Musk's answer: "I am actually going to do something along these lines." Hmm. So he's not going to do that. He's going to do something else. Like what? Invest in companies that create many jobs and make things for the benefit of mankind, that is, what he's been doing all along? Or hold onto his wealth until it disappears because, according to his theory, money will be nothing in 10 years, so that will be about the same as giving it all away?
August 7, 2026
"If money won’t matter in 2036, why don’t you pledge to donate your current wealth… to charity no later than 2036?"
A question from the economist Daron Acemoglu to Elon Musk, quoted in "Is Elon Musk right that money will be worth nothing in ten years? The world’s richest man says there’s no need to save because AI is going to change the value of everything. He might have a point…" (London Times).
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105 comments:
What’s with charity? Just give it away here and there to strangers like the old TV show
Money won't matter?
Ha!
Our would-be slave masters, the globalists, want you to be lulled into that kind of stupor.
Even cigarettes,
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yqjtr7IlMhY
The guy asking the question is an economist? Elon Musk is not sitting on vaults of cash. He's not Scrooge McDuck. Do you think he has a trillion dollars in cash?
The vast majority of his wealth is in his stock holdings. He owns shares of Tesla and SpaceX. Whatever his claims about the value of money in 10 years (Musk often makes shocking predictions on his conference calls, he's famous for big talk), you can bet he's not planning to give away his control of Tesla and SpaceX. And nobody wants him to!
Musk's "money" consists mostly of shares in his companies. It's control of his companies that matters. He won't give that up.
Economic thoughts:
- Fiat, not money, is a rationing system for scarce things
- Therefore fiat is not actually money
- Value is and always will be fundamentally about scarcity
- *There will always* be scarcity of something
- Call it whatever, but scarce things require scarce things in trade
- Post-scarcity is not a destination, it's a journey
- Money printer can always go brrrrrr...value printer can not
- Elon is right about many things
- He might be right about "money being worth nothing"...
...but he's wrong about post-scarcity
"Musk's "money" consists mostly of shares in his companies. It's control of his companies that matters. He won't give that up."
True, but he still has something like a billion dollars in cash. He could slosh that over to a few of us.
“True, but he still has something like a billion dollars in cash. He could slosh that over to a few of us.”
And just why would he do that, comrade?
@Althouse, $0.15 cents has been deposited in everyone's account. Thank you Elon!
According to Wikipedia, he's a normal economist (a.k.a. not a Marxist). Basically a middle-of-the-road guy. Lots of interesting ideas and thoughts.
And then you get to the Trump section.
In an op-ed in Foreign Policy, Acemoglu claimed that President Donald Trump shared political goals and strategies of Hugo Chávez, Vladimir Putin, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, such as "little respect for the rule of law or the independence of state institutions, ... a blurred vision of national and personal interests, ... little patience with criticism and a long-established strategy of rewarding loyalty, which can be seen in his high-level appointments to date. This is all topped by an unwavering belief in his abilities." In a 2019 interview with Der Spiegel, Acemoglu stated that he sees similarities between Trump and the Republican Party and the Nazis: "Surely, Trump and the Republicans are no Nazis. But they are exploiting the same political sentiment."
**Ann Althouse said...he still has something like a billion dollars in cash.**
I doubt he has anywhere near that much lying around easily convertible. Anyhoo...I'm sure you've heard the claim that if everyone had exactly a million dollars today, by tomorrow some people would have more and others would have less and within a year there would be rich and poor again.
I think it's all bullshit.
Until a robot can design, install and warranty my HVAC system - and until a robot can install my new water heater and heat pump, and until a robot can design and install and manage my solar panels...
The self-driving cars - let's wait until they perfect that one first.
True, but he still has something like a billion dollars in cash. He could slosh that over to a few of us.
Hence his comment that he "might do something like that" in 10 years.
Musk is making a prediction about the future. He's not making a pledge or a commitment.
It's kind of an interesting point, actually, that technology makes us all richer.
Think of homeless people with cell phones, able to communicate with people around the world.
This is a fun article on that topic.
You Are Richer Than John D. Rockefeller.
I don't want Musk's money. I don't want any "billionaire" money.
Yes - I would prefer if billionaires would act responsibly with charitable giving and political giving. ie - NEVER ever ever ever ever ever give to the corrupt democratp party.
