Pay Per Click: 1 Radical Way to Stop the Theft of Marginal Utility

The Law of the Mirror: Gossen in the 21st Century

In the 19th century, Hermann Heinrich Gossen taught us a fundamental truth: prosperity arises when we distribute our scarce resources—time and attention—in such a way that the last unit of effort yields equal satisfaction everywhere.

Today, that balance is entirely lost. We live in a digital narcosis. The “free click” is the greatest lie of this century. Because the click costs nothing, it no longer possesses any intrinsic value. We are drowning in a “Gringo’s No Man’s Land,” where anonymity reigns, and social restraints have completely vanished.

Calvin 2.0: Freedom Through Limitation

True freedom is no “free lunch.” Freedom without identity is a farce; it is the vestibule of hell. To save our autonomy, we must return to the discipline of Calvin 2.0. Not as religious dogma, but as a social necessity: fettered commitment (geboeide gebondenheid).

My proposal is simple yet radical:

• Pay-Per-Click: Every click on the internet costs €2.
• Digital Identity: Every IP address is inextricably linked to a passport.

The moment a click is no longer free, mental sobriety emerges. The “drooling masses” will be forced into a cost-benefit analysis. Is this insult, this distraction, or this ideological “woke” stimulus worth €2 to me? The answer will often be “no.” That silence is where recovery begins.

“Papa” Back in Pole Position

The government and Big Tech have sabotaged the role of the father. “Papa AI” and the “Atheist Pastor” (the system-world) have hijacked upbringing, replacing observation with ideology. In education, the “woke-spread” has become an invasive weed stifling the human scale.

We must return to the lab model. As Philips learned during the Video 2000 debacle, technical superiority means nothing without discipline and a realistic connection to the market. We must develop, test, and mature before we roll out. We must stop treating our society as an involuntary test lab for algorithms. Upbringing must return to the “turf”—to the raw reality of observation and necessary sacrifice.

The “Stavast” and A Flight of Curlews

On the political plush, noise currently reigns. But there is hope in Neo-Realism. A man of stavast (steadfastness), like Joost Eerdmans, understands that you build a foundation with patience, not with “quickies.” He dares to hold a mirror to the citizen: “Easy come, easy go.”

We are seeing a movement reminiscent of Maarten ‘t Hart’s A Flight of Curlews: the human being wrestling free from stifling frameworks and the fever of isolation, finally landing in the raw observation of nature. The citizen is pulling the plug themselves, choosing the camper, the small journey, and the grassroots initiative. The indifference we see now is not apathy, but a protective wall. It is a refusal to remain fuel for the megalomaniacs.

The blueprint is there. The dike has been reinforced by fettered commitment. The invoice and the passport are ready. Who dares to join us in the return to the turf?