dunno, imho thats overstating it. People pay for pretty much everything, either directly, or indirectly via taxes. And many of the things that are now supposed to be "free" used to be paid for (newspapers, magazines etc.) without even thinking about it.
rather than a deep homo sapiens malfunction, the issue is more of a silly mix of adtech conditioning (here, free email for your data) and publishers not gettting their act together for the digital age.