In the beginning the Universe was created. This had made many people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. – Some Hoopy Frood

Once upon a time, a bunch of primates came down from the trees and now we have unstoppable climate change.

We let people become rich without eating them when they did bad things.

Some would say it was coming down from the trees.

We gave normies access to the internet at anytime.

Everyday we do not stop the profit incentive.

It's complicated.

In short, yes.

When we developed culture, it began the uncoupling of our abilities from the capacity of our brains. All other problems stem from this!

I think it was when we started organizing into walled cities surrounded by agricultural lands... that was really conditioning to a miserable way of life (for most, benefitting only a few) that carries through all the way to today.

We thought tech would improve our lives. And allowed companies to do anything they wanted for decades because don't want to hinder progress. And no regulation on companies purchases.

Their techno fascist overlords, not for consumption, just to keep the propaganda space up so their have a space to control the narrative.

You are conflating micropayments (sufficient to pay creators) with gateway monetization, which would need to be small enough you could still use the internet (lets say thousands of pages a month) but high eough to dissuade scraper bot operators. I am not sure such a price exists. Maybe for some bot operators, but the various AI companies have more money than all regular internet users.

I'm with you. My concern is that I haven't yet figured out how it's gonna be ruined for private consumers by corporate consumers yet, so can't know how to prepare lol.

Yeah, my shareware did real well - 800 hours in development, $500 in income across the past 30 years. Oh, and it cost me $400 for the compiler tools back then - so my net profit is rolling in at $0.12 per hour invested. Warning: $440 of that $500 came from an extreme niche product you're unlikely to find such a lucrative vein anymore. My game only netted $60 in return for 400 hours of development, but you could say I got the compiler "for free" off that niche product's income.

I've tried that before, but barely anyone donates. People expect the world for free.

It's the same way that taxes work. Rich people contribute more than poorer people, but everyone can use things funded by public money (parks, police, fire fighters, public transport, schools, health care outside the USA, etc).

I actually wonder if there should be more taxpayer-funded online services. Lemmy's development was partially funded by government money (NLNet Foundation via the European Commission) for example.