I’m thinking something like the onion plus a conglomerate fee for first class citizen level prioritization.

I have no idea what you are talking about. What do you think "the onion" is?

Maybe GP is saying Tor could monetize to provide private access? Which, correct me if I am wrong, is a feature Tor doesn't even provide?

I'm pretty lost too.

Clearly I’m not the guy to talk to about tor/onion. I’m wondering if a network could be set up across thousands of homes somehow and that network could purchase priority of its traffic. Basically there’s always a way to add another layer of abstraction to circumvent a lower layers restrictions.

Yes, a mesh network would work for that, then you just need a method to measure how much traffic each node serves then pay the node operators for that.

Is anybody working on that?

I know there were mesh networks with wireless microwave transmitters deployed in some rural areas, but I can't find the articles. It's probably going to get more and more attention though, along with distributed electricity and similar things as technology progresses.