I agree completely. I wrote an article called "Dangling the carrot," about this very thing. Having waited for a while to finally be writing on the Medium platform it's discouraging that irrespective of how good the article or how many claps it receives, I live in a country that doesn't have Stripe (mediums only payment option) so until that happens, I can't join the MPP.
Please feel free to read my article called "Dangling the carrot."