I wish I had your optimism.
From where I sit, the world is driven by one thing, and one thing only. The shameless desire to appropriate ever greater of material goods and or physical pleasures, by those with the means to appropriate them, at the expense of everyone else.
Take for instance, the cellphone industry.
The trend there is not to create an adaptive, versatile phone that manifests true quality of workmanship and forward thinking-- Such a device would be sold once, and would stick around far too long, reducing potential future sales figures. Instead, the devices are marketed with currently popular gimmick technologies, and are basically just hardware wrappers for ephemeral software products which can be artificially obscoleted, and thus force the consumer to keep buying, so that the operators of the cellphone manufacturing industry can continue to make money. (which may or may not be for the purpose of enriching investors, whp's only contribution is putting up some of their own financial power to fascilitate this collection of wealth, with the promise of getting their money back with interest.)
At no point in this process is it ever considered that 100% automation will destroy this cycle, as no return flow of currency into the market will happen after that point. When people arent employed (or even employable!), they don't get paid any money, and thus they have no money to spend to buy the prodcuts produced. Money only works when it is widely distributed amongst many hands. 100% automation would effectively transter 100% of all money to only a very few hands.
I hold a more prosaic view about the worth of people than is held by most people who are driven by the profit motive. As a contrived example, let's look at the case of the "not too bright, but friendly" person. In this post automation landscape, this indivudal would be completely unemployable. They aren't very bright, and all work that they are able to do is better performed by robots and software algorithms. Quite litterally, it is not in the interests of any employer, anywhere, to ever employ them, period. This person is not retarded or anything, they just aren't the brightest, and wont be winning any scholastic or academic achievement awards any time soon. In this paradigm, they are consigned to either horrible poverty and death from systemic institutional neglect-- or, living on the dole, to the chagrin of the profit motivated elite. (See for instance, Mitt Romney's rather famous quips about supporting wellfare recipients.) There isn't anything physically wrong with them, they just arent inclined to have the few remaining skills left that are in demand, and so, are simply not employable--- As the current verbiage goes, they aren't "Qualified Applicants". They will NEVER be employed, even if they want to be.
However, unlike our friend Mr Romney, I do not consider this person to be a drain on society. With money, this individual is capable of doing things in the community that improves the human condition intrinsically-- Such as helping to combat the spread of infectious diseases by being a volunteer relief aid, or providing counselling services. (Even the power elite need counseling when their mental health suffers a decline.) This person is valuable, and needs the opportunities to thrive to properly demonstrate that value. The value they represent cannot be distilled into a simple financial metric.
No person, rich or poor-- Clever or thick, is without intrinsic value. The value they represent simply cannot be easily quantified, measured, and exploited. Without opportunities to thrive, people languish, and potential is wasted.
The current tradjectory of mankind is not toward a post-scacity utopia, where financial power is what is eliminated-- It is toward a sick form of neo-feudalism, where humans simply arent worth anything to the power elite, because they have robots and AIs for everything they could possibly want, and they have the resources to make it happen.