{"id":4382,"date":"2026-07-28T06:40:28","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T06:40:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4382"},"modified":"2026-07-28T06:40:28","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T06:40:28","slug":"elon-musks-vision-of-a-post-money-future-got-mocked-vinod-khosla-warns-it-could-become-a-dystopia-instead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4382","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk\u2019s vision of a post-money future got mocked. Vinod Khosla warns it could become a dystopia instead"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>In a\u00a0wide-ranging interview with <em>The Economist<\/em>, Musk told editor-in-chief Zanny Minton Beddoes that AI and robotics will produce such an abundance of goods and services by 2036 that money will become irrelevant. His logic: \u201cWhat do you want money for? You want money for goods and services\u201d\u2014and once robots and AI generate more of both than any human could consume, currency loses its purpose. Musk went further, predicting deflation, not inflation, would become the era\u2019s defining economic challenge.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4380\">Trump can\u2019t stop shooting himself in the foot, as the stage looks set once again for Warsh to hold\u2014if not hike\u2014interest rates<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Musk made similar remarks on the\u00a0<em>People by WTF<\/em> podcast\u00a0months earlier, saying \u201cmoney disappears as a concept\u201d once AI and robotics can satisfy all human needs without wages acting as \u201ca database for labor allocation.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>What changed this time was the venue and the pile-on.\u00a0Gizmodo\u00a0characterized Musk as melting down over \u201cperfectly normal questions\u201d about his worldview, calling his answers frequently incoherent. On\u00a0Reddit, one widely upvoted thread set off a round of debate, ranging from Musk\u2019s track record of predictions to the future of capitalism. <\/p>\n<h2>Khosla enters\u2014with a catch<\/h2>\n<p>Vinod Khosla, the veteran Silicon Valley investor and Khosla Ventures founder, didn\u2019t join the pile-on. Instead, he posted on X that he\u2019d \u201cmodify\u201d Musk\u2019s prediction by adding a crucial qualifier: Money won\u2019t matter in 2036 \u201conly if the politics permits this great abundance.\u201d He linked the post to his own 2024 essay,\u00a0\u201cAI: Dystopia or Utopia?\u201d published on his firm\u2019s website.<\/p>\n<p>Khosla wasn\u2019t endorsing Musk\u2019s timeline so much as using it as a springboard to make a very different argument, namely that the technology enabling abundance and the political will to distribute its benefits fairly are two entirely separate problems, and solving the first guarantees nothing about the second.<\/p>\n<p>Reaction to Khosla\u2019s post split along similarly predictable lines. One reply called the whole abundance premise \u201cbeyond ridiculous,\u201d arguing that police, firefighters, doctors, and nurses won\u2019t simply work \u201cfor free.\u201d Another commenter offered a backhanded validation, noting that \u201cElon is often right in the end, but usually about 10\u201315 years early on his predictions.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<h2>The dystopia hiding in the fine print<\/h2>\n<p>Khosla\u2019s essay warns that \u201cAI could create a world where a small elite thrives while the rest face economic instability, especially in a democracy that drifts without\u201d active policy intervention. He argues AI is categorically different from prior technological revolutions like the microprocessor or the internet, because those tools amplified what humans could do with existing brainpower, while AI actually substitutes for brainpower itself.<\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4378\">U.S.\u2014Canada bridge opens to traffic in Detroit amid Trump tariffs strain<\/a><\/p>\n<p>That distinction is what makes mass abundance technically plausible, in Khosla\u2019s telling: AI could eventually replace most jobs in health care, law, retail, and beyond, with productivity gains theoretically capable of supporting comfortable living standards for everyone.<\/p>\n<div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Khosla has been predicting this for over a decade. A\u00a0Substack analysis of his writing\u00a0notes that as early as 2014, \u201che issued a warning shot, arguing that AI would drive unprecedented abundance alongside a massive gap between the rich and the poor.\u201d His proposed fix, per\u00a0<em>Fortune<\/em>\u2019s earlier coverage, is a universal basic income \u201cto ensure people can live well even as jobs disappear.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Crucially, Khosla\u2019s essay stops well short of predicting governments will actually adopt such fixes. He warns wage compression, job displacement, and deflation could just as easily deepen inequality as eliminate it, with the outcome depending \u201cupon the policy approach of our elected officials and their willingness to tackle the severe redistribution problem pure capitalism may create.\u201d<\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Separately, at a\u00a0Stanford FIS event, Khosla warned of \u201ca five-year burst of productivity and cost cutting before a deflationary decade reshapes the global economy\u201d\u2014a rockier near-term path than Musk\u2019s smooth abundance narrative implies.<\/p>\n<p>Neither man is short on incentive to talk up AI\u2019s transformative potential as both have deep financial stakes in the technology delivering on its promise. But Khosla\u2019s caveat suggests that even among AI\u2019s most bullish investors, the real debate isn\u2019t whether the technology can produce abundance. It\u2019s whether the political system will let that abundance reach anyone beyond the people who own the robots.<\/p>\n<p><em>For this story,\u00a0<\/em>Fortune<em>\u00a0journalists used generative AI as a research tool. An editor verified the accuracy of the information before publishing.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Read more <a href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4376\">Kalshi tiptoes back into canceled flight markets with new  JFK airport wager, bets don\u2019t apply to specific flights<\/a><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Khosla added a qualifier to Musk\u2019s prediction, saying money won\u2019t matter in 2036 \u201conly if the politics permits this great abundance.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4381,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[61],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-future-of-work"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.7 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Elon Musk\u2019s vision of a post-money future got mocked. Vinod Khosla warns it could become a dystopia instead - Cross Country Moving Team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/crosscountrymovingteams.com\/?p=4382\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Elon Musk\u2019s vision of a post-money future got mocked. 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