One at a time: I'm a big fan of SBI; it's a great incentive/prize to offer in drawings and contests, and particularly nice as a thing to offer newcomers to the site who are invisible, but might feel encouraged by the fact that they are getting a small vote on their posts. I was gifted quite a few SBI shares in my early days here, and they certainly encouraged me in the early going.
Yes, there seems to be a "downvote brigade" out there but I feel that they are missing an important point: SBI is not an "upvote bot," it's a long-term investment. I remember someone did the math on it over on Steem a while back, and you have to make something on the order of 40-50 posts just to break even. As such, it actually becomes a retention tool of sorts... because why would you partake in something like that if you were going to leave soon? Aside from which, you can't even buy SBI for yourself, you have to sponsor someone else... hence the pay it forward angle. Actually, one of my posts was hit by the "downvote brigade" today, and all I can do is just shake my head! It's a bit like having someone come and slash your tires because you actually have the audacity to collect the dividends on your stock investment. But hey, to each their own...
For the other part, I'm not sure about government sponsored UBI... more inclined to believe in some version that makes companies above a certain size liable for paying part of their savings from automation into a fund to help support workers permanents rendered jobless by automation.
For example, driverless trucks will will put 5-6 million drivers in the US out of a job... but both insurance and delivery services will save billions as a result. Not ALL of that should just be "corporate profits," some of that should go to people (in a collective sense) who were made OBSOLETE.
Part of the problem we face is that few engage in long term thinking. In 40-50 years from now, Humans will only be needed to do maybe 25% of the work that exists today. But they'll still need shelter and to eat. And if they have no means to get money, they won't be able to buy the products being created by the automation. In that context, UBI/BI is not "socialism," but rather "capitalism investing in its own survival."
=^..^=
This is a great anecdote, and I was hoping to find it when I posted this thread. I'm also pretty frustrated by the downvote brigades. It's sad to see it happening on an ideological basis without much of a regard to the underlying intentions of the supporting ecosystem.
This is interesting as well, and there have been discussions about a AI tax. I wonder if a social organization could be something like this, but allocate 100% of returns to the public, instead of a percentage-based tax.
Thanks for sharing, @curatorcat!