&gt;micropayments. I disagree strongly, see Nick Szabo, Clay Shirky, and Hal Varian as to why not.<p>So my initial reaction to their arguments was that none of their complaints matter as long as it&#x27;s cheap enough. The fact that my water is metered doesn&#x27;t make me anxious about usage, because it&#x27;s too cheap to care.<p>But of course, that&#x27;s because water is fungible. I have no fear that the water company is going to start sending me expensive mineral water while I&#x27;m in the shower to run up my bill.<p>But the exact same forces that lead sites to ridiculous extremes of obnoxious advertising, are likely to push up their micro-costs high enough that people can&#x27;t ignore them, and most likely stop visiting.<p>The only way I can see it ever working is if there were some way to regulate the costs to avoid this. But I&#x27;m not sure there&#x27;s any way to do that for something so non-fungible.