alt Hacker NewsHow do you explain public utilities? No one has any issue with the fact that flicking a light switch in your home is technically a micropayment, as it consumes extra electricity that comes out in your monthly bill.
I would venture to say that what consumers don't like about micropayments is any combination of the following:
(1) It's a pain in the ass to provide payment info most places, and comes with the looming paranoia that your data is going to be abused;
(2) It's viscerally disgusting when e.g. AAA video game developers expect you not to notice the difference between $100 for marginal extra content, and 100 micropayment charges of $1 for the same amount of marginal extra content;
(3) It's an infohazard to the average person to inform them exactly how much they're spending on each thing in their life, because it tempts them toward a culturally validated budgetary anorexia.
Public utilities avoid (1) because it's a one-time signup with trusted vendors for years of service, they avoid (2) because utilities are priced (somewhat) rationally in nationally standardized ways, and they avoid (3) because utility bills can only get so itemized.
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It's also the incentive structure that's different. E.g. I can choose to buy cheaper LED lights to reduce my electricity costs because the interests of lightbulb companies are mostly orthogonal to the (usage-based) interests of the utility providers.
Micro-payments are more akin to a hypothetical world in which the lightbulb company gets paid via my electricity bill; now they have an incentive to sell incandescents over LEDs. Similar to how micro-payment (and advertising) based news companies have an incentive to sell click-bait, because they're getting paid based on usage rather than a flat fee.
Is usage based billing the same as micropayments? In any case, I have one utility company with lines connected to my house, so I put up with whatever they want to bill me. Very different marketplace than news papers.
For utilities its tolerated because there is a massive difference in cost between servicing different users of different usage patterns. There is no way to have a fixed monthly bill for utilities in a way that is fair. If usage didn't incur such huge costs it would be a fixed bill like internet and phone plans.
While providing extra TV channels costs nothing. Even if you are a power user who watches 10x the TV as a normal person, it doesn't cost the company anything extra.