I responded to this in /r/futurology over at reddit as well. I see some serious problems with this proposal. First of all, though Jaron Lanier is quoted and referenced, the author ignores that he has written a book proposing exactly the opposite of what is proposed here. Lanier suggests the deployment of a network wide micropayment system that backlinks to original authors and data collectors so that whoever inputs into the network is paid every time their work is referenced. You'll find a description of his approach at this Harvard affiliated website:

http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/05/jaron-lanier-wants-to-build.../

Of course, one could posit an ideological challenge to this approach. But ignoring its similarity to communism, and forgetting the values laden notion that people 'should' work to sustain their daily bread as humanity has always toiled. Or even pure Libertarian notions extolling private property rights over all. One can instead view this from a practical socio-economic standpoint where the proposal would incentivize yet more centralization of wealth and power. Exactly the opposite of what the author purports to promote.

Extrapolating, we would see a three tier global society enshrined - one that is already well on its way to creation - where an elite of royalty made up of the super-wealthy would be taxed to sustain a middle class of governing managers who then distribute a dole out to the general populace. In that sense, it would further the development of a new global neo-feudalism whereby government becomes a vassal to the interests of the super-rich and the populace becomes the vassal's new serfdom.

But there's a difference. Unlike days of feudal yore, where serfs were necessary farmers who fed even the wealthy, in the situation you propose this new underclass of serfs would serve no purpose whatsoever to the global elite. It would only further divorce the powerful from the populace.

Regardless of whether the populace might be engaged in private off-economy activity that benefits this bottom tier of society, there would be no means to track value creation and thus it would reinforce the sense that these people are nothing more than 'useless eaters' (as Henry Kissenger liked to call the underclasses of society). I can't imagine a better situation to engender elite distrust and antipathy for those on the dole. It would serve to promote triumphalist perception among the elite that they deserve the gains of technology above and beyond the bottom tier, accelerating inequality to global dystopic extremes.

Ultimately, I fear your proposed utopia would only reinforce a mindset among the elite that promotes such social-Darwinist values as Eugenics, walking the masses straight to a global genocide. And lest you think that an extreme position, I point you to Samantha Powers' book, "A Problem From Hell," where she listed eleven genocides across the twentieth century and argued that there is plenty of reason to believe that this outcome is not an aberration of society but instead central to the divisions of class your proposal would only further solidify.