Tom,
Let’s first make the definition of a paywall clearer. I think the paywall you mainly critizise is a paywall that requires you to pay somebody in order to access his content. This is a fundamental difference to a requirement to pay one fee to the whole community in order to access some content. Because you can still decide for which specific content you actually want to pay, you don’t have to pay anybody for his content in order to access it. You would just have to value the cultural work in general.
Second, I actually showed in this entry, that instead of restricting anything, one could think about gentle incentives to register with a social payment service. Again, nobody is required to pay for anything on a site doing such a thing. E.g. on zurpolitik.com you give the incentive to have ad-free content for registered users. This would also be such a possibility to think about: offering users to remove any ads once they register for a social payment service. Again, nobody is required to pay for anything on a site doing such a thing. The site just has a fair chance that the user will do it, if the content is worth it.
Third, I understand you and share your feelings (convinve people, that they want to give something). But we don’t have to decide now, because people themselves will decide it. If social payment becomes a huge success just because everybody wants to register, I am even more happy. But if not, I’d strongly advise not to call the approach “dead” too early. Because it’s the way most promising thing to finance cultural work in the future I’ve yet come across. But I am quite sure, it will just continue to work, if it is not just a (”negatively” working) redistribution of income between authors.