Yes, and there is a good solution to the problem of so many substack $5 subscriptions: you sell subscriptions in bundles just like in cable TV. The idea most people seem to have immediately of allowing creators to sell articles individually actually makes things worse not better.

If I’m a creator and people can buy my articles a la carte the suddenly lots of people who used to subscribe choose instead to skip a bunch of articles and just purchase a la carte and thus to achieve the same total revenue they have to up their prices. You end up with readers getting fewer articles per dollar, creators getting fewer views and probably less profit and everyone is actually worse off.

Just like with cable TV, counterintuitively, everyone is better off if you sell content in bundles not a la carte and what substack needs to do is the opposite and bundle many creators into single subscription packs.

I know it feels weird but if you work out the math it makes sense. Basically since each extra view is free it makes the most sense to sell them in large packages so you can take advantage of the fact that some people might value each article by X at 25c each and Y at 5c while others value X at 5c each and Y at 25c each. If you buy them seperately then X and Y both price at 25c each and only the viewers who value their pieces highly get to read. If you bundle the two everyone can read both X and Y and both X and Y get more total readers and more total revenue.

That's because -- assuming X and Y both publish 10 articles per month -- the total value to both the people who really like X and really like Y is $3. So suppose you set the bundle price at $2.75/month and -- assuming for simplicity there are 100 of each type -- both X and Y get $375/month from the bundle while selling seperately they could have at most made $250/month. Also X and Y now reach twice the audience and the subscribers all get articles worth $3 to them for $2.75 so literally everyone wins.

Yes it is more complicated to set it up correctly in the real world and convince creators of the advantages but it is the only solution and it also helps tackle the problem of echo chambers because there is no harm to bundling views on both sides of a subject.