[maximus_01]

Sure but that's what happens when you cut distribution costs to zero (i.e. the internet). It's pretty indisputable that most content online is garbage. But there is also a lot of super high quality information out there in all sorts of fields, more than there was when distribution costs were high.

There is a prevailing attitude amongst some that they aren't willing to pay for any info - and they hold that as basically some sort of weird sacred belief. I think those people, even if they came across the best piece of content ever written, would be unwilling to pay 10c for it (pre or post). I'm just saying I find that odd.

[ndriscoll]

It's that distribution costs are zero, and there's more extremely high quality "content" out there offered entirely for free than anyone has time to digest. Interested in physics? You can read Feynman for free. Interested in chemistry? MIT OCW has you covered with a dozen courses, probably 450 hours of lectures. Or if you want computer science, you can watch lectures from people like Sipser! Want to really get serious about a science? There's the arXiv.

I've also already got dozens of hardcover books that I'll probably never even get through as it is. Mostly acquired from thrift stores while I was in university.

Then there's the classics. It'd take years to get through just the very best highlights of the public domain literature, religious texts, and philosophy. Project Gutenberg has 75,000 books. My wife spent at least months (maybe years? I don't remember) just reading Proust (at the end she said it wasn't worth it).

This is without even needing to get into the fact that frankly I don't see copyright on things older than me or especially older than my parents as valid at this point. Most modern works I'd be interested in qualifies for that treatment. The authors are retired or dead.

This is all also speaking to pure consumerism as ways to pass idle time. I've got instruments to play, a computer to program/tinker with, an endless list of possible home improvements, and a family to spend time with.

I don't think I'm the only one who ends up in this state. There's a whole meme about people having hundreds of games in their steam backlog.

The best piece of content ever written is just not a compelling hook. Nothing in the content industry is. First of all it's an entirely generic description: the best X ever written is not going to be described as "content". That's like calling it "copy", and immediately betrays its low value/the way the author thinks of it.

So yeah generic "content" is going to be a very hard if not impossible sell.

[maximus_01]

I get all that. Still doesn't mean there isn't some things worth paying for that are created in real time and aren't out of copyright. Something like Stratechery, as an example most people would be familiar with.

Picking on my use of the word content is a bit silly. I think you know what I meant. Use whatever word you want there - best book, best textbook, whatever.