> not a true alternative to Patreon

Translation: Not a paywall service.

Patreon is largely that function for people. The ability to just get donations existed long before. A tool to combine donations with access to exclusive stuff is the main focus of Patreon.

Personally, I see paywall-service as unfortunate because paywalls shouldn't exist. We need to find solutions (like patronage not tied to paywalls) to fund creative works that aren't restricted or freemium or whatever.

It seems to be working for The Guardian.

I think if something's valuable enough, someone will be willing to cover the cost, irrespective of whether it's also freely available.

The freerider-dilemma is a real thing. Even when it works in some cases (Wikipedia has large enough audience to get by on donations even when the percentage that donates is tiny), those are the exception.

Hence the efforts to build better coordination models (such as https://snowdrift.coop is doing).

> because paywalls shouldn't exist

Why not?

Because in principle, all the same amount of resources could fund the same work and yet a far greater audience could get that much greater value without paywalls.

Paywalls are a compromise that dramatically reduces the overall benefit a work has in order to get over the freerider problem that public goods face.

Basically: the PAY part isn't the problem, the WALL part is.

When you say “in principle,” what you mean is “ignoring all of the reasons people spend money.”

I mean that it's not an absolutely set necessary conclusion that stuff can't get funded equally well without paywalls. It might require different cultural norms, different ways to organize people or many other solutions, but IN PRINCIPLE the resources are available and could be available without paywalls.

And other than securing funding, there's nothing else positive about paywalls (although I'll admit there's potential arguments around ideas like people appreciating things more when they have to pay for them — things that still don't anywhere near outweigh all the negatives that paywalls have)

I don't see any reason why Liberapay couldn't deploy a recurring donation system like Patreon's.

They don't allow donations on content publication like patreon does, because it can be seen as a purchase.

They only allow reccuring donations.

It's their choice to not compete with Patreon. See FAQ: https://en.liberapay.com/about/faq

"What are the differences between Liberapay and other recurrent crowdfunding platforms like Patreon?

1. Liberapay is only for donations, meaning that transactions must not be linked to a contract nor a promise of recompense."

They do. It's in the title of the article.

What do you mean?? Liberapay supports solely recurring donations.