"This is true, but there's no reason it has to be paid by selling our attention. I'd rather use money." My attention is a commodity I have great control over.

"This is true, but there's no reason it has to be paid by selling our attention. I'd rather use money." My attention is a commodity I have great control over. My money has less fluidity and I'd rather get some interest on it. Especially when new products are constantly created and they are sold to me in tiny modules preventing me from estimating how much money I will need throughout my lifetime to cover the cost of all my needs/desires. But here is a fixed currency based model which maybe could work 100 years in the future: Everybody pays a "technology tax" that's a fixed monthly or annual cost (maybe it's attached to your ISP bill). This tax then goes into a fund that tech companies (Apples and Googles of the world) can access and withdraw money out of based on the services they offer. Maybe they'd have to get audited on how many users they have and what type of services they take advantage of, and some independent auditor would try and attach a dollar value to this effort giving the techs the ability to withdraw that amount from the "tax fund".