You’re right — there is no “zero marginal cost”. I mentioned the “time preference of money” (AKA “interest”, or “dividends”) and risk — I should have added opportunity costs.
Still, the notion of 1% of users of a premium service cross-subsidizing the ordinary service for the other 99% of us does seem to be happening already. So long as the 1% (or whatever) is paying for the opportunity costs, interest, risk, etc. — then it would actually be a sound business model.
You’ve prompted me to think of another problem — the huge threshold effect between a “free” service and the paid premium service. In practice, there will probably have to be tiers of “premium” service — like there is with cable or satellite TV — which would result in a larger percentage of people paying something (just like the “good ole’ days”) and the 1% paying a lot more.
Your comment reminds me of an article I read on FR a month or so ago.
It had to do with First Class on airlines. Basically, someone proposed to make airlines more profitable, get rid of First Class, put in more “economy” seats and run more passengers that way.
But, IIRC, the airline industry said that just one paying First Class customer per flight usually made the entire flight profitable. The people who paid to fly First Class simply wanted the better experience and could and would pay for it. Profits from First Class passengers were then used to make coach more affordable, thus increasing the occupancy rate in Economy too.
The bottom line was that without First Class, it would be a lot more expensive to fly in Economy.