As I guess you know, my journey in nostr was not at all a bed of roses, especially at the beginning. I had to make my way through a lot of criticisms of all kinds for offering a free product while other providers charge (in my opinion) an exaggeratedly high cost for the same service.
As I have been reading your article, I have been modulating my opinion regarding your words. First I have taken it as the umpteenth attack to my approach with nostrcheck and its free service (not personal attack obviously 💜, but general to services like mine), but then I have been seeing how you focus it in the general concept of value for value. Here if we have points in common, I argue with my own experience.
99.99% of users in my service pay absolutely nothing at all. A small percentage pays me a few sats every time I release a new or improved product, another small percentage pays a few sats to register, we are talking about 10 people in total since I have nostrcheck 😅 (February 2023).
In my opinion value for value serves only in two situations.
1- You are famous, or your status in your community is high, in this case anything you do will have an intrinsic value for your audience, upload a picture of your ass and it will rain sats. Nothing to do or say here, this is not the debate.
2- Your users are people who understand the value of what you do, in my experience I have been paid only by "veteran" users in nostr who use my services, either in the form of donation or by zaps to a new release note of mine.
As you say, people do not know the value of things, so if you want to get a benefit from your work put a price, and yes, it is true, the higher the better, human beings do not stop being apes come to more, it's crappy but real as garlic 😂.
In short, I think it is a strictly cultural issue, society in general is not yet ready for it. Anyway I keep hope for it, society has advanced at a very fast pace in the last 50 years (in all senses), maybe in a few years we will all be a little more, as I would define it, adults.
What a pleasure it is to read well-structured things like this.
