I'm not clear on how your realizations turned you against UBI. If (a) is true, people will still work (because they want money above their UBI), and will still

I'm not clear on how your realizations turned you against UBI. If (a) is true, people will still work (because they want money above their UBI), and will still create progress (i.e. little will change). I'm not sure how (b) connects. Perhaps it assumes people will do less work towards automation under UBI? I would like to think people will still work on UBI. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the percentage that don't is similar in some respects to drug use in those places where all drugs have be decriminalized (and perhaps similar to true unemployment numbers now). There is a question of what people will do with their freedom to choose what they will do. Would we get more and more creative art? More inventions and entrepreneurs? More things that are "useful" (by whatever metric: technological progress, preservation of the environment, internal well-being e.g.) or less? Trying to speculate seems fairly silly, though perhaps one could look to history (patronage, for example). I think it'd be even more silly to think we have things right right now (esp. considering fairly objective things like suffering that could be prevented or environmental damage that could be checked) and the idea should be given a shot at least in a limited setting.