That was pretty persuasive, @kenoubi! Let me see if I can salvage the claim…
Trying Beeminder without a payment method empirically doesn’t work out well. Tons of counterexamples (including you, of course) but the following generalization has enough truth in it: People half-ass it, quickly derail, then stick their head in the sand and ignore us forever. They even often have uncertainty (the half-assing applies to reading the webcopy) about whether putting in a credit card after derailing means they’ll be charged for the derailment that already happened, and which doesn’t feel to them like it even really counts because, again, they were half-assing it. So they avoid us or procrastinate indefinitely on trying again.
So, yeah, no philosophical claims about the essence of Beeminder required (though we do like to think that way)! Hugely valuable to have you arguing the other side of this, btw. Thank you!