I would expect this to happen if you just give everyone UBI with no changes anywhere else, but that wouldn’t make any sense. Why do we not consider a setup where we set UBI to X, then reduce everyone’s wages by X?

I don’t know if I like this change. Not allowing for sideloading means a reduction in user freedom, sure, but how much freedom does the average user care to have anyway? With the state of Apple products as it is today, I would definitely recommend them to someone who isn’t technologically savvy over something that grants more freedoms because of how fool-proof it is. For the rest of us who know our way around this stuff, we have Linux. The lack of freedom in Apple products doesn’t take away from the freedoms of Linux users.

Don’t most distros have access all desktop environments? I’m assuming OP is asking about the default DE.