The layered goods answer how a standing floor can be unconditional while still asking something of participants. Not every good sits at the same level, so not every good carries the same reciprocal condition. Three tiers separate cleanly. Standing goods — a food floor, basic shelter, essential healthcare, legal existence — carry no productivity test at all; withholding them threatens membership in the ecology itself. Cooperative goods — participation in a commons, a shared workspace, cooperative governance, mutual-aid systems — may reasonably ask for reciprocal behavior, because they exist only through mutual upkeep. Scarce privileges — rare public grants, limited research resources, exclusive use of a scarce asset — may legitimately require demonstrated responsibility or contribution.
The tiers hold together two truths a flat rule cannot: standing is unconditional, and reciprocity is still real. A deliberate free rider never loses the standing tier — survival is never held hostage — but they can find that expanded claims and scarce privileges carry conditions their refusal has not met. The layering is also what keeps one hard case from forcing a false choice between abandoning people and asking nothing of anyone.
The tiers sit inside a wider map. Standing goods are pooled in kind or paid as floor credits; ordinary goods are bought above the floor. Scarce goods split in two: privileges allocated publicly (a research grant, a seat in a program), where contribution can be a criterion, and goods held by owners (a house on the shore), which pass by price, fit, and testimony under their own rules. Contribution as a criterion here is never pay. By the place rule, standing goods meet the same floor everywhere.