Elon Musk has once again predicted a future of abundance where money will become redundant. In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the tech billionaire wrote: “Saving money for the distant future is pointless” in the “super intelligent abundance” driven by AI. Elon Musk’s post responded to a user’s lighthearted justification for questionable spending amid expectations of rapid future prosperity. “Justifying each of my questionable financial decisions with the fact that we’re headed towards a future of abundance,” X user @battleangelviv said adding “Don’t be like, totally reckless, but also most of it won’t matter in a few years anyway”.
Not a first
This is not the fist time that Elon Musk predicted a future without money. During an interview with Peter Diamandis earlier this year, an entrepreneur and executive chairman of the XPrize Foundation (via Fortune), Musk laid out a “moonshot” vision of a future where human labour is optional and currency no longer exists.Elon Musk believes that AI robots will change global economics. “AI and robots are going to make so much stuff and provide so many services that they’ll run out of things to do for humans,” Musk said. In Musk’s view, this automated abundance will lead to a massive economic shift wherein the volume of goods and services produced by robots will far outpace the actual supply of money, causing retail prices to plummet toward zero.He also said that since robot labor will be cheap and continuous, production costs will practically disappear. Without the need to pay human workers to generate supply, the traditional need for money falls apart.“I think money will stop being relevant at some point in the future,” Musk stated bluntly.Diamandis was quick to point out the contradiction between Musk’s words and his wealth. “So just as you’re becoming a multi-trillionaire, money starts to have less value?” Diamandis asked then. To this, Musk replied: “Yeah, pretty much.”
Elon Musk proposes universal high income
It must be noted that Elon Musk has previously advocated for a system of “universal high income” to ensure citizens can access this automated abundance. In April, he spoke about what he called “Universal HIGH INCOME,” suggesting that federal government checks could help people cope with large-scale unemployment driven by AI and robotics. He argued that as AI increases productivity, the supply of goods and services could grow faster than the money supply, making such payments sustainable.“Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Elon Musk wrote adding “AI/robotics will produce goods & services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation”.