I think the fear is more primal than it seems at first. I don't think it's necessarily a fear of not having a job, or not being able to survive because of capitalism, I think most people are actually aware that things can and do exist without capitalism just fine. I think the bigger fear and problem is a lack of meaning. The forced psuedo-scarcity and pseudo-meritocracy give a lot of people meaning. It gives them a world they need to struggle to survive in, it gives them an explicit metric for success and it gives them a hierarchy to fit into.

I think that a lot of people who are afraid of technology and afraid of the future are really just afraid to lose that meaning and afraid to face the reality of how they've been living, moraly and otherwise.

And I do think a lack of meaning will be a long term problem for people in the future, even as intelligence and culture grows, so I don't really blame them.