🧳Living It Up At the Hotel California🚖
One of the most common criticisms of Universal Basic Income is that it treats everyone the same, regardless of their circumstances or capacity to contribute. But what if UBI could be both universal and adaptable? Let me propose a three-tiered system that acknowledges different life situations while maintaining the core promise of economic security.
Before diving into the tiers, it's worth addressing how such a system could be sustainably funded. One promising model involves shared advertising revenue. As UBI recipients, participants become part of a stable, engaged audience—whether through streaming services, digital platforms, or public spaces where media is present. This predictable audience base makes advertising models more valuable and reliable, creating a revenue stream that directly funds the program.
In essence, our attention becomes a shared resource. Rather than corporations capturing all the value of our viewership and listenership, a portion flows back to support universal income. We're already a captive audience in hotels, waiting rooms, gyms, and increasingly in our own homes. This model simply acknowledges that reality and ensures we benefit from it collectively.
The first tier is designed for professionals who work directly with audience measurement, media placement, content distribution, and related fields. This includes those involved in determining what content reaches audiences and how its impact is measured—areas that have historically operated with limited transparency.
This tier offers the highest payment scheme and creates a structured space for meaningful participation. Recipients might contribute to quarterly assessments of the program's effectiveness, provide insights on emerging media trends that affect revenue sustainability, or participate in working groups addressing industry-wide questions.
The value here is reciprocal: these professionals receive maximum support while helping build transparency into systems that shape what millions of people see and hear. By bringing stakeholders from across the media ecosystem into an open framework, we create accountability where it has often been lacking.
Tier Two: Professional Engagement
The second tier recognizes professionals in adjacent fields—marketing, communications, creative services, and other sectors that interface with media and audiences but aren't directly involved in placement or measurement systems.
This tier provides substantial payment with moderate requirements—perhaps annual reporting on professional developments that might affect the program's funding model, or participation in periodic surveys about advertising effectiveness and audience trends.
These professionals are already stretched between demanding jobs and personal responsibilities. The system shouldn't burden them further, but their insights remain valuable for maintaining a sustainable, evolving funding model that adapts to changing media landscapes.
Tier Three: Universal Foundation
The third tier serves everyone else—the foundation of true universality. This includes those facing chronic unemployment, disability, caregiving responsibilities, or simply working jobs that leave no capacity for additional commitments. This tier requires minimal effort while meeting or exceeding local welfare work requirements and maximum benefit thresholds.
Here's what makes this crucial: by designing Tier Three to align with existing welfare rules, we create a bridge rather than a cliff. People aren't forced to choose between bureaucratic welfare systems and UBI support. Those with disabilities aren't asked to prove their worth through tasks that may be genuinely impossible.
And here's the essential point: this tier is funded by the same advertising revenue model, but recipients participate simply by being part of the audience ecosystem. Whether watching television in a hospital waiting room, streaming content at home, or hearing music in public spaces, they're contributing to the stable audience base that makes the entire system viable. Their participation is inherent, not contingent on additional tasks.
Critics might argue that tiers undermine the universal in UBI. I'd counter that this structure maintains universality while acknowledging different relationships to the funding mechanism.
Those in Tier One work directly in industries that generate the revenue—their participation creates transparency and accountability in systems that affect everyone. Those in Tier Two have adjacent expertise that helps the model adapt and remain sustainable. Those in Tier Three simply need support, and they receive it with dignity.
This proposal recognizes a simple truth: we're all already participants in an attention economy. The difference is that this model distributes the benefits rather than concentrating them. It asks professionals who shape media systems to help build transparency into their own industries. It invites those with relevant expertise to contribute insights. And it provides unconditional support to everyone else, recognizing that their participation as audience members is contribution enough.
By creating legitimate forums for discussing how media systems actually work—including uncomfortable questions about measurement, placement, and influence—we build trust. By funding UBI through the value our collective attention creates, we ensure sustainability. By meeting people where they are, we honor the universal promise while building a system that can actually work.
Universal doesn't have to mean identical. It can mean universally funded, universally accessible, and universally responsive to the reality that we all participate in media systems whether we realize it or not. This model simply ensures we all benefit from that participation.
