Cooking the Books 1 – Fully automated luxury capitalism?
Elon Musk has said it again. That money will eventually become meaningless. This time he also gave a date: 2036. In an interview with the editor-in-chief of the Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes on 20 July, he claimed that in ten years’ time advances in intelligent AI and robotics will have helped usher in an era of ‘such amazing abundance’ that money will have become meaningless. The work of production will be done by robots, leaving humans free to do work they enjoy — he gives gardening as an example — while having access to the abundance of wealth that the robots produce.
There may well be the technological advances he predicts but making something possible does not mean that it will actually happen. Under capitalism technological advances are only applied to production when they become the cheapest way of producing something. The complete robotisation that Musk envisages wouldn’t be cheap. He himself mentioned the cost in terms of electricity usage and computer chips. As long as paying humans a wage to produce wealth for sale is cheaper, then that is what will happen, as it is now in almost every field of production and, given capitalism continuing, we counter-predict still will be in 2036. In fact, insofar as robotisation did replace human labour and create a large pool of unemployed workers, that would exert a downward pressure on wages that would cheapen the cost of employing humans, so slowing down the application of robotisation to production.
Then there is the problem of how Musk’s vision would come about. Minton Beddoes pressed him on this point, asking if he thought that it would be through the mass of displaced workers electing a left-wing government that would nationalise everything; which she implied was surely anathema to him as it was to the Economist. Musk evaded the question, re-asserting that there would be an abundance produced by AI-driven robots by 2036 and that this would lead to deflation unless something was done to maintain demand, as by the government writing cheques to provide everybody with a Universal High Income.
Quite apart from this meaning that there would still be money, it would require the election of a government that would do this. Unless, that is, he has in mind the cheques being written by him and the other tech bros. The obvious solution, assuming that the predicted robotisation and abundance was to come about, would be either to hand out to people what they needed or (better) let them take it. But that would imply that the robots and the rest of the means and instruments of production had already become commonly owned. A fully automated luxury capitalism is not possible.
However, in suggesting that a fully-automated moneyless society of abundance could come about Musk has undermined the argument that capitalism is the only game in town. As we pointed out on one of our Facebook pages:
‘Has Musk thought through the consequences of his “Money won’t matter in 2036” prediction? With a moneyless free-access society with the ability to produce more than enough of what everyone needs, why should an elite continue to own the means of production and distribution, decide how these are used, retain power over humankind because of this ownership, and continue to enjoy immensely superior living standards compared to everyone else?’