Automation offers a unique ability to deliver the idealized society, but first we have to get rid of the notion that full employment is the goal. If anything, modern governments should be trying to lower employment, not raise it (or rather provide more choice to not work). You can't do that without a taxation strategy shift form income to capital gains.
Typically people who end up without jobs tend to waste away though. They start drinking, doing drugs and committing crime, largely because they are bored.
You see something similar in young people who drop out of the educational system. These are people with all the options open too, yet they struggle to fit in.
If we create a society without jobs for everyone we also need to give everyone something to do, and I don't think we can expect them to do things on their own.
That's not what worries me in the now though, I'm only worriered about the inequality of wealth because you can't have a stable and free society if the inequality grows too large.
We’re wealthier than ever, but we can’t use the wealth to society, because we’ve moved it from the masses to the few.
Now this probably isn’t a popular thing to say in American contexts because it sounds like socialism, but historically the levels of inequality we’re seeing now have lead to only one violent outcome.
We’re not in danger yet, the middle class isn’t starving after all, but if we don’t radically change taxation to match modern society then we’re going to be fucked in 25-50 years. Because we’ll desperately need a model for society where not everyone has to work.