Be the Spare Change You Want to See In The World
May 9, 2012

Justin Wolfe (who wrote this and this for us) entered into a Bold New Digital Venture the other day. (Alert TechCrunch!) He will email you things regularly for the price of $2.22 a month.

I thought that was a really quite reasonable price to pay for some entertainment in my inbox, so I signed up. (Even though this newsletter, for instance, is undercutting his business model, by being free! Although sometimes the Awl newsletter is "worthless," so the price is about right.)

"A small personal pet peeve of mine is when people 'like' or RT or fav or whatever something that is for sale, then don’t buy it," Awl pal Emily Gould wrote yesterday, in endorsing Justin's project. This is totally sensible, as she runs a subscription business (of fine books! I also subscribe!).

The responses she got on Tumblr were... pretty wild! They're not really printable here, or else this will not make it to your inbox? Due to profanity! They were like this:

• "I love it when middle class [...] are all like LOOK HOW INEXPENSIVE IT IS. Yeah cuz you can afford food normally you stupid [...]."

• And "You want me to buy your [...]? Go fix the corrupt system that means I can’t first. Oh, it’s quite hard isn’t it? Exactly, shut the [...] up."

• And "if you are paying me a salary, [...], then by all means, I will buy [...]. Otherwise [...]."
You get the picture. I kind of love this vehemence! It's a remarkably vehement vehemence. Emily responded really thoughtfully, I thought:I do think we should “fix the corrupt system” that makes a person feel this upset by the suggestion that, instead of enjoying someone’s artwork and writing for free, s/he ought now to consider paying $2/month to enjoy it. But I don’t think the answer is "everything should be free, so that no one has to feel poor."(Yes, cf: Gillian Welch.) There are, obviously, Attention Economy issues here, and also the old tired "either you're the product or the customer" maxims apply. (And there are totally times when you should get paid in attention!) But there's something more: if you're not the customer, and you're also not a vendor, what are you? (Well, you're a free spirit, at least, so bless you.) How are we going to have our all-barter, post-capitalist, totally equitable economy if you have nothing in the marketplace that isn't consumable except for the cost of $0? (Sidebar: "Delete your Tumblr.") At least let us pay you in, like, vegetables or something! If I can't pay you in anything, then what can I give you but attention? That all this class warfare erupted over something that costs $2.22 a month is pretty... weird. I have a suspicion it wasn't really about $2 a month.

Asking to get paid is both a lively experiment and also, duh, an assertion of value. Justin Wolfe is pegging his value at all of 7 cents per customer per month. You don't have to pay him that. You can applaud or ignore from the sidelines. He just says that's the current going rate for his labor. So what's yours?  —Choire