He believes artificial intelligence and robotics could drive such a surge in productivity that goods and services become widely abundant. In that world, traditional retirement planning loses relevance because basic needs are no longer tied to personal savings.
He has pointed to something beyond basic income. “Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI,” Musk wrote in an post on X last week. “AI or robotics will produce goods and services far in excess of the increase in the money supply, so there will not be inflation.”
It’s a sweeping vision. It also depends on timing, policy decisions, and technological progress all lining up in a relatively short window.
Well retirement savings will not be needed.
One question. Will this occur before or after the establishment of the Mars colony?
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There is an assumption that the people making money on the AI and robots will be inclined to share their money with the rest of us.
We can safely assume that is not a good assumption.
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Bam. That’s what I keep telling people. Corporations today don’t want to compensate people they are getting direct benefit from (manual labor, mental labor, etc.), but for some strange reason they will when they are not even employing them anymore? How do people fall for this?
People by and large do not want this future. “Just pay us enough to live”.
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“But, I still need a trillion dollars.”
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I do not need much money, but me and my kind sure as hell need wilderness.
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Musk has already backed off Mars.
I’m pretty sure that if Musk can make rocket boosters land in formation, he’ll figure out Universal Basic Income (It will likely be enough to fund a Tesla-branded capsule hotel and a diet of Soylent Green. 24-hour video games are essentialy free.)
intercst
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EXACTLY! I wonder, perhaps he has already built some prototypes for a true “workers’ paradise”.
That explains the tech overlords building their super secure bunkers. Everybody will have such abundance that they’ll need to hide away from all the gleeful citizens storming their compounds to give thanks.
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They still have a problem in their bunkers. They need servants. And a way to keep the servants from running the asylum. In “The Psychopath Test” by Jon Ronson he mentions this problem, where a small collection of ultra-wealthy asked this very question of a psychiatrist. If they are in their bunkers, and money means nothing anymore, how to keep their security team and their servants from taking over? They weren’t looking for answers like “treat them well” and such. They were wondering if shock collars would suffice.
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