My observation is that the best and most reliable indicator of Musk's wealth isn't his current stock price/portfolio or his available cash but the number of women having sex and children with him. They're on to something.
Signal: buy SpaceX.
Musk has spoken at length about his something else… high basic income and sovereign wealth funds along the Alaska model funded from the profits of the AI/robotics companies.
I'd prefer the Soros family give up their wealth and become paupers.
Strange there is no expectation that any leftwing billionaires give up their wealth for the common good.
Come on leftists - put your money where your mouths are.
“money will be nothing in 10 years”
The question now should be: “What WILL be something in 10 years?”
And the answer is in another question: What do you want it to be? Peace? Love? Understanding?
All the above?
Can Robots pave our streets? Can Robots build and maintain highways? Fill pot holes?
Can Robots build trains to nowhere?
Can Robots finish remolding our major airports?
Can Robots run our airports? Fly commercial jets, man the radar?
If we devalue money- will we also devalue all work?
How comfy will our floaty chairs be?
Karl Marx was a fat fucking Leach. He never worked and demanded family and all those around him pay for his sloth.
LOL.
Why doesn’t the smug communist questioner go found a company.
Love this one.
“@Althouse, $0.15 cents has been deposited in everyone's account. Thank you Elon!”
“What WILL be something in 10 years?”
Real, genuine, unassailable privacy.
I suppose I ought to do my own research into Musk's theory, but as has been pointed out above, if everyone has money, then money is not money--it is no longer a currency, a measure of value, or a store of wealth.
I think that the great injection/distribution of inflated dollars post-covid illustrated the folly of this. We ended up with a bunch of people (myself included) making a lot of money from investments and a whole lot more pretty much ending up where they were or worse.
Anyone who has taken a gander at the amount of debt currently accrued by the world's so-called "economies" and the rate of inflation that governments have been fostering so as to enable them to repay said debt with worthless fiat money understands that money is already worthless. We have been taking in each other's laundry for so long we have come to believe that is the normal state of affairs.
Money will be refactored, relabeled. Resources will remain finitely available and accessible.
When "money" meaning currency dollars, euros, yen etc means nothing......represented value goes to zero...... There will still be items of "value" or representing currency that will used to trade for other items of value.
In a post apocalyptic world... or in a society reduced to it's lowest technological level it would things like: food of all kinds, livestock, tools, labor, things that can be made, crafted that people need. Ammo,guns, even bows and arrows would be very valuable.
Doing the numbers...
If Elon gives an equal share of his $1 billion in cash to every earthling...that's 12 cents to each of us.
($1 billion divided by 8.3 billion people)
If Elon only gives to Americans, and gets the rest of the world to hate his guts, then we each get $2.90.
($1 billion divided by 342 million)
He could do Africa (62 cents) or Asia (20 cents) or South America ($2.26).
My suggestion is to do Greenland. Everybody in Greenland gets $17,543. Oh, they would love the shit out of him in Greenland! He would be the man.
The idea that everything will be done by robots or AI is delusional and only thought of by people who have never done a lick of actual manual labor in their lives. Live in a nice cocoon of air conditioned offices. I'm married to a plumber/water well technician.
I'd like to see a robot crawl under a house with a flooded crawl space, hand dig out the broken sewer line, reconnect to the septic tank which also needed to have a new leach line created and dug out. (You should see the aftermath of yuck on his clothes!!!) Try to remove a burned out water pump from 15 ft under a river stuck, in the muck, replace the pump and filtration screen in the water..... and reconnect system to the newly installed water filtration system, replacing the old one, which was also filled with muck. Robots can swim and use boats in a flowing river....right? OR..... Pull 300 feet of steel pipe full of water, from a well and replace pump and motor, change check valves so that pumped water doesn't just go back in the well.
DBQ - exactly.
I want to see a robot do HVAC/ Plumbing - just as you describe.
Millions of people are on wells and septic.
Millions more on municipal water. Will robots build and maintain all of that? in 10 years? no way.
Robots and IA will speed ahead into the "HARM" category - just as the Chi Coms are planning. IMO
Musk to Acemoglu: 'You go first.'
DBQ
Even simpler. Change my flat tire. Get your robot to do that.
What I'm finding particularly funny is the DSA statement about "Seizing the means of production."
Dude. You can't toast an Eggo. How are you going to build a truck?
Ann Althouse said...
