But not, if you write in a language that is not English but a native language to the country you are living in, like German, French, Spanish, Portugeese, Italy, Polish, …
Maybe with the exception of Spanish (Middle and South America) and French (Africa) you have a rather small audiance but still the same living costs like in the US.
If you audience is not the general public but a specialied audience like Technology, like Astrophysics, like historic cars, then you don't have the audience like an article about Lady Gaga or some general politics.
By breaking it down to pay per article vs. flat rate, you're missing the multiple alternative payment schemes possible with micropayments and massive scale. Just for starters think of the spotify model, where users are charged a flat rate, but their money is then paid out to artists based on the number of streams (or attention paid to each song).
But to your point about scamming, that is definitely a concern - but no more of a concern than aggregators and viral sites (think uproxx) are today.
I see any per article pay model as likely flawed anyways. Netflix and many others do well because flat rate. I'd hate if nytimes charged me per article. I'd likely go somewhere else