Not So Elon

 

Here it is, the end of November, 2025. I love tradition but only a fool can deny that we are dashing headlong into a future utterly different from the past, like nothing we could have imagined.

Elon Musk the other day was quoted as predicting that the Age Of AI will change everything, which it will. Elon predicted that money will disappear that people will no longer have to work. I cannot disagree with what he sees in his digital crystal ball.

When driving to work the other morning I heard Salem News radio host Chris Stigall interviewing someone who has invested heavily in a company which manufactures AI robots, as they are perfected, to work in factories, in the fields, to eventually do all the trades work, and this guest said that was a noble advancement for humans, never to have to do blue collar/drudgery type of work anymore.

This guest noted that AI robots will work for free building houses cheaper and better than carpenters have done.

Well, as a long time follower of Eric Hoffer, I too worry that people who get money without working, who no longer have to work, whose drudgery or manual labor or skilled hand labor are now done for them by a class of robot slaves—what will become of people?

People who do not work, who do not do some physical work each day, who do not have to hustle to be productive to pay the bills and support their families—this is a society of wealthy, parasitic drones who will go crazy and join mass movements because work, which used to provide them with a sense of purpose, meaning, a self-respecting identity, self-esteem, a sense of usefulness, something to do with all that time on their hands.

We will need a carve out for people do work, to work also with their hands, to do menial, physical labor, even if a robot can do it faster, cheaper and better.

As individuators who knows the upper limits of strength, efficiency and adaptability that humans could achieve to compete with robots?

Humans not working, not working for money: it must not be so, Elon, for the sake of each person, for the safety of the world.