If agency to make a thing must be purchased the long term viability of the thing is suspect. The work becomes about payments not the thing.

If it’s a real human problem, humans will solve it. If it’s instigated due to someone with coins in their pocket to mesmerize lizard brains, it’s a synthetic solution that will vanish with the synthetic driver of the work; payments.

Just because paying for things is common throughout history does not mean it’s necessary or the best choice long term; see Netflix propping up payment flows churning out crap. It means meat based tape recorders simply LARP the past.