alt Hacker News> nor would the very large number of free-as-in-beer services that make up a large part of what makes the internet useful to people.
Whatever replaced them could hardly be worse than the shit we currently have. I refuse to believe we live in a global maximum.
You could be right, but I personally am much more comfortable paying with a few milliseconds of my attention for news/email/short comedy clips/timezone conversion/etc. than even a single cent of actual money. And it has to be one or the other -- right?