Yes, agree that fixed-price deals with publishers / aggregators are tenable. Spotify works for people, for example.

The original argument was essentially that there was a minimum transaction size that was cognitively viable at scale.

I understand it's about cognitive costs. What I propose makes the cognitive load of actual monetary payment a single decision per month. I pay X. Let the aggregator and the publishers automatically figure out every little fractional detail.

If the objective of paying is to make the web better and reward quality content, you don't want two pages of clickbait to pay more than one page of watergate-level investigative reporting.

And any automated system to tell clickbait from quality journalism will incentivise people to trick it.

So at the very least, you need a refund button.

they could do it like medium “claps”.

No claps, no money.

Clap as long as you want.

At the end of each month your $10 is divided up by the number of claps you gave.

And if this isn’t for you, then go with ads or be paywalled.

An upvote button and a flag button I think might do the trick.

Well, Spotify works for the consumer. For the musicians, it's mostly advertising, not a useful source of income.