Micropayments would allow me to pay $1 for those articles viewed, or maybe even $5. The difference is that this would not require me to do anything else besides viewing the page, just like on the old prestel networks. But there the &#x27;central authority&#x27; was the phone company and the whole tracking saga means that if you want to hit a large enough fraction of the ad blocker users that you&#x27;ll have to take that scenario into account.<p>Wired figures that if you read any of their content at all you owe them $50 &#x2F; year and that&#x27;s an &#x27;all you can eat&#x27; figure. So if you read all the articles they have that&#x27;s a bargain, if you read only one then you might as well skip that one and the next and take your s.o. out for dinner.<p>A micropayment system would reduce the need for such calculations, it would allow a pay-as-you-go model which is far more effective for impulse buys such as articles.