I'm with you here as well. Not so much on the UBI side though. I only believe in social measures to a certain degree because it is a slippery slope. At the moment, my job is very demanding and sucks up a lot of my energy. In addition the last decade was an absolute bombardment with family problems and it all fell on my shoulders and I was not betting on myself to sort things out at all(even though I managed against all odds and at the cost of a lot of compromises with myself). And 10 years is a long time, especially in the 25-6 to 35-6 range.

Now I don't have all that much on my shoulders anymore or rather it's very much under control but once everything is truly sorted, I have thought about it many times: I am truly exhausted and on a personal level a less demanding and less busy job does sound appealing in a way even for less money. And this is the catch: not everyone is greedy and many people are capable of saying "you know what, I have enough, let's take it easy". Which would become a huge problem on a large scale when the balance shifts. You have over 3 generations now (alpha, z, millenials and x to a very large degree) who have been bombarded for decades by social media and feel no desire to try or learn something new as opposed to just relying on slop. And it was bad enough as it was even before that - I haven't seen nor do I wish to see a large chunk of my family but to give you an idea, my cousin(at the time around 10 years old) did not know how to eat with a fork and knife or tie his shoes or button up his shirt. Not because of a mental disability but because his parents had a child instead of getting a small dog to take for a walk two times a day.

Imagine when you have tens of millions of those that would gladly scroll through tiktok all day long and rely on UBI without batting an eyelash.

I genuinely don't have a solution but UBI does not sound like it. I agree that for most of history, humanity has been pushed by a very small fraction of individuals but currently I don't see people that are doing it, given that we are currently living in a bullshitter economy: "within the next year we will have {x}".

I don't know of a single instance in humanity where someone has made a big leap, granted that all the basics are provided to them in the same way no one has gotten out of poverty through charity.

If I had to base everything off of my own experience(and those around me), my view is that a certain critical mass of unfortunate circumstances are required in order to get someone to reach their potential.