When we used to have a functional banking system, you could work your ass off, make your money, and simply put it in a savings account, or Certificate of Deposits (CDs), and make 4-8 percent interest while inflation was 2-3%. That money was reinvested locally as loans to local businesses.

The advent of free money to cover the insolvent institutions caught making stupid decisions, but managing to be "too big to fail", stole a lot of money from local economies, and my parents.

The thing with FIRE movement is more about escaping being forced to work soul sucking jobs, commuting, management, mindless boring tasks.... And it's not always easy to change fields, or change company, move city, ....

People that I know that are already FIREd or plan to don't actually intend not to work. They want to, but on things they actually enjoy. If there was UBI the FIRE movement would go significantly down because one of it's main goals would be achieved by default. Right now the only way to get those goals is with passive income from investments.

We have this one life, and wasting it is not the way to go. FIRE people don't want the riches or hoarding insanes amount of money for power trips with their buddies. Most are very frugal in fact, that's the only way to achieve FIRE in the firs place. They just want the freedom from forced work. That is the essence of the FIRE movement.

I think FIRE is mainly about not needing to work anymore. Passive or investment income isn’t the goal, just an (important) way to be done working earlier. E.g., in a hypothetical world where you only had interest-free savings accounts, you could still retire early, you’d just need to save more first.