Elon Musk thinks your newborn's savings account will be worthless by the time they are 18. And it’s not because of inflation.
We are raised on a specific set of financial commandments: Work hard, save money, compound interest. It’s the bedrock of our stability model.
But what if the future operates on a physics entirely different from today?
Musk recently suggested that by roughly 2042, money as we know it may be entirely useless. He isn't predicting a market crash; he's predicting a fundamental phase shift in civilization driven by the velocity of AI.
He sees no "slow middle path." Only two outcomes:
1️⃣ Total Collapse: Institutions fail as automation breaks the labor market faster than we can adapt.
2️⃣ Extreme Abundance: AI solves production scarcity. Robots build robots. The cost of goods approaches zero.
In a world of radical abundance, "saving money" becomes an archaic concept.
The most terrifying part of this assessment isn't the outcome, but the speed. We think linearly. AI scales exponentially.
If money fades, hierarchy doesn't disappear. The metric just shifts. The new wealth won't be dollars in a bank; it will be compute, energy, and access to the machines that create the wealth.
This forces a brutal question: What is the value of a human in an automated world?
If your economic value is tied to your ability to do something a machine cannot, that list is shrinking daily.
https://sylvainsaurel.substack.com/p/the-end-of-value-why-elon-musk-thinks
Posted by sylsau
12 Comments
idk man this feels way too binary. yeah ai is moving fast but human systems adapt slower than tech. money might change form but it won’t just disappear by 2042
I can see this being the way, but I don’t think it will be that soon
I’m sure money feels meaningless to the richest man in the world.
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Speaking of AI
Did self checkout lines end all human labor in supermarkets?
No.
Elon Musk is a hyperbole.
Some things will be automated yeah. But in that time span ? Laughable.
Dude thought we’d have a Mars base by now.
Yea, we should all listen to the richest man in the world tell us we don’t need money while he sits there and hoards the world’s wealth…
Billionaire wants to remove the threat to his wealth and power, shocker. Thats people and democracy btw.
Wonder how is planning on paying for “his” Path of Exile characters.
So Elon’s giving away Teslas, free housing, and sending food straight to our doors now?
Microsoft has begun pulling back spending on their Copilot AI…nobody, almost nobody fvcking cares to use it, or needs to use it. Bye, bye AI
I’d prefer my new born gets 1k in btc or eth instead of usd…