Paywall? We Don't Need No Stinkin' Paywall!

This is what "No Paywall" looks like. And I intend to keep it that way. I challenge my esteemed colleagues to do the same.

Hello, Paid Subscriber. Whoever you are, Thank you, but, um, actually we are not doing that.

As you can see from the pink slip that Stripe has given me, I could not take your money using their gate way even if I wanted to. (Oh, and I am excited to have crossed the 2K mark in subscribers. WOO HOO. Can you help even more? Thanks)

Not that I do not need money! Of course I do. Telling people that the US (and every other country) is not actually in a treaty obligation with the UN or any of its parts does not get you paid very well.

In fact, I can tell you from very real, very personal experience that running a private practice of Medicine and Psychiatry to which people literally showed up from around the world is a LOT more lucrative! A LOT.

But when General Bert and I (see below) realized that we had to add our strategic logical capacities to the warm hearted, but tactical, rather than strategic, actions of our team, we closed the practice and shifted from treating the [mind and] body to the Body Politic.

Major General Albert N. Stubblebine III (US Army, Deceased) and the happiest woman in the entire world, possibly universe.

Do I need support for this work? Of course. You can send that support to me at
Rima Laibow, MD
3769 E Calle Fernando
Tucson AZ 85716.

It is most appreciated.
But you gave out your address……

Yeah, the people who assassinated General Bert and who have tried to accomplish the same end know perfectly well where I live and where I might travel. You are not going to try to hurt me. They are (they have), so I am not worried about you and I refuse to be cowed by them.

Back to paywalls.

Substack makes it easy to set up a paywall. Just a couple of clicks and 91% of everything that comes in is yours.

9% and all the data is theirs. All the data? Well, yes. Stripe has been demanding that the people whose donations they are processing must be “transparent” to them. And the people whose accounts those donations go into must be “transparent” to them. And the people with whom you and your target for donation have banking relationships must be “transparent” as well since Stipe takes all of that information and does whatever the hell it wants with it.

So, draw a stripe over Stripe, thank you very much.

What about other gateways? Turns out they are all intrusive, some to greater and some to lesser degrees. I do not want that for me and I do not want it for you.

I have some highly accomplished and esteemed colleagues here on Substack and I am honored to be among them. I would ask them to trust their supporters more and distrust the background financial representative of The Man and drop the paywall (whether for current articles or archives) and open all their outstanding, brilliant, magnificently researched work to the public and ask them to pay their fair share, whatever they determine that to be, in contributions.

Your work, Dear Colleagues, is incredibly valuable and your research is astonishing. But I urge you to open your Stacks and let the light of representative democracy, based in intelligent, informed choice-making, have a better chance to assert itself.

We need support, but we really do not need no stinkin’ PayWall.

And you, Dear Readers, need to do your fair share in this intellectual and cognitive fair share, pay your fare, system.

I trust you. And I believe firmly that Democracy Dies Behind a Paywall.