You raise an interesting point. Having been to a couple of developing countries myself and lived with locals, I do wonder how useful our self-improvement articles would be for people there — more often than not, not very useful I would guess. Does getting up early and other tips to being more productive really help someone who already gets up at 5am to cook for their family or head off for a long day of working. Would these articles really add value? But I do agree that information needs to be available to everyone and $5 is certainly a lot in some countries. Perhaps this is something Medium could consider doing something about?