You have your options:
Either upgrade to a higher plan,
Or Self host discourse
Both of those will allow you to get the benefit of subscriptions plugin as you may please.
Debating with everyone around your idea of how a product should be offered is not magically going to change the offerings overnight.
You mentioned that you have experience of communities since usenet days, how many communities have you seen since those days till up until very recently that forced a subscription from the get go and were able to attract a significant number of users?
You can spend days on days debating whether a plugin should be offered on a given tier or actually go on and focus building your community. Choice is yours.