Nick Szabo  🔑

Yes, I'm using a useful definition from the consumers point of view. The fact is once I send a per-msg-billed text message, I *will* end up transfering $ to the phone company to pay for it. From my point of view, that's a microtransaction, implemented via a per-month bill.

That's seems to be the problem with your writing on this subject: you're using somewhat arbitrary definitions that don't map to actual user experience. That's not useful.

Utility bills are the best example I can think of. Nearly universally accepted and the individual 'transactions' (turning on a closet light for 1-2 minutes, opening the refrigerator door once) can be truly tiny.

People next to never actually pay money when they open the frig or turn on a light. They typically pay a bill once a month. You only metaphorically think of them as small transactions because electricity, unlike most things people pay for online, is fungible.

P.S. next to nobody can tell you off top of head actual cost, within reasonable error bars, that they incur when the open a frig or turn on a light. That level of granularity is useless for creating a more efficient market. Typing it into a calculator would cost more than saved.

It's actually critical to an efficient market because unless it is individually charged, there is no tie to efficient usage. People (sometimes) think about opening the refrigerator less or turning off lights, etc. because of the direct charge.

...and the amount of thought they put into knowing that is proportional to the expected cost. Comes to mind a non-technical boss I had ages ago, who told me to make sure I turned the heaters off at the end of the day because they cost a dollar an hour. He was right.