Back in the early days of the internet I used to believe that monetization, or micropayments, was one of the key unsolved problems. Now I'm starting to wonder if it is the problem, that monetization is the root of all evil on the internet, such as advertising and limbic capitalism, social media and surveillance capitalism, the spammers and scammers and cryptocurrency pyramid schemes, the re-intermediation of new monopolies, and so on. Maybe it would be better if people were still working on free content for love not for money, and/or working on sites and apps that provide a useful service in return for a simple subscription or fee.