It seems you’ve responded to a refusal to subscribe with an argument for willingness to pay. It is possible to be open to payment and not to subscription.

HN is filled with people bemoaning subscription software. Subscriptions, whether to software or news, shift power toward sellers and invite dark patterns for its abuse.

That abuse is well enough recognized to be the subject of an often celebrated (on HN) CA law attempting to make subscription less odious.

https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...

Can’t speak for parent but I’d be slow to conflate unwillingness to subscribe and unwillingness to pay.