["Musk's "money" consists mostly of shares in his companies. It's control of his companies that matters. He won't give that up."]
"True, but he still has something like a billion dollars in cash. He could slosh that over to a few of us."
I know you're being humorous - I get that - but we all know it wouldn't go far, spread out over millions of people. I suppose he could pay down part of the national debt, but even that would be a drop in that huge bucket. Or, as you say, he could continue creating jobs, inventing new stuff, and enhancing our tech capabilities. I'm guessing that's your point.
I absolutely abhor people who insist on telling the “rich” what to do with their money. My response: You first. Drain your bank account, sell your house, your stocks, buy a tiny house and then you will have credibility. Otherwise shut up.
Leftists are Marxists.
Marx was a lazy bastard mooch.... with really bad ideas.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to is needs.”
LOL - that was Marx's attitude regarding his own life.
Shorter Marx: "I refuse to work, but I demand you pay my way." (Because Marx was so freaking special.)
pffft - Like most academic harm-fueled leftists, he thought of himself as superior and deserving of the fruits of other's labor.
Most up in here will be dead before the soothsayers prophecy comes to fruition including myself . Drama stories with no ending in sight for those opining! Make a wager on the WHITNEY tomorrow put your money to good use :)Cant take it with you and seeing how your kids won't have any MAKE A PLAY!
DBQ and Peachy: I get what you're saying but I'd be careful about dismissing the future possibilities of robot technology, including one that can crawl under your house to install or fix something. It could be that we're just scratching the surface of it now. I don't claim to know enough to hazard a guess, much less an opinion.
You could give everybody on Fiji $1,066. That's pretty good.
U.S. Virgin Islands, everybody gets $11,494. Ooo, that's a party. All his drinks would be free, the rest of his life.
Yes, an Optimus robot will soon be able to crawl under your house to fix the plumbing.
9:11 Saint Croix.
LOL -
We are going to have to purge this form of evil stupidity at some point or we will become like the rest of the world.
@Saint Croix, Pitcairn Islanders (50) stand to make $20,000,000 each! Elon as the next Fletcher Christian patriarch!
Nah. Again, I predict more harm that good from the AI/ Robot community.
Even if Musk had the sort of liquid wealth that so many seem to believe he has, why on Earth would he "donate it to charity" when - if nothing else - this past year and a half has revealed so clearly what a racket "charity" (as envisioned by the left) is? Why wouldn't he just burn it in a giant bonfire?
"He could slosh that over to a few of us."
A dollar and 30 cents roughly per U.S. resident. Can't even buy a burrito for that amount.
Peachy+2 said..."I think it's all bullshit.
Until a robot can design, install and warranty my HVAC system - and until a robot can install my new water heater and heat pump, and until a robot can design and install and manage my solar panels..."
Yeah, robots are going to need a HUGE increase in capabilities first. 2036? LMFAO.
I have all the respect in the world for Elon, but remind me when he was going to be on Mars? Wasn't it about now?
ai answers: "The phrase "too big to fail" first appeared in print in September **1984**.It entered the public lexicon and written record during U.S. Congressional hearings investigating the federal bailout of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust Company. While Comptroller of the Currency C. Todd Conover used the underlying policy rationale in his testimony, U.S. Representative Stewart B. McKinney is widely credited with coining and popularizing the exact phrase during the Subcommittee on Financial Institutions Supervision, Regulation, and Insurance hearings. The transcript of these hearings marked the very first time the phrase appeared in printed text."
(**asterisks for emphasis) Though they are probably superfluous, here.
He's going to use it to build a space colony.
He's been giving away billions -- in taxes
Just shows how out of touch tech nerds can be with the economic and material realities of everyday life.
Money ain’t nothin’ and the robot chicks ain’t free.
The zeroth law of Econ is, if everyone can buy everything, then no one can buy anything.
I think Musk is right that the proper model for managing the productivity increases from automation that results in the lack of jobs, is a wealth fund like Alaska oil. AI becomes the resource that everyone benefits from.
Turkish Daffy from that well-respected/lauded economist.
The idea that robotics won't do amazing this is short-sighted. As the AI becomes more robust, it will make huge strides in efficiency of robotic assembly and function. It will have endless permutations of design that it can do much faster than people and so functionality will soon improve at amazing rates. Sure it will be a while before it can crawl under a house to do those tricky repairs, but it will build roads, houses, do farming, all kinds of mostly repetitive, well-defined tasks within a few years
If Elon could give a billion dollars to everyone in the world inflation would immediately make a hot dog worth $50 million.
