"Luckily" they know that! Porous paywalls are price discrimination. Someone willing to restart their browser/wiggle their VPN/watch an ad etc. is just not at the point in their life where they are likely to pay, so it's intended to allow you to read without making the paying customers feel like they paid for nothing.

The next step ip is to replace some (but not all) of the agony with some (but not all) of the price: coupons, year-end sales, bundles etc.

Or you can simply disable javascript on uBlock Origin; works a treat on many sites (including the NYT).