No, you're right, it's a bad idea. People just don't want to listen, and want instant results rather than putting in the work to slowly build their readership over the long term. If they want to wreck their long-term chance of obtaining genuine readership and growth, just let 'em go at it. Hopefully they'll learn something from it when they have a hundred dead subs weighing down a series which is getting pummelled in the algorithmic rankings because of it.
Monetization is useless until you hit several thousand active subscribers anyway. I've earned like $0.02 over the nearly 5 months I've had ad rev unlocked. I'll have a whole dollar in like, 50 years. 