Capitalism controls distribution of goods with money. Communism controls distribution by making you wait in line at government stores.
What I worry about is if people believe him, they act accordingly, and then it turns out he’s wrong. Then what?
"The idea that robotics won't do amazing this is short-sighted."
Perhaps what's short-sighted is where this ends up. We better enjoy it while it lasts.
A Taxonomy of Omnicidal Futures Involving Artificial Intelligence
I especially like the Unintentional Omnicide scenario. AI isn't malevolent, it just doesn't care.
"Communism controls distribution by making you wait in line at government stores."
...or just ending distribution.
"Yes, an Optimus robot will soon be able to crawl under your house to fix the plumbing."
Not in your lifetime. For once I agree with DBQ.
Charlton Heston would yell. Inflation is PEOPLE with more fiat money. If Elon keeps his wealth in stocks rather than buying Rolexes there is no inflation due to him. If he gives it away it is inflated away.
The other thing I want to say is actually a question (or questions):
Why does Musk say things like this? How does saying this benefit him and/or his companies now and/or in the future?What does he get out of it?
"If Elon keeps his wealth in stocks rather than buying Rolexes there is no inflation due to him. If he gives it away it is inflated away."
If the Fed can do quantitative easing, why not a private citizen?
"I think Musk is right that the proper model for managing the productivity increases from automation that results in the lack of jobs, is a wealth fund like Alaska oil. AI becomes the resource that everyone benefits from."
Do you really think that our new Tech Lords are actually going to share the wealth from AI with us? If you believe that, why haven't they done it already. Twenty years ago, the richest people in the world (Gates, Buffet, Walton Family, etc.) were all worth 50 Billion or less. Now $50 billion won't even get you into the top 30.
"Why does Musk say things like this? How does saying this benefit him and/or his companies now and/or in the future?What does he get out of it?"
People like to talk. It's the rare person who can keep their mouth shut, even when it's beneficial to do so.
"”Yes, an Optimus robot will soon be able to crawl under your house to fix the plumbing."
Not in your lifetime.“
That is an amazing thought, we send satellites to space to fix other complex satellites but we can’t send a small track drone to your house to change your toilet? Or glue some pvc pipe? We don’t do it now because not everything is done at once, but there is no reason why it can’t be done, there may be some rare things it would need to call for help on.
"That is an amazing thought, we send satellites to space to fix other complex satellites but we can’t send a small track drone to your house to change your toilet?"
Sending satellites into orbit is easier than changing a toilet.
I think Musk is hyping his companies. I don’t believe he’s thinking about the financial well-being, let alone security, of the rest of us. I don’t believe he’s thinking about how the little people believing his hype might disincentivize work, savings, financial planning, and financial prudence. But the rest of us should be.
No, I don’t hate or fear Musk, and in fact I’m a long-time if small investor (who has reaped the benefit of being so). But he’s acting in his own interests, and we would do well to remember that, be skeptical, and plan as if he’s wrong. I wouldn’t want any young person, or even older persons, to make plans based on a belief that money won’t matter in 10 years. Too many people are in bad enough financial shape already. (Have you looked recently at the mean, median, and mode of individual retirement savings lately, for just one example of many?)
"we can’t send a small track drone to your house to change your toilet?"
Have YOU ever replaced a toilet? Do you even know how they work? Do you think you just think you just physically pick up the old toilet and slap down a new one. Ta Dah!!!! Do you even know how MUCH a toilet weights. How to dispose of the old toilet? Is the track drone going to drag it all the way to the dump? Is the drone going to bring in the new toilet. What if you are on the second floor. Shut off the water supply properly. And then reconnect the plumbing. What if you need new fittings? Do it without spilling water all over the floor and mop it up afterwards?. Install a new wax ring properly?
Do you know anything about plumbing at all?? Do you think a small track drone can do all of those things completely alone......unassisted by a meat based associate? Or are they all robots as well.
Meat based associate.
I like it.
I don't know what a "track drone" is, but I'm enjoying the image of a drone with helicopter rotors flying up the stairwell with a toilet hung below it, bashing into things as it goes.
