I was gifted quite a few SBI shares in my early days here, and they certainly encouraged me in the early going.
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.
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.
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!