies, and that’s the rational way to be in an economy of scale, where loyalty is “brand loyalty”. If consumers aren’t loyal, it’s a failure of the company’s marketing.

[j-bos]

- They are disloyal leeches.

Implies there ever was, or should have been any loyalty. Should a child be loyal to a stranger offering candy? Let's even grant the stranger purest of intentions. Should they?

I personally am not friends with any corporation, and I'd laugh at any suggestion of the inverse. It's business, the few businesses that demonstrate and earn trust will have loyalty, but it's all uphill. Because after, they're just strangers.

[matheusmoreira]

Would you read my comment if I paywalled it? Seriously doubt it.

It's not like these little journal articles are the ultimate truth we all need to read. It's just a guy publishing his views on some topic. Views likely biased by his stakeholders at that. Views likely manipulated by PR firms if not government entities. Essentially propaganda advancing some narrative. When governments want people to view propaganda, they pay for an aircraft to airdrop leaflets. Yet we're expected to pay for the privilege of consuming their information?

Truth is on the internet if they want people to read their views they have to actively go out there and post them. They have to pay money and/or time to make it happen. They don't get to demand payment because opinions are infinite. Paid journals are a relic of the old world and its media where they had printing presses that made literal newspapers with columns on them and that was the only way to get a mass audience. That's over now. They need to deal with that fact or go bankrupt.

Hell, I don't even care about the articles posted here most of the time. I come here for the comments. I want to know what the people on this site have to say. The submitted article is just a conversation starter really. Anything notable or important in it will certainly be quoted here.