Elon Musk is a plagiarist and huckster for Technocracy, period. Age of abundