From Dizzynomics:
Digital scarcity
Here’s a thought experiment.
What happens if and when all the digital services we have become accusstomed to getting for free experience a system-wide revenue slump (perhaps due to a sudden dearth of advertising dollars on the back of extreme market fragmentation that makes advertising on platforms much less appealing) and are forced to start charging for services instead?
How would such a sudden system-wide digital scarcity affect users? How would users choose to allocate their modest salaries to digital services if they had to pay for them? Who would win and who would lose? What would be considered vital and what would be considered a luxury? To what degree would such an event constitute a major inflationary shock?
Thinking about myself, I would pay only for the following services and only if certain conditions were met:
1) a neutral search engine (one that doesn’t use my data to better target advertising at me and doesn’t rank commercial searches I might make according to the dollars corporates have passed on to the search engine).
2) my email, providing it was cryptographically secure.
3) one instant messenger app.
4) one social media site (that didn’t target advertising at me. It would probably be Twitter, not Facebook or Linkedin).
5) up to 10 different news sites. I already pay for subs for the New York Times, New Scientist, WSJ, Vanity Fair. The FT is a given. I would pay for Reuters, some Bloomberg content (can’t see myself living without access to Matt Levine), perhaps the Daily Mail (sometimes you need a brain rest), im presuming BBC would remain free because of the license, and I’d also pay for the Guardian. The remainder I would pick randomly. I’d pay for an archive service.
6) would I pay for Youtube? Probably not. If we are going down the pay route i would pay for video content distributed via formal channels. I would not pay for selfie tutorials or “viral” pics of cats. Id expect those could be sent to me via the other channels I pay for, and be hosted on different sites. Would i pay to have access to a video broadcast network that I can post content to? Probably not. Only on a case specific basis....MUCH MORE
