Re HN: also anything that can be coerced into a political discussion will devolve quickly. Conservative views typically wind up grayed, even when they are substantive arguments.
One need only look at the number of articles that deal with ideas like basic income, regulatory responses to climate, energy, or finance, public transport, or other areas where systematic centrally planned responses are supported as being the way forward and you can't help but see that progressivism is the larger ideal supported here.
It's hardly surprising though. This is group of professionals that engages in build systems to tackle problems in new ways. We convince ourselves that we're the disruptors who's vision can change industries and our way of life. A natural extension of that viewpoint is to believe that the public sphere can be molded, too, if only the right programs are put into effect under the watchful eye of intelligent and visionary custodians... which has much in common with progressivism.
Of course, that's my personal viewpoint (and I am certainly not a "progressive").
It tends to be supported by some more pragmatic libertarians, who recognize that some form of welfare is necessary, and see UBI as the least-overhead form that, if not the cheapest economically, keeps the associated bureaucracy (and the government sprawl induced by that) to the minimum.
However, it is also a popular idea on the left, especially among the more individualist-minded liberals, left libertarians etc.
Basic income would mean that part of GDP is redistributed in purely democratic manner - everybody gets the same piece of pie, whether they deserve it or not. It's very similar to democracy, but on economic level. And democracy is in fact very leftist idea (if you look at history of the left), because again, it proposes that all people should the exact same political power (one person, one vote), regardless what they are or what they do or contribute.
The fact that today's right (at least partially) accepts some of these ideas, such as democracy or UBI, is actually a success of left, or manifestation of the reality having a liberal bias. :-)
But, yes, both downvoting and flagging can and have been abused here, despite measures to prevent them.
Not sure about that, could you find one such comment? Many people would upvote any greyed comment that comes with substantive arguments, regardless of their political view.