[001sky]

Paid email? Regardless of the merits of the idea here, its worth looking at history. The idea "if I could charge 1 cent for every e-mail" is the most scalable business model. But every Mckinsey consultant and two-bit MBA has dreamed of this "Goose" that lays the golden egg, since the dawn of the internet. So has every tax-seeking government. But it has not happened. There is a deep seeded respect online for 0 marginal cost communication. Large enough to even hold off the shadowy forces of very powerful monied interests. At least to date. The idea is in a certain way disrespectful to the foundations of online culture. LIke asking, what if PG charged for every post on HN? This is not passing judgement on the idea itself, more raising context, unintended consequences and other latent forces at play. In other words: overcoming this inertia, would be part of the challenge.