Hollywood Enters Oscars Weekend in Existential Crisis

NB: it's generally poor form to presume what someone thinks or perceives. At best it may be highly inaccurate. At worst ... well, worse. Better to couch it in terms of your own experience, or third-party research where that exists.

Though yes, old-style ads are less relentless, and often have some degree of novelty. Repetition of ads where I do encounter them (largely public-broadcasting underwriting spots and on podcasts before I fast-forward through them) is in fact tedious, so you may have a point.

Another factor though is that the old-time ads are attempting to manipulate, yes, but they're trying to manipulate a target which is no longer present. Current-day ads both turn the dial to 11 and are often at least trying to specifically exploit personal information and weaknesses.

TV's been dead to me for decades, in large part for the reasons you describe. The few times I'm exposed to it just reinforces why.

If UBI were enforced, landlords and food markets will just raise their prices, knowing that everyone has more money.

Another issue is that if everyone received say $1000 monthly, what protects the future generations, what prevents politics occasionally lowering this number diluting your implementation of UBI?

Even if the laws regarding the issuance of UBI weren't touched, what prevents the loss of your UBI for future generations, as money devalues due to inflation?

How do you ensure the UBI amount increases with inflation, who will define and measure that level of inflation?

Wouldn't it be more attractive to have a more American idea (Georgism) intertwined with UBI?

Can you prove that society can pay the UBI? Where does the money come from? Wouldn't a proposal that demonstrates provable affordability of the proposal be more effective?

What if everyone received the Average Rent? All Land (in a single nation, or the whole world over) would be considered a common good, but available for rent, minus natural reserves for example. So farm land, housing, city appartments, but also mines.

Who sets the prices? And what does it mean to receive the Average Rent?

First let's prove that it doesn't need external funding (unlike your UBI we don't need to look for funding): the sum of all rent being paid by N citizens, viewed as the source of income, is redistributed over N citizens, resulting in the Average Rent expended. People can still get jobs to earn money on top of their unconditional Average Rent. If you were satisfied with average, you are basically living on your proper share minerals, sunlight, space in the Earthly biosphere, as a kind of birthright. If you are satisfied with less than average for a while, you can save up money until you have say a business model. You want to live extravagantly, i.e. above average? you would have to find a job. In this world the latter category would either be very motivated individuals or a victim of their sense of entitlement.

Observe that unlike some $1000 figure in UBI, it is a discrete concept, either one receives the Average Rent, or the system has evolved to stop issuing Average Rent to the population. A clear difference as opposed to minimizable "tiny changes" in the $1000 figure becoming $999 etc. So UBI is vulnerable to smoothly loosing civil rights, whereas Average Rent is a clear integral concept, either whole or broken.

Who sets the prices of the appartments etc ? Well, if you are a landlord you choose the highest bidder. If in the system of Average Rent, everyone is treated as an equal co-owner, then we could similarly decide to rent out places to the highest bidder. Each mine with minerals would be rented out to the miners that bid the most, funding your Average Rent, enabling the consumption of say electronics (smartphone etc.). Each plot of farmland would be bid on by farmers, and the most efficient farmers or farming styles would outcompete the less efficient ones (monoculture), or perhaps some plots of land would be more lucrative when exploited as Solar Farms. If somebody outbids you on your dwelling you can either raise your bid in return, or find another place, so that the group can find the most mutually pleasing allocation of resources.

We could protect children against abusive parents and traumatic childhoods by teaching them to temporarily override the transfer of their Average Rent for the duration of a school trip, each year progressing towards more independence (first time just teaching the kids how to redirect their Average Rent to the hostel where they reside for a week, another year also on paying for a laundry, or for the travels). As children progressively learn how to take control of their Average Rent finances, and then after the school trip redirect it to their parents again; we are also teaching them how to walk away from toxic households in case they deem it necessary.

Surely a provably affordable proposal that captures the Spirit of UBI without inheriting its vulnerabilities is more attractive I presume?

And it is provably affordable: if we denote the rent expended by a citizen indexed i as r_i then the Sum(r_i) would be the total generated, and if we divide it by N thats just the definition of an average of a sequence of rents. The proceeds divided by N matches the average of rent expended. It's affordable by definition, no need to levy income tax, cheese tax, tobacco tax, etc.

Now tell us again why UBI is so attractive, apart from how dilutable it is (the people running the central bank can intentionally devalue the currency to turn the $1000 UBI into a symbolic-but-worthless-gesture), apart from how unfinancable it is (who do you propose pays for all this UBI?), apart from how unprovable the payability is (perhaps your funding proposal may sound feasible today, but tomorrow that source of income to fund UBI may evaporate).