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Today I noticed there are a bunch of different places that you can pay for a service or a capability and a bunch of different ways to pay. I counted three. I don’t know why I never noticed this before. I mean, I noticed, I just never put them together. Here is what I concluded:

First, we have places that you pay for membership and get unlimited usage. A gym membership, for example. I can walk into my neighborhood gym, sign up, and be there all day and use as many machines as I want for as long as I want.

Second, there are pay per use places. These places include laundromats, carnivals, and do-it-yourself car washes. At these places, I must pay upfront for each item I use. And then I can only use it once.

Third, there are capabilities I have to pay for in accordance with the block of time I used them. I can either pay upfront for a set time, such as with prostitution (or so I’ve heard), or pay the time of your usage multiplied by a certain rate, such as at pool halls.

But what if we flipped the script and shuffled what we do, where we do it, and how we pay for it? What if we set a standard method of paying for a service or capability?

Imagine if you had to join a membership to do your laundry. Would you do it? What if it meant you could use whatever washer for as long as you want and as often as you want?

Picture a gym that was free to join, but had token operated equipment. What if for every 20 reps you had to put in another token? What if you had to carry around a bag of tokens in order to do a full workout?

Is there a reason why we have three different methods of paying for utility and services? Is it cultural or strictly economic? Laundromat owners probably don’t want people paying a flat fee for usage as it would wear out their machines, but what about the others?

I don’t know why I think about these things. I think I am bored.