More of us should learn to do things the hard way more often, and to be familiar with less-convenient things. There are life-changing advantages to doing things the hard way at least some of the time.
For the user there is no way to pay the 0.0000001c that it takes to load a web page, for the web master there is no way to get paid the $10,000 it takes to serve the users. So we settled on advertising which can somewhat cover those costs since each individual add is basically worthless but an add campaign isn't.
One Satoshi is currently worth $0.000713.
Now make it work 10,000 times per day, for every page you visit, posts, news, short form content you scroll, long form video you watch. And multiply this by billions of users.
And once you've done that, how do you deal with spam, bots? How do you prevent invalid traffic? Fraudulent chargebacks? And how do you take quality into consideration (NYT prob want to charge more than my crappy personal blog)?
Transferring money is one small element of large and complex equation.
Advertising is not perfect, but it's the best alternative for a free and open web I have seen in my 30+ years online. Subscription works for large ticket items (and for the affluent minority), but it doesn't solve the other 95% of cases.
The problem is so complex that every action you take compounds and extends far beyond what you realize. Especially as we're living in such a connected world. Those ripples propagate through all the ponds we've connected together.
I don't think it's money, convenience, or any of that. I think it's just that the world is getting more and more complicated. That our actions and inactions have larger and larger effects. We've done a lot of good, but we've also made it a lot easier to feel the flapping of a butterfly's wings on the other side of the planet.
Citation needed.
You ask me to prove something essentially unprovable. Prove to me that most evil is created by people trying to do evil. It'll be equally as difficult to prove as you can't look in the minds of those doing evil. And you also can't trust what's coming out of their mouth.
I gave you some evidence in indirect form. I'll give you another saying: "for the greater good." There's no doubt people doing wrong want to justify their actions so that they do not view themselves as evil. So go ahead and look at your username and look at mine, then follow the line of logic
Looking back, I realize that started me on the path of not doing things the easy way. It was really hard a first, but over time it got easier. Most people in my line of work don't take accurate notes of what has transpired, don't keep a proper history of business exchanges and don't have clear agreements and contracts in place that spell out what is expected. Once I started this process of improving my life, I realized the more I made the effort to keep detailed track of everything I do/did, my life and business started to improve. I think you are right, taking to the most convenient path in life is a sure way to bring about pain and suffering.
Convenience is how we describe efficiency when it applies to non-classically “productive” endeavors. (Analogous to how we rebrand efficiency as sustainability when it applies to material and energy inputs.)
Self-deception is actually the root of all evil, not money nor convenience.
