> I would rephrase #1 as, "a way for content creators to monetize what they make, other than running ads." Certainly credit cards exist, but (for several reason

> I would rephrase #1 as, "a way for content creators to monetize what they make, other than running ads." Certainly credit cards exist, but (for several reasons) people won't whip out their CC to buy a funny cat video on someone's website. Patreon is one solution, but signing up to support a new creator is kind of a heavyweight operation. The solutions you mention all work just fine--lots of artists are making money on Bandcamp and Patreon. The only reason you think they don't work fine is that they haven't scaled well for gigantic centralized entities. But I have to ask, why, as a user, would we want gigantic centralized entities? That's the absolute antithesis of what I want.