The userbase would balk. Private subreddits are already a feature. Asking users to pay money for something they currently use for free would tick off power user

The userbase would balk. Private subreddits are already a feature. Asking users to pay money for something they currently use for free would tick off power users who have ungodly influence among the users. I think I get what you're talking about, but Reddit is not like Github enough to pull that off.