Give his service over the years and Erick’s and everyone else’s here, I think the idea of having a subscription to this blog, or a micropayment system, is one whose time has come.

Everyone here does valuable work. I spent more than 5 hours the other day just answering responses in my own blog entry. I know Erick and Neil and YOU and many others here spend a lot of time. Well, there should be some, ahem – VALUE attached to that value.

There can be discounts for regular contributors, or even a revenue-sharing mechanism put in place. But I think it’s well past the time people started discussing it.

If someone gets banned, you know when you received their subscription and you can refund it. Or you can say: “If you get banned, no refunds. Period.” Say that right up front.

But that’s also why a micropayment system works well. You pay each time, there’s nothing upfront, and if you get banned, you get banned.

Waaaaaaaaaaaaay back before most of us were adults, there was a newfangled thing called “Cable TV” that appeared in some people’s homes with walnut-colored set top boxes with a dozen or so buttons on them.

When they first appeared, I remember a vivid and heated conversation about “paying for television” taking place in my grandfather’s house. After about 3 minutes he slammed his foot down on the floor shook his fist at everyone and said: “I’d die before I paid a nickel for television. It’s all garbage. I’d just as soon throw the damn boxes out into the garden.”

Flash forward a year and a half and we drive up to Massachusetts for Christmas…

We walk into the living room and my grandfather is sitting in his leather chair munching on a box of Bugles, and there’s a new television with a new remote, and a set top box, and he’s watching Louis Rukeyser….on Cable TV.

I was a just a child and I looked at the set-top box and said: “But Dad, he said…” Everybody turned various shades of purple, anticipating the blast wave. And my grandfather got up from his chair and came over and gave me a BIG hug and said: “Well, I change my mind, sometimes, Alex. Now go help your father unload the car.”

And that was that.

I’m just asking a question now that I’ve asked in the past. I appreciate everyone’s comments even though I know I would subscribe if there was a payment system. There are very few places I would subscribe to but Redstate is one of them.

“This was one of my Kowalski questions that I asked a few years ago and it’s meant as an informal barometer of opinion that is in no way connected to anything or anyone official at Redstate. I came up with the question in response to a discussion I saw someplace else and decided to reprise the question after having asked it several years ago. I still think Neil and Erick work too cheap. And I would subscribe to this online publication. Thank you for your attention.”