It is an interesting idea, Lucinda. I love its simplicity and transparency - though as we know, those are two taboo concepts for smoke and mirrors Medium.

I think one problem for them is that this would effectively make their role that of a hands-off conduit - they provide the platform and take a cut of the transaction price, and we sell our wares to readers.

But I think they see their role instead as taking our wares on deposit, with no guarantee, and then selling them to users for as much value as they can extract in terms of continued or new subs.

They then come back to us and say 'We sold you article for 1 cent', or '7 dollars'.

They want to be the ones setting the price, based on the subscription revenue each article is deemed to have brought in, rather than the readers deciding it..

Hence the complicated formulae.

Another problem (for them) with allotting unused 'clap cents' as bonuses based on existing clap counts is that this would tend to favour the 'echo chamber' crowd who have many high-clapping writers among their readership.

And as we know, Tony despises the echo chamber losers, to such an extent that he goes out of his way to insult the very people he was inviting to be the public face of the company he 'runs' just a few months ago at Medium Day.