People are bad judges of value. Companies push subscriptions because people always over-susbcribe for the value they get. But even if they don't, just by virtue

People are bad judges of value. Companies push subscriptions because people always over-susbcribe for the value they get. But even if they don't, just by virtue of a prepaid subscription, the sunk cost makes people consume more than they would if it were a metered service. In fact the addition issue is tightly related to the subscription model. For Google and Facebook it's because the "subscription" is free. For Netflix and other consumptions it's because it's paid upfront. If every piece of content required a conscious decision of paying, people would automatically value their consumption properly and stop using.