As for me, I believe we'll have to resort to basic income sooner or later. At least, I haven't heard anyone proposing an alternative solution — well, unless you consider bullshit jobs (http://250bpm.com/blog:44) to be a solution.

As for 99% doing nothing, it's unlikely IMO. When you look at actual people, you'll find out that it's pretty hard to make them do nothing. You have to lock them up in a jail or something. And event there they will be doing something, I guess. Doing nothing contradicts our psychological (or, to put the emphasis on the inborn component of it, etological) wiring.

So, I think, we'll just have to think of a way of steering this surplus activity in desirable direction by non-monetary means.

So they decided to part with some of their revenues and pass it to the Government for re-distribution to as many poor people as possible, as a welfare. The poor people keep the ability to buy (cheap and little in quantities, but there are many of them), so those who sell to them gather their income and keep their ability to buy more costly things… and so on.

The new problem is, that the size of the population grows, and the part of it that produces things shrinks. To keep the pace the capitalists have to have more revenues, and pass to the Government more.

What will be in the end? 1% of the population working, creating very big revenues to their bosses, and the bosses paying enormous taxes to support 99% of the population having nothing at all to do…

What you do (according to Georgists) is that you tax land value and basically remove all other forms of taxation.

Besides not distorting ordinary transactions it also has the benefit of predetermining the total wealth available for BI which I believe should install a natural balancing force into the market. If too many people does the wrong thing the total wealth sinks and so should land rents, at some point the BI will simply be to low to be acceptable again.

You could also argue that BI from land value is just the morally correct thing to do if land is seen as fundamentally a commons, but with arrangements of private ownership layered on top for efficiency. See Geolibertarianism. In this view it can be argued that land value taxation isn't a tax at all, just a proper rent contract between the land owner and the commons.

In my mind there is also the potential to solve the climate crisis this way. What is Ecotaxing if not compensating the commons?

In traditional economy you are guided by prices.

In economy based on basic income there's no such mechanism.

Maybe producers should actively search for feedback as a way to improve their credit (you get more credit for nice pictures than for sucky music). Would that be strong enough incentive to drive the effort in the right direction? Or should it be enforced by voluntary redistribution (donations)? In the latter case, wouldn't it mean that those working in scarcity-based sectors of the economy would have more say than others?

In fact, we don't know. We don't even have a way to reason about such things. What's missing IMO is a generalised economical theory that would take non-monetary aspect into consideration rather than conveniently waving if off as "externalities".

If basic income is low enough but still enough for basic needs, it wouldn't hinder market information flow much. Plus, the current tough reality drives people to join established companies, which strengthens centralization, oligopoly, and eventually monopoly. Oligopoly and monopoly shield market information very well.
Basic income incentivizes people to become free agents and join startups, and this encourages formation of free market and thus free market information flow.
Low-enough basic income would be a nice compromise.

Or I might be wrong, and basic income would just block market signals, making everyone poorer.

In the end, either basic income or other mechanisms should come in to rescue us from life enervating forces(Those boring and mediocre 9-5 brick and mortar office jobs, sacrifice of hobby lives, having to endure subordinate conditions, etc)

NPE(non profit entity) jobs that you mentioned may turn out worse than our traditional jobs, and a global market state of free agents(as opposed to a global welfare state of high class elites, which is closer to hobby economy e.g., linux and clojure) sounds better in my mind.

What do you think will rescue us?

Basic income doesn't provide that imformation flow.

However, judging on you "expensive extras" comment, I guess we are on the same line here, i.e. you have to work on something that is actually wanted to get the extras.

My guess is that basic income will cover basic needs(house, clothing, food, internet, …) and people will work on interesting things to obtain expensive "material/non-material" stuff(a jet engine, ticket to the moon, social status, knowledge, quality time, etc, …). Then, basic income will basically just remove neccecity for "subordinate" jobs but encourage people to work as free agents or in small companies doing interesting things together without managerial interventions.

My feeling is that with conspicious spending gradually losing it's ability to affect societal status, we'll evolve some way to trade (in a very broad sense) money for status that would actually help to fund non-profit (better term: non-scarcity-based) sectors of the economy.

If so, you won't get money for sitting at home, watching TV, rather for doing something that is perceived to be "useful".

Automation is an intellectually demanding task and is more expensive than manual labor initially. Thus, if managers don't trust workers much, they don't let workers automate in the first place.

In open-allocation shops like github and valve, people get to work on any existing projects they like without managerial intervention. So, they are much more likely to automate no matter the initial cost.

Basic income is the way to go for now.

Since automation deprives people of power as producer, they need some other kidns of power. Basic income gives power as consumer to people. If they have basic power as consumers, people will be much more likely to refuse crappy jobs, which is terrific.

As time goes, more of easy tasks are automated, and humans are left with intellectually difficult tasks, so we will need to learn more to have jobs. This means, after decades, people will have to drop jobs from time to time, learn for months/years at home, and get another job. This process leaves most people jobless, and eventually, 0~10% of humanity will be "fully" employed.

However, there will always be infinite demand for making our lives better.
Thus, even after our basic needs(food, house, sleep, …) are automated, there'll still be economy for billions of people on this planet alone.

What's wrong with receiving basic income which enables people to refuse traditional crappy corporate jobs and work "only" on interesting things in their lives(Art, Science, etc)? Humans aren't born to work in subordinate jobs in the first place.

Another possibility is that, eventually, there will be no need to work at all, and economies will collapse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Culture describes this possibility.