“Have YOU ever replaced a toilet? Do you even know how they work? Do you think you just think you just physically pick up the old toilet and slap down a new one. Ta Dah!!!!“
I have personally replaced 5 or 6 and changed the fill valves in dozens of them and replaced the water valve a few times, humans are great but 3 axis robot arms and vision systems are up to the job. There are not big companies in the home game yet so it’s not a priority.
Going out to people’s homes and navigating is going to require some work but a drone can fly in and scope it out the. The robot arm comes in, pops of the caps unscrews the nuts from the base, disconnects the water and picks the bowl up, then a new wax ring and more nuts. It is all possible. And going into a crawl space, seeing the leaky disposal pipe, curing and replacing. Yes. This could be done with current tech.
I am not trying to be mean, and I do know how plumbing works.
@ Original Mike. Or the drone flying down the stairs sloshing toilet water all over everything. Taking a couple of trips to do it as well...since the tank, lid and seat parts would all be separated
Can Elon continue doing what he loves if he shed himself of wealth?
The great thing about giving away other peoples' money is that you get to feel good about helping the less fortunate and you don't even have to crack open your wallet.
It's all very progressive.
Well a track drone is one that runs on rubber treads like a micro dozer and can carry a robot arm and other objects. I have used them to automatically put fork lift dividers between stacks of panel products at plants even with fork lifts running around. I am not saying that it is better than people now, but there is no reason that a Waymo type car could not bring the robot to your house and an aerial drone could guide the unit in with customer help, even climbing stairs and install the toilet. It is not the hardest thing anyone has done. It would take a lot of work but you know, if someone wanted to do it they could.
What is not true is saying that it could never be possible.
@Wa St Blogger said ....
Have any Funds built AI for themselves? Their clients?
"There are not big companies in the home game yet so it’s not a priority."
And I don't think it's going to be for quite awhile. Human labor is, relatively speaking, cheap.
Could there be a crash course in developing a robot with said capabilities within the decade? A moon shot, by analogy, in the bathroom? Probably. Will there be? Probably not.
Here’s a piece on Musk, which among other things references Musk’s fondness for Iain Banks’ sci-fi Culture series, which talks about abundance theory and other themes and ideas.
https://open.substack.com/pub/a16z/p/spacex-and-the-sentient-sun?r=8dfcll&utm_medium=ios
The piece, published in June, is co-written by venture capitalist Marc Andreesen and writer Michael McGuinnes.
Jamie: "...why on Earth would he "donate it to charity" when - if nothing else - this past year and a half has revealed so clearly what a racket "charity" (as envisioned by the left) is?"
Especially when it was Musk's work on DOGE which exposed how much government "charity" was a political kickback scheme.
How would we compensate the entertainers who would be needed to produce the stuff to fill our idle hours? The actors, athletes, musicians, producers? Do we designate nice things--homes on the waterfront, jets, yachts, etc. for those who are deemed superior? Who designates? How is their "value" determined? How is that different from "money?" And someone has to monitor the robots--do they get "paid" for that? I'm not going to even get into what to do about the physically attractive men and women who the upper echelon seem to prefer the company of--do they get "paid?" Do they need to bother to shower, cut their toenails, make themselves presentable if their is no monetary reward?
Elon is way smarter than I am, but I don't think that he has thought this through.
Robotics can already do astonishing things, and the capabilities and capacities of robotics will continue to increase exponentially.
But just as the internal combustion engine and the personal computer rendered all sorts of tasks and enterprises obsolete, idled many and made life so much easier for just about everyone, the improvements wrought by robotics will not render humans or their ideas, problems, goals and dreams moot or superfluous. Is Marc Andreesen going to spend his declining years watching 30-year old Netflix shows while robots feed him caviar and wine?
Wealth and money are not the same thing.
I think Musk is hyping his companies.
Absolutely that's what he's doing. You ought to read his conference calls transcripts. I don't think there's another CEO who expands the Overton window like Musk does.
That's a fun substack read, rcommal, thanks for the link!
Earth is the cradle of humanity, and you cannot stay in the cradle forever.
This reminds me of the kids-leaving-home-and-coming-back thread. Come on babies! You got to get out. (I say "you" because I ain't going).
"Go into space, young man."
To paraphrase Horace Greeley. "Washington D.C. is not a place to live in. The rents are high, the food is bad, the dust is disgusting and the morals are deplorable. Go (into space) young man, go (into space) and grow up with the country."
