That is an understatement. The company is paying one cent for ten words.
However it’s not the rate, but the premise of the business that’s the real problem. Some writing is worth nothing, no matter how many words and how much time is put into it.
The idea that you can subject art and creativity to mass market factory manufacturing is unfortunate.
Ultimately you end up with cheap rubbish - much like so much of what is mass produced in our ultra-capitalist society. It's likely that more than half of what is produced, shipped and sold globally is unnecessary, wasteful and of no significant lasting value ie ultimately, a mere exploitation of resources and each other.
We could be putting our human and natural resource capital to better use, through meaningful work of so many kinds. There’s a huge mismatch between what we need and what we create/produce.
Either we have a values-based society - and I am referring to values of a circular, regenerative economy, with sustainability as our central concept, or will destroy our planet and each other.
Those are our 21st century options.
Arguably, engaging in exploitative business practice, whether as producers, investors or consumers, makes us part of the problem — unless we have no choice, in which case we are victims of the problem.
I have a choice to write on Medium. It’s a platform I value, and I benefit personally from expressing myself, from the process and thus the service offered by Medium. My relationship with Medium is thus mutually beneficial.
But the day I start writing rubbish just to be PAID, is the day I SELLOUT and become part of the problem.
Please note that it’s a different matter when we allow ourselves to be exploited because we have no choice — as is the case with many workers around the world.
Our world needs new paradigms, and we need to talk about this and act within our powers and spheres of influence to change the culture that allows for the pathetic economic exploitation and carelessness which is our destructive norm.
Resistance isn’t futile. Humans are capable of change. It is our adaptibility which got us this far through millenia. Change or die. I am not referring to death via authoritarianism but death via the destruction of our habitat and civilisation, both inevitable if we don’t reform our economic cultural norms.
