"The best and the brightest are not those who benefit from UBI, they are the ones who will be paying for it"

Everyone who makes any sales will be paying for it to some extent. As for net-payers: In the long run, the best and brightest might also be paying for it (as net-payers) if we introduce it, though owners will always be participating in paying the thing, while the brightest people sometimes happen to first have to be born and grow up and figure things out and have to have access to economic opportunity, before they can start paying for it. Owners of the Land, economic opportunity, can skip all of that process, and still pay for it.

You could be a genius, but on the roadside in africa, there's not a lot of economic opportunity.

Today, technology allows for much greater non-merit based concentration of economic opportunity by factors of having come first, bringing us closer to that metaphoric circumstance. Network effect and increasing effectiveness of economies of scale DO right now, create a circumstance where the brightest have to sell out everything they could be doing, to the highest bidder. Which happen to be established companies, meaning owners benefit. Notice that across all industries, the industry leading companies have managed to increase gap between marginal cost of creating another product/service, and the sales price, which is not true for the 'second in line' companies in the respective fields. (interesting breakdown of two papers, one of em pointing that out.)

So today, it is for owners to (net-)pay. If we make owners pay, then, eventually, maybe the brightest of the people will be able to (net-)pay too, in the long run. But we don't know how much of it. With current economic trends, it's going to be less and less the brightest people doing the work who pay, and more and more the people owning things, that would pay.

Either way, seems sensible to make those who now hold the greatest economic opportunity for no factor of individual quality pay the most. This is for the brightest people to benefit from, as they rarely are the same people, neither today, nor in a setup where individual inheritance and gifting based on relations of love, not merit, is the dominant form of distributing Land, economic opportunity.

You could propose to abolish patent protection entirely, use usufruct and methods outlined in the Charter of the Forest for physical Land use, and somehow overcome the network effect, and maybe without redistribution, the brightest might come out ahead 'naturally'. But that's basically asking for the abolishment of capitalism and somehow doing something about the network effect in some way. UBI is a useful measure to get the brightest people into a position where they can command economic opportunity, without turning our economics upside down.

With all that in mind, I think it really wouldn't be wise to focus on the notion that "people need food and shelter so let's give em that". That's not what this is about in the current business climate, and probably even moreso going forward. It's about ensuring the naturally, potentially increasingly monopolizing forces on the market are managed for the benefit of all who care to add something with their unique skills, for a mutual benefit. It's about a nonforfeitable guaranteed stake in the Land, economic opportunity, for everyone.