Manifest destiny.
from the article...
The Russians didn’t take Musk seriously, and on one occasion, a chief designer spat on him and his team in a display of contempt. On the second trip, in February, Musk asked how much a missile would cost. $8 million each, they said. When Musk countered with $8 million for two, Musk’s aerospace advisor Jim Cantrell remembers them saying something like “Young boy. No,” and implying he didn’t have the money. Musk decided they weren’t serious and walked out.
Cantrell figured the trip was over. He and Mike Griffin, who would later run NASA and had come along as an advisor on the second trip, ordered drinks on the flight home and clinked their glasses, glad to be out of Moscow. Musk sat in the row ahead of them, hunched over his laptop. Then he turned around in his seat. “Hey, guys,” he said, “I think we can build this rocket ourselves.” He showed them a spreadsheet listing the raw materials in a rocket – aluminum, titanium, copper, carbon fiber – and what each one cost. The materials cost only two percent of the quoted price, and as Musk would later put it, “clearly you just need to think of clever ways to take those materials and combine them into the shape of a rocket.”
Years later, Musk would dub the principle underlying his spreadsheet diagnostic tool the “idiot index.” If the ratio of a part’s cost to its raw materials is high, you are either an idiot or you are working with idiots. This sounds like a joke, but it’s the foundation of SpaceX’s strategy.
Every part SpaceX bought was accompanied by an idiot index calculation. One of the legendary stories from the early days of the company involves Steve Davis, who joined SpaceX straight out of Stanford as the 14th employee and was tasked with sourcing an actuator to steer the Falcon 1 rocket’s upper stage. When he reported that a traditional aerospace supplier wanted $120,000 for the part, Musk laughed, telling him the component was no more complex than a garage door opener. Musk gave Davis a budget of $5,000 to build it from scratch. As biographer Ashlee Vance recounts, Davis spent nine months toiling over the design, ultimately producing a functional actuator for just $3,900. When Davis sent a technical breakdown of the triumph, Musk responded with a characteristically brief, two-letter email: “Ok.”
(I am buying some shares on Monday).
Daron Acemoglu = typical leftist
Always telling other people what they should be doing with their own money.
Disposable rockets sounds so stupid in retrospect.
Disposable airplanes. Disposable cars.
Obviously you never advance if it's one and done!
Traditional launch providers like ULA and Arianespace treated each mission as a custom job. The customer specified the orbit, the payload, and the integration requirements, while the launch provider designed a custom mission around the satellite. That model assumed a few launches per year at very high per-mission cost, and it made manufacturing at scale impossible.
SpaceX inverted this. They published a Falcon User’s Guide that defined the rocket’s exact specifications and told customers to design their satellites to fit. At the time, this was considered radical, and it cost SpaceX some early business. But it unlocked a manufacturing flywheel.
Today, SpaceX launches a rocket every two to three days on reused boosters while competitors launch only a handful of custom rockets a year.
*“Have YOU ever replaced a toilet? Do you even know how they work? *
I've swapped out more toilets than I'd care to admit. I would welcome a robot doing it for me instead.
I've never even heard of Iain Banks. I just bought his first one. (There are nine).
One review...
After a brief prologue, we were immediately introduced to the main character, an alien agent who finds himself in a very sticky situation, and his Culture nemesis. Through a James Bond like series of events, the agent escapes and a galactic scale quest began. So far, so good - a likable character set into a series of adventures in the line of duty that put him in far flung, exotic locations with interesting companions and mysterious enemies. This promised to be an entertaining story.
While I was expecting a hard science fiction tome - with the density, depth and complexity of a John Le Carre novel, the actual story was more of an Indiana Jones in deep space.
Dude! You're speaking my language.
I guess I ought to note that these are the books that inspired Elon Musk.
I've swapped out a few toilets. The hardest part is getting the old one downstairs and the new one upstairs. Robots would certainly help there.
St. Croix: You’re very welcome. I thought it might catch at least someone’s interest, including the reference to Banks’ works. I’m just glad I had bookmarked it after reading it so that I could find it again.! I hope you enjoy the books.
I have not personally changed out a toilet, but between my grandfather, father, husband son, I’ve certainly seen a whole lot of them changed out over the course of my lifetime.
And cleaned up after and during those projects, lol. A lesser skill set, but still useful. ; )
I hope you enjoy the books.
Yeah, me too! I am not a science guy. But I like fun.
