The usual way people have tried to solve the microtransactions problem is through aggregation/centralization. eg, everyone who wants to gives HN $K/mo, and then HN distributes that money proportionally to sites clicked.
Unfortunately, I think the incentives are too loose. Users aren't obligated in any way to pay for links; as usual, humans aren't charitable enough to actually sustain public goods voluntarily. Secondly, the aggregator site isn't under strong incentives to pass on revenues (which applies equally to ads).
And the usual way people have tried to solve the solved-microtransactions-problem is by gaming the system, which is exactly the history and outcome of the current situation.
The 'microtransactions problem' using 'aggregation/centralization' you're describing would be readily identified as the newspaper industry a few decades ago. Nowadays you have to wrap it up in a healthy dose of cryptocurrency scamming, federated networking bullshit, and other huckster lingo to make it seem like a radical approach.
Newspaper companies, which allowed patrons to exchange a few cents for a daily source of vital information curated by professionals across a wide array of expertise, distributed money received in patronage towards the journalists, editors, fact-checkers, you name it.
Of course, that isn't the full story. What newspaper companies did was become the mouthpiece of the government and eliminate any useful information, filled nearly all the pages to the brim with huge obnoxious ads with little text remaining, started some perverse incentives with journalist pay forcing the smart ones to abandon ship a long time ago, and helped build a mass culture of frantic zombies who cannot tell the difference between fact and fiction, parroting whatever they read as a sort of social lubricant, and trained to resort to looking on a page for the local weather information yesterday that could be far more accurately sourced now by looking up to see if there are clouds above.
Good riddance to 'content creators.' Don't let the door hit you on the way out, and HN will never receive a cent of my money. :D
Unfortunately, I think the incentives are too loose. Users aren't obligated in any way to pay for links; as usual, humans aren't charitable enough to actually sustain public goods voluntarily. Secondly, the aggregator site isn't under strong incentives to pass on revenues (which applies equally to ads).