Last week's column was about ideas and specifically about Vik Rubenfeld's idea for aggregating electronic micropayments — payments we'd be making, presumably, to keep the creaky old World Wide Web functioning as an information transferal device. And while Vik himself — programmer, TV producer, raconteur — was universally praised, almost nobody liked his idea. Everybody's a critic. But the nature of their criticism tells us a lot about ourselves and even offers up some answers for how to make the Web pay its way.

It turns out, the readers said most clearly, that nobody wants to pay to read Web pages, no matter what the payment scheme. One reader cleverly called it the "death of a thousand cuts." This attitude is, of course, delusional, because we pay for everything, just not always in money. We pay in time, for example. You are spending small chunks of your waning life reading these very words. Whether it is worth your time depends a tiny bit on what I do and very much on what are your alternative uses for this time. I may beat out tooth flossing, but I hardly think many people would choose this column over sleep if they were tired.

So we pay, if only with our time. And there is a market in buying our time. Radio and television have been doing it for years. They sell ads against our time and make a good living doing it. The basis of that good living, interestingly, is the fact that our time is so cheap. Proctor and Gamble gets us for only a few cents per hour.

If people are unwilling to pay for Web content, they are slightly more willing to pay for Web access. Most of us do that already by paying our Internet Service Providers, except the clever ISPs don't pay me. Some readers thought that's exactly what they should do, though. They suggested running the Internet like a cable TV network where the ISPs were like cable companies paying service fees to the Web sites used by their members. The only problem is that most ISPs aren't making money as it is, so there really isn't much to share.

Even if we ignore the idea of what we are paying for, most readers hated the payment process, itself. It would be an invasion of privacy, they argued, because some central billing authority would know exactly where you had gone and when. What would they do with that information? Sell it? How dare they! Forget that there are outfits doing just that right now even without our paying to play, outfits watching our every mouse click and selling that information to businesses big and small. But PAYING to be so monitored is even a greater indignity.

Then there is the payment system, itself, which not only knows precisely how much time we spent last month at bigboobies.com, it then dips into our bank accounts and credit cards to pay for that time. How do we keep the system from cheating us? If I inadvertently click a link I didn't mean to click, am I still charged? What if I don't like the place I go? Can I get my money back? What can I do if the system charges me 10 times for every site I visit? Do I have to pay for pop-up windows if I don't want them to pop up? Can I contest my bill? Is it even worth my time to do so?

Some readers, on the other hand, think we are already there, already in command of payment systems that can do the job. PayPal aggregates charges, we're told, though it doesn't aggregate payments. Should I be worried about that? eBay doesn't charge you until you owe it $10, just like Vik suggested. Maybe we could aggregate Web charges on our telephone bills like eCharge does, or put it in our ISP bill like iPin. Microcreditcard.com claims to be the very embodiment of Vik's idea. And don't forget about Commission Junction.

There are many micropayment plans out there, most of them toiling in the wilderness and unappreciated. All of them are fighting against the three trends that I have been writing about here — invasion of privacy, possible fraud or financial manipulation, and the underlying fact that people resent having to pay for content they feel should be free. These are tough issues to confront and tougher still to defeat. But heck, I've had a whole week to think about these things, so let's do it.

First, let's find a way of paying that won't invade our privacy, won't allow us to be cheated, and operates at the absolutely lowest possible cost. This would have to be a system that had no settlement costs at all and hence no settlement system. Imagine a banking system without banks. What kind of system would that be? One based entirely on cash. If we all carried cash and used it to pay for everything, well, there would be no banks, no credit cards, no audit trails, no checks, no way of knowing exactly whose dollar this is that paid for access to that Web site. And since the back end system doesn't exist, it also doesn't take any time to operate. An all-cash system operates in real-time with everyone paying — and being paid — instantly. Hey, this is a great idea! Of course, I didn't think of it. Blame Robert Hettinga of the Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation.

Hettinga's idea is a simple one — that we pay for everything with, well, money. Whether the payments are micro or enormous, if there is no settlement system, there is no transaction cost. All you need is a pocketful of electronic money. The money is the key here, because while Hettinga's system has no banks, it sure has a mint — a place where the money is made. In this case, the money is made by a big computer that spits out zillions of individual encryption keys that represent fractions of a cent. Each of these money blips is a unique individual, minted in exchange for nasty old paper, plastic, or metal money, or maybe in exchange for part of your house or for the copyright on this week's column. Hettinga's plan allows anyone to securitize anything, making us all completely liquid and putting everything instantly and forever in play. And the money belongs solely to the bearer. Even Bill Gates is worth only as many blips as he can carry.

The key, of course, is making all those little bits of money truly individual, but Hettinga swears it is already being done. He will drive the tax authorities crazy, of course, but I like that. Pay attention to this guy, because he's turning this idea into a serious business.

Now that we have the promise of a payment system, how do we pay for Web content?

Advertising isn't the sole answer. We need something else, too. But people won't accept anything that tracks their Web usage or risks double- or triple-charging them. Heck, people are generally unwilling to be charged at all. So don't charge them. The content payment solution that might actually work comes from the self-proclaimed "The Famous Brett Watson" — he of "the thousand cuts" — who notes that while people resent being charged, they might happily pay on a voluntary basis. Credit risk isn't an issue when payment is voluntary. Pay if you like! Pay what you like! Maybe this column is worthless to you this week, but last week was worth a buck. Is this any way to run an industry? Why yes it is. It's how waiters, bellhops, and street performers have always made a living — a system that encourages good service.

We've just invented the electronic tip jar and I'm proposing we slam one down on every webpage, including this one.