"Years later, Musk would dub the principle underlying his spreadsheet diagnostic tool the “idiot index.” If the ratio of a part’s cost to its raw materials is high, you are either an idiot or you are working with idiots. This sounds like a joke, but it’s the foundation of SpaceX’s strategy."
Elon: "The best part is no part."
Money? Or just cash? It's possible that in 10 years, cash will mean nothing, but money in one form or another will go on and on.
Do you really think that our new Tech Lords are actually going to share the wealth from AI with us? If you believe that, why haven't they done it already. Twenty years ago, the richest people in the world (Gates, Buffet, Walton Family, etc.) were all worth 50 Billion or less. Now $50 billion won't even get you into the top 30.
The transition is going to be one heck of a ride. Rich people haven't shared their wealth because it hasn't been an issue. Though many have tried to use their wealth for pet charity. The amount of wealth they have now is not liquid, and as others have said, they want control of the business, they don't spend the wealth anyway, it is just a tool to build with. Musk is a serial producer, taking his growth in one business to start another. I want his to keep doing it until he dies of old age and then I want his reanimated corpse to keep doing it. No one had generated more value for humanity lately than Musk.
Now, there is still the problem of tech making many jobs obsolete such that many people won't have much work to do, coupled with the good thing that most luxury goods cost almost nothing to obtain (The vast majority of the cost of goods in in the labor. Just look at what you can buy in 3rd world countries where labor is dirt cheap.)
So good are there, consumers are there, but consumers have no wealth. If DSA takes over, then elite overlords will use the disconnect to try and control the population. Most of the tech leaders won't want to waste their time doing that, though there are always people who prefer control over creation, they go into politics, while the others go into business. I am not worried about the tech overlords as much as I am about the politicians.
What it comes down to is we have to solve the problem of getting goods to consumers. Once goods become so cheap, money won't matter, so allowing the resources that tech produces to be given to people is a much better answer than government seizing it and deciding winners an losers. (Hint you won't , nor will I, be one of the winners). So, I am hoping (yes, it is a hope) that the tech companies will be so profitable and goods so cheap that the owners won't measure their stake in money but in the ability to leverage the next big thing. We will still have unequal distribution, but I think the top 1% would rather live without fear of the mob, so they will find a way to make it work.
One of my husband's college roommates was Employee #[mid-2-digits] at SpaceX, "back when we were just strapping a bunch of rockets together to make bigger rockets," as he says. His daughter just graduated at the top of her class from one of the UC schools, after interning at SpaceX and seeing her dad's thousands of CAD designs there in the files. I can't remember if she's going straight for a master's. Smart kid. Smart parents (mom is also an engineer).
After working down the hall from him for years, this friend mostly says Elon is "different." Certainly our friend is very rich because of him.
As to abundance: it sounds to me as if Musk is just talking in degrees. After all, it's already possible - common, even - to sit in a climate-controlled office for no more than 40 hours a week, actually working no more than 30 of them (maybe fewer!), and earn a high-5- to low 6--figure salary. (Obviously YMMV.) All three of my kids got jobs right after college - public universities, mind you - in the upper third of five figures. On the trade side, my daughter's fella is a tradesman whose annualized income is close to six figures with just two years' experience - it might be over that by now.
All this with a supercomputer in your pocket, a car that can save your life in a crash, summer fruits in January in every supermarket, and more entertainment of whatever quality and genre you desire available 24/7/365 at a cost ranging from $20 a month to a couple of hundred dollars a month, depending on your preferences. If you prefer live entertainment, well, look around: musicians, actors, comics, they're all still performing.
Meanwhile, if you enjoy craft beer, you can't swing a cat without hitting a brewery, even in a small town. Decent, even good, wine can be had for under $15 a bottle. Food trucks - food trucks! - can offer incredible meals with no reservations. Artisans of all kinds are living their dreams, making cool things and selling them with greater ease than ever before thanks to Amazon and Etsy, et al. Yes, there's lots of crap out there - but there's also an unbelievable amount of quality, everywhere, at a wide range of prices.
We're already so close to having everything. I think there will always be "money" - a generic means of exchanging something of value for something else of value - but I'm amazed every time I bring it to mind, how miraculous modern Western life is.
What is the robot going to do when it finds the subfloor is rotted out because the human plumber didn't seal the previous toilet correctly.
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