In a recent interview with The Economist, Elon Musk made a prediction that would have sounded like science fiction just a few years ago.
He suggested that money may no longer matter by 2036.
His reasoning is that if AI and millions of humanoid robots can produce more goods and services than humanity could ever consume, then scarcity largely disappears. As he put it, the most likely outcome is “an age of amazing abundance,” where anyone can have anything they can think of—assuming we avoid World War III.
Whether that timeline turns out to be right or wrong remains to be seen.
But the conversation itself has changed.
One of the world’s most influential technology leaders is now openly talking about a future where money may no longer be the organizing principle of society with the editor in chief of the Economist.
And there’s something remarkable about that in itself.
The editor-in-chief of one of the world’s most influential financial publications is interviewing the richest man on Earth about a future where money may no longer matter.
Just writing that sentence feels surreal.
I’ve since seen two different clips from the interview circulating online. This is the other one:
In one, Zanny asks the obvious question: “How will this be financed? Will there be massive redistribution of wealth?”
Musk simply replies:
“What was relevant in the past might not be relevant in the future.”
It’s a fascinating answer because it suggests that perhaps we’re trying to understand tomorrow’s world using yesterday’s assumptions.
In another clip, she asks a different question:
“At a more prosaic level, what will life be like?”
To me, that’s the most important question of all.
Because abundance alone doesn’t tell us what everyday life actually looks like.
How do we live?
How do we organize ourselves?
How are homes provided?
How do education, healthcare and transportation work?
What motivates people?
What does a civilization beyond money actually feel like?
Listening to these two clips, I couldn’t help smiling.
Not because I think Elon Musk is describing the same future I have imagined.
But because the questions being asked are the very same questions that fascinated me years ago.
In fact, they fascinated me so much that I wrote an entire novel exploring them.
Well… I imagined this world in the year 2115 rather than 2036. 😊
But hey… if Elon turns out to be right, perhaps we’ll get there almost a century earlier than I expected…?
If you, like like Zanny Minton Beddoes, ever wondered what everyday life in such a civilization might actually be like—not just technologically, but socially, politically and humanly—that is exactly what my novel Waking Up – A Journey Towards a New Dawn for Humanity, and the many articles on this blog, explore.
So if, like Zanny Minton Beddoes, you’re wondering what life beyond money might actually look like…
…I think I may have an answer.
In the story, the bewildered billionaire Benjamin Michaels wakes up in that world after 100 years of cryonic sleep, trying to escape his cancer. He expected to expand his empire upon awakening, but much to his surprise there is no money in the world anymore. Instead he gets an amazing journey through this new world, filled with both peril and paradise…
Hope you like it.
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