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I don't see it as very competitive since it's trivial for someone to press subscribe. SA must really be way better than John Nerst in some way, but we can't see it as readers, because I believe that way is his friends who also have attention and who have money. This is the openish secret that is kept from us -- hey, it's only fair that someone who gets to tell everyone what to think, or think about at least, gets his privacy!
How do you square this with the law of large numbers?
Wow, who are these rich friends and how can I get money off them, because they certainly never paid me to go read Scott! I demand my share of the swag!
You are sounding like "It's so unfair those guys got to be big name rich famous rockstars and my band didn't, we're every bit as good as they are!" Well, yeah, that's how it goes.
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This presupposes you see things you subscribed to and things you could potentially subscribe to on even footing, which is no longer the case the moment you subscribe to anything. You see more of what you subscribe to, that's what subscription is.
Path dependency.
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