Well, as even supporters of the rewards curve have noted, one of the unintended consequences of the CLRC is the lower rewards to non-abusive authors. Many users will not ever get posts above 40 steem, not because they're posting junk, but because of a ton of factors that have little to do with quality: the small target audience, the large target audience of small users, whatever. So I think a whitelist of users who are at the bottom of the curve but not abusive is a good idea, and I think SBI helps those users stay invested in the platform while they build an audience that will boost them above the 40 steem level or if they're a consumer and will stay small forever, so that they can have a lasting impact on other users.

And that's only one use case of many.

But that's not the discussion you want to start with. You want the nitty gritty technical economics, right?

I'll do my best, though @josephsavage is the economist behind the program, so he not only understands the working parts behind the program, but has an even deeper understanding of the economic impact of SBI throughout the steem ecosystem. Tagging him here so he can explain better.

Here's what I do understand.

A sponsor sends 1 steem to sbi with the name of someone they want to sponsor into the program. Assuming neither user is on @steemcleaners or @buildawhale blacklists, SBI begins a tally of rshares (see @steembasicincome for math)

SBI uses that Steem to purchase delegations on dlease.

When the rshares tracked rises above the dust threshold and then some, they use a vote on the curated author and sponsor's most recent post to send that value.

It takes approximately 2.5 years for 1 SBI to accumulate 1 Steem, so it is not a program for short-term gain.