The background is Elon Musk’s unusually bold prediction about the future. In an interview with The Economist this summer, he said that by 2036, money would no longer play a major role.
The explanation lies in AI and robots. According to Musk, AI gives the economy rapidly expanding digital intelligence. Humanoid robots give that intelligence hands and the ability to operate in the physical world. If the number of advanced robots becomes large enough, they could produce so many goods and services that Musk describes it as a “quasi-infinite economy.”
“It is an idea worth taking seriously, though the ten-year timeline is much easier to question,” says Fredrik NG Andersson, adding:
“Money is largely a response to scarcity. There is a limited amount of goods and services that can be produced each year. Through money and markets, we allocate these resources among different activities and consumers. If technology radically reduces this scarcity, the economy will change as well. We would no longer need money to tell us how much we are allowed to consume.”
This is where Musk unexpectedly comes close to a much older vision, according to Andersson.
Capitalism and Marxism converge
Marx also envisioned a society in which markets and money would eventually lose their function. Production would no longer be organized through private producers making goods for sale on a market. The means of production would be collectively owned, and production would be organized according to society’s needs.
Marx wanted to transform ownership of the means of production and replace the market-based organization of production with collective production according to need. Musk, by contrast, envisions entrepreneurship, capital accumulation, AI and robots within capitalism creating such enormous material abundance that money and markets gradually lose some of their function. The idea is that there will be enough goods and services for everyone, with plenty to spare.
What speaks against Musk being right?
“AI and robots may well increase productivity, and the availability of labor may no longer be a binding constraint on the economy. But that does not mean that all scarcity will disappear.
Robots may perhaps be able to build millions of homes, but they cannot create unlimited amounts of land in central Stockholm, London or New York. AI may make many services almost cost-free, but people’s time and attention will remain limited. Energy, land and many natural resources are not infinite either,” says Fredrik NG Andersson.
AI is not immaterial, either. Data centers consume large amounts of electricity. Robots require metals, semiconductors, batteries, factories and energy. The International Energy Agency expects global electricity consumption by data centers to more than double by 2030, driven largely by AI.
“There is no technological development that can override the laws of physics. That is why it is unlikely that the fundamental economic problem will disappear. As long as there are things that several people want to use but that are not available in sufficient quantities for everyone, someone has to decide who gets to use them,” Fredrik NG Andersson concludes.
So what will the future look like?
Musk is nevertheless raising an important question, he argues. If AI and robots dramatically reduce the need for human labor, we need to start thinking about a society in which work and income are no longer as closely linked as they are today. This could mean shorter working hours. It could make ownership of capital more important. It could create arguments for broader capital ownership.
Musk himself has spoken of some form of “universal high income,” meaning that people in an AI-driven economy could receive government payments that provide them with a high material standard of living even without working. This shows that even his high-tech vision of the future cannot entirely escape the question of distribution.
“Perhaps this is where Marx and Musk truly converge. Not in the belief that money will soon disappear, but in recognizing that a radical change in productive capacity also changes the question of who gets to share in the fruits of production.
Technology can make us vastly richer. But it cannot determine how that wealth should be distributed. That remains a question of institutions, politics and our view of humanity,” says Fredrik NG Andersson.