Sure, and a dolphin isn't a tiger. But if I can increase the revenues of a site that I'm getting free access to without any real hassle, I'm happy to. I'd like

Sure, and a dolphin isn't a tiger. But if I can increase the revenues of a site that I'm getting free access to without any real hassle, I'm happy to. I'd like people who are benefiting my life to get compensated. Two reasons - first, it's a good thing in a general sense for people to get compensated for their efforts and value they deliver. Second, generally having people get paid for delivering a good product makes them more likely to deliver it. Who knows how much the most HN Amazon commissions could be - a couple hundred bucks a month? But that's a couple grand a year, which would be enough to build and sustain a pretty good YCombinator library of technical and business books. And again, it's no skin off my back, so why not?