The Internet is the exact opposite of what it was meant to be. Instead of giving efficient access to high-quality information, it gives inefficient access to watered down, spread-down, low-quality interaction. Site after site, query after query, we all continuously pay a little tax with our time.
This is a sad result of incentives which ruined RSS, semantic web, and the original purpose of the Internet: to effectively share and communicate information globally.
Advertising (including propaganda and surveillance) and copyright are major forces in that ruination - not to say they don't have legitimate uses and benefits, but their concentrated financial interests conquered the domain. It's a kind of colonialism of public (cyber)space and collective mind.
Tax is an apt analogy, since the power lies in the control of "media" in the most general sense, to force itself in every transaction between things and people.
I believe "dis-intermediation" will help improve the free and direct flow of information. That is, to reduce the middle layers - the gate keepers, the walled gardens, intercepts (lawful or not), filters - by re-decentralizing the net.
Now, that I have some money, I am willing to pay for subscriptions, because that would mean high quality content, not because of ads. However, there were times in my life when I barely had what to eat and I barely afforded to pay for the Internet connection and paying subscriptions was the last things I was willing to do.
I suppose many of the 7 billion people living on Earth are poor enough to not afford paying for subscription.