Could be. I think paid email is becoming slightly more popular with this recent economic downturn. I think my concern is how do we balance cost with spam prevention. Paying for infrastructure is important, and relay providers should be able to be compensated for their services, but I think my social interaction would be limited if I always had to think about money when chatting with people. I'd be way too concerned with how much I'm spending just to share my thoughts, make frens and build a network. I'd probably just stop using social media altogether. 

Do we just go back to cellphone minutes? 
How much does unlimited minutes cost?
Does an upfront cost model work. 

Sure operators can play with these models, but in the long term they will need to settle on some payment model that works. 

And finally I think lightning, at the moment, is just a bit too complicated for a non insignificant portion of the target nostr audience  

 Yeah I don't disagree. This might be the community to experiment with it though. I think more people here have that value for value mindset.

Hell, even us chatting right now. I'm taking time out of your day, your out of mine. But I'm replying to you because you are bringing up interesting points.

So we are paying each other with our time right now. 

But your idea of prepaid is also good. I'm prepaying acces to this network. You are right in that it has that genX "minutes" feel. But it might be worth it.

 

 Exactly, but we have the cost in time, plus the cost in some fungible asset we likely also exchanged time for.

I guess it matters where it goes, maybe like stackernews does it. Pay to post but I believe a portion or a majority goes to the poster, circular economy sort of pays for itself, just a matter of the risk/friction that limits spam. I suppose that could work but not sure relays could enforce monitoring payments essentially.