Sure, but remove any mention of micro-payments from my comment and the point is unchanged. I would consider it a minor and optional detail, at least compared to

Sure, but remove any mention of micro-payments from my comment and the point is unchanged. I would consider it a minor and optional detail, at least compared to people caring enough about the quality of journalism that hacks would have no audience. I did call that utopian after all. But just because there is a big distance between here and there doesn't mean there's not a "there" there, and if people cared enough, they would find a way. Yes, it's vague, but this island seems to be sinking, the next one looks better to me; that's all I can say from here. People liking instant gratification over attention spans and smart long-term decisions is not something to adapt to, much less exploit, it's something that we will either deal with, or something that will deal with us. And in regards to micro-payments I think it would also help if anonymity wasn't under attack so much. When people seriously drive towards abolishing cash in the physical world, of course introducing the equivalent of cash on the web can't really work; I'm not saying it would be necessarily trivial otherwise, but there's a really hostile climate towards it on top of it. It's also a political and social problem, not just a technical one.