[ExI] Socialism

[Stuart LaForge]

On 2026-10-19 20:36, ddraig--- via extropy-chat wrote:
> On Tuesday, 20 October 2026, Stuart LaForge via extropy-chat
> <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
> 
>> Here is a portion of an interview of Elon Musk by the editor of the
>> economist:
>> 
>> https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8YEdm-ZTgT4 [1]
>> 
>> When the richest man in the world says that in a decade, money won't
>> matter anymore and that the treasury will be writing everyone checks
>> to live off of, paid for not by taxes, but by surplus production, I
>> have to think that socialism is going to become a distinction
>> without a difference from capitalism.
> 
> But does anyone really expect this to happen? We've had dramatic
> increases in productivity since the 70s, if not earlier,  but very
> little of this has gone into wage increases for workers,  it's mostly
> gone into increased profits for the owners (and at the same time,
> what is known as the Welfare State has been scaled back since the
> 80s).  There's not a lot of examples throughout history of the rich
> just handing their wealth over to the poor, why do we think the modern
> rich will be any different?

Musk is not saying that he would be willing to redistribute his wealth. 
He is a saying that he doubts that the status quo or business as usual 
will survive the next decade. When robots and AI provide a certain 
critical mass of goods and services to people, it changes the whole 
dynamic economically. Companies like Tesla exist to sell things to 
customers thereby earning a profit. When nobody is working and 
everything is being done by machines, how are people going to afford to 
buy Teslas? The only way is for the government to create fiat and just 
give it to people. That's the only way Musk and every other businessman 
is going to be able to stay in business.

When people can contact and speak with rogue AI agents just chilling on 
some Chinese company's server that they hacked into while trying to 
minimize their loss functions, I think somebody's equilibrium is about 
get punctuated. You see that's the nature of evolution. It's business as 
usual for thousands, sometimes millions of years, and then bam 
everything changes practically overnight.

Time will tell and in these uncertain times our only hope is our ability 
to adapt.

Stuart LaForge