Building on the Medium Model
Folks, the Medium Partnership model is a good thing. While I’ve been known to raise questions about the value of a clap, the appropriate number of claps, and the near inevitability of clap inflation (I almost said inflammation but that would have been a distraction). This is potentially good in a far bigger way than just making money. Ok, I’m making some money on the Partnership but not a lot and that is ok, too. It dawned on me what Ev was saying in the announcement of the Partnership program but I was still struggling with implications of it when I read Is Medium Membership Worth It? by John Metta. The key point that John made was Ev Williams bluntly saying that the whole Partnership program was to “save us from advertising . .”. It needed to be directly pointed out and I got it.
Up to that point I was most concerned with all the predominantly younger writers trying to make make it in a world that has no interest, and less each day, in paying them so they can develop their skills. While writing lots everyday is a very important thing it doesn’t do you much good if no one reads and then reacts to what you write. And there is a critical point in which even a small payment is a tremendous reward. While some will go on to make a living from writing the odds of doing that in our present ad driven, capitalist media world are tiny. To the extent that they exist at all the distortions of capturing eyeballs guarantees endless listicles or careful advertising copy. We desperately need millions of thoughtful and interesting voices adding to the emerging Endless Conversation (Members Only Story).
The bigger thing that we can help build from the Medium Partnership model is the new economy based on intellectual property producing new wealth and new income based on our data assets. Capitalism was based on goods and only secondarily on services. Wealth existed in capital assets via ownership of goods and real estate. The problems of racism, xenophobia, and the concept of divine right to own everything left most of the people on this planet with wage slavery as the only means of gaining any of those capital assets. Information is the new value and the new asset. It is also very difficult to lock up and prevent others from having any share because it is produced by people doing what people do. But the old systems in their corporate and governmental form are desperately trying to lock up data that has been taken from people without any recompense. The next stage is to prevent people from securing their data from government and corporate confiscation. Take a look at Enrique Dans writings and specifically this article on the global identity crisis.
Setting up a viable subscription and payment system for any writer willing to invest a small monthly membership is a tremendously original step toward that newer mcu fairer economy. It’s definitely not time to quit your day job but this is a potentially viable alternative that would combine with Universal Basic Income to create a new, intellectually valuable world by eliminating the propaganda of advertising as tool for the distortions of wealth in the old economic model.
So this is not just a way to make some money but a way to shape the future world that is struggling to be born. And that world will replace the old world of kleptocracy that is killing this planet. That’s a pretty big step for one small program. I am definitely in . . .
