Musk Says Money Will No Longer Matter by 2036
In an interview with The Economist, Musk stated that by 2036, "money won't matter" because AI and robots will produce an abundance of goods and services for humanity. He described this future as "amazing abundance" and mentioned that society may transition into a state of "universal high income."
In market terms, this means buyers will shift from being "payers for scarce goods" to "beneficiaries of automated production capacity," while sellers will still rely on traditional labor and monetary distribution systems. If production costs continue to decrease due to AI and robots, the pricing system and wealth distribution methods will be rewritten.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
The core of Musk's statement is not simply that "money will disappear," but that when AI and robots can reduce the marginal cost of most goods and services to very low levels, the scarcity allocation function of money will be weakened. From a capital perspective, this is an extreme deflationary narrative: if production capacity expands infinitely while human demand grows limited, the value anchor of assets and income will shift from "labor for money" to "who controls automated production capacity." This is why he connects future wages, benefits, and tax systems to new distribution models. Historically, every leap in productivity has rewritten wealth distribution, but this time is different because AI and robots may simultaneously impact both "labor income" and "information advantages." So even if money itself does not become completely ineffective, the mechanisms that determine who receives money may be more unstable and politicized than today. Essentially, this is about technological substitution: when machines begin to replace the vast majority of labor, economic questions will no longer just be about "how to make money," but rather "who will distribute the surplus created by machines." ABAB News · Cognitive Laws
- The higher the productivity, the weaker the distribution function of money.
- The more thorough the automation, the more wealth rules need to be rewritten.
- When marginal costs approach zero, value anchors will be repriced.