Both employment and returns on capital are a happy side effects of solving human problems and directing scarce resources to their highest and best use, the only human-aligned goals of an economy. Hunter-gatherers operated various economies for millennia with very little capital and almost no capital returns. But the definition that you supply is the one that is in operation, and will be almost impossible to dislodge. I'm not arguing that immiseration brought on by automation is unlikely, merely that it is not inevitable.