The claim that robots cannot de-toil humans challenges Elon Musk’s often-repeated prophecy.

My message should be understood on two levels. The first one is literal and is the main subject of this post.

The second one is more subtle and goes against the ad hominem argumentations.

Check 10 posts on this blog that address various aspects of the Elon Musk phenomenon and especially Elon Musk, Stalin’s nephew (not anymore?)- fourth revision. I consider Elon one of the few outstanding personalities in contemporary Western society, but that does not mean everything he does or says makes sense. What he triggered by acquiring X (formerly Twitter) is the most efficient break in the decline of Western civilization. Tesla’s role in boosting the electrification of cars was not only a commercial failure that survived only because it was/is subsidized, but also a strategic mistake that boosted Chinese car manufacturers, which, overnight, outperformed Tesla and the European industry.

Not every word of a wise guy is wise, and not every action of a villain is malevolent. To assess the world around us based on ad rem argumentation is, for me at least, one of the main virtues in the world that is so much ad hominem driven as it is ours at the moment.

Ayn Rand predicted Elon Musk before he was born.

The prophecy of Ayn Rand comes more and more true. Leading industrialists of our era are increasingly openly pleading for a future in which individuals would be subordinated to the collective, as she analyzed thoroughly in her book The Return of the Primitive.

Elon Musk’s prediction about universal basic income (UBI) is a prime example.

His argument for UBI rests on this assumption:

In March, President Barack Obama warned Congress about the looming threat of job loss, based on several reports that found that as much as 50% of jobs could be replaced by robots by 2030.

From this presumption, Elon concludes that, since those people will have nothing to do, and since robots will generate all added value, it will be necessary to reimburse humans through UBI mechanisms.

Elon, have you ever heard about the Industrial Revolution?

Let me be clear: robots and AI are going to develop and play an increasingly important role not only in the production of goods but also in everyday life. They will replace specific traditional production lines and certain regular habits, like steam engines replacing standard production in the 19th century, and the Otto engine replacing horse carriages with cars. New technologies do not make people unnecessary; only those who do not adapt to the new environment are. On the contrary, history proves with 100% accuracy that new technologies create new jobs.

Elon Musk and Barack Obama are behaving like carriage drivers in 1900; they see the world as a static entity frozen in the past, and cars as threats that will endanger the whole society.

Elon Musk, as a visionary and creator of Starlink, is stuck in the past. Isn’t such a claim a bit outrageous? How could a techno inventor be so stupid as not to understand all the potential of new technologies?

Elon, why do you hate humans and love the State?

This apparent paradox resolves once we understand the business models of both Obama and Musk. What is not surprising, if you take Ayn Rand seriously, is that Donald Trump’s economic policy plays the same collectivistic tune. As a mercantilist, Trump sees the state as the crucial agent in the national economy. That was precisely where Ayn was right in her criticism of Republicans: At the moment, Argentinian president Miles is the only statesman globally who is trying to expel statism and collectivism based on von Mises’ economic insights.

Tesla heavily depends on subsidies. Not only direct subsidies to final products, such as electric cars, but also much more in indirect subsidies for electricity from renewable sources. Renewable energy producers are subsidised with a premium of 400% or more on their products in some European countries. For that reason, such energy actually lowers prices.

But prices are reduced for an additional reason: the tremendous surplus of energy during periods of abundant renewable energy. So we now have a situation in which an investor in renewables cannot fail even if the market price of electricity goes to zero. For that reason, the renewable energy sector attracts new investments. For so long as traditional electricity producers exist to fill the electricity gap when renewables are unavailable, everything goes smoothly.

We all forget that we pay a much higher price for electricity through various visible and invisible taxes that boost renewables. Elon Musk’s business model thus relies more on taxes than on the market economy. He relies on subsidised markets. Subsidised markets are not markets but the state-planned economy. This is the economy planned by Obama, Trump, and other world etatists that prevailed in the second part of the 20th century.

Elon, why don’t you think about plants?

But it is not only history that proves that new technologies create new jobs, but also simple economic calculation.

Elon Musk lives in an imaginary world of no competition. He thinks that if robots take over all work, no one will strive for even better, more productive robots. I speculate that he is thinking about robots that develop better robots. It might even happen that robots would compete among themselves without human interference. We could live like angels while robots would handle all the dirty work, including stock exchange transactions and lobbying. Wow! We might think that this would prove there is no need for humans to toil. That would be something so new on Earth that it would completely change our lives and our economy.

Something utterly new on earth?

Give me a break!

Don’t we already have plants and animals that reproduce, improve their fitness, and evolve according to the laws of evolution, which are based on the basic principle of limited resources? Robots in the form of plants and animals already exist.

Does that mean that there is no place for us, humans, to create value to accumulate better resources?

Suppose robots ever develop to the level of plants and animals. In that case, they will fit into an ecosystem and introduce a new environmental factor that we, humans, plants, and animals, will have to take into account while striving to produce as much added value as possible. UBI based on such a picture is a bromide seriously hampering human potential.

Elon Runs Atlas

What becomes clear sooner or later in every state-planned economy is a complete lack of value creation feeling. Such economies fail to understand that the whole society, not only Unions, fight for a fair redistribution of wealth.

Collectivists who also appear in the form of Elon Musk, when he addresses universal basic income, are the proponents of the costliest utopia of any society. In Musk’s interpretation, this heaven-like utopia is objectified by robots.

If Ayn Rand were still alive, Elon Musk would be a significant negative role model in Atlas Shrugged.