I'm not OP, but a big part of the complaint is that one can't pay 10USD to read the issue that contains the article in question... absent the charity of someone else, one must pay -at minimum- nine times that amount. [0]

Ten bucks is pretty close to "I don't even need to think about it" money. Ninety is -for most folks- nowhere near that.

[0] <https://accounts.theatlantic.com/products>