I have to wonder though: if >50% of people currently employed lose their jobs to automation... who will be there to fuel the consumerist economy? Who will buy ads on Facebook and Google that peddle widgets and services for which there no more consumers with disposable income to market them to?
How would this work? You can’t invest in shares, if companies have no consumers. You can’t invest in property if no one can afford rent. You would need not financial independence but independence from finance
Ideally nobody has to work and everything you'd ever want is free.
but in reality, people who don't have investments in the automation will just starve and die, while people who _do_ have such investments reap many rewards.
Ford famously gave employees relatively high wages and weekends off specifically so they had money and reason (free time) to buy the very products they manufactured.