> The routers can then decide how the data is charged, or if the balance isn't closed somehow, just start dropping packets coming from that link.

At this point you're essentially arguing that network neutrality is bad and what we really need is the opposite of that.

Realize that in your system, it's Verizon and Comcast who have all the power. They're sitting on millions of customers who have no other network path to them, so they would get to charge monopoly prices to anybody who wants to communicate with them, and the customers themselves have no other choice because the incumbent ISP has a local monopoly (or the sort of totally inadequate competition that DSL is now putting forth against cable/fiber).

And if you're paying for sending data but not for receiving it, it would give ISPs all the more incentive to keep doing and increase doing the things like selling highly asymmetric connections that upload much slower than they download, which make it harder to create competitive P2P networks.

> So again, the main business model is altruism with no way to actually monetize the transport layer.

How is the network not already monetized? Is there some alternative to Verizon and Comcast where you're paying no monthly fees, short of building your own network like Google does? Even then you still have to pay for it, you're just paying for land, labor and equipment instead of service.

You pay your ISP to get you to a peering point. That's monetized. The other endpoint pays their ISP to get to the peering point. Also monetized. What's left? The peering link? The actual cost of that is such a small percentage of the total that you can round it off to zero, and people only really try to charge for it when they're rent seeking because they have a monopoly path to a large number of customers.

> Yes, that's why you shouldn't do it that way.

Because occasionally people who make bad security choices will be encouraged to do better after suffering an uncovered loss of something like fifty or a hundred bucks? That seems like a small price for having a payments system that has low transaction costs and protects privacy.

> You don't spend 'money' you have agreements with your peers over how much data they are willing to receive from you. The clearing process is completely independent. Cash, cat pictures, happy feelings, revolutionary zeal. All are acceptable currency if the owner of the router agrees with you.

How is that any different than it already works? Anybody can configure their network to accept traffic or not from whoever they like. What's missing is an efficient method for clearing small payments -- but that's a general problem, not anything specific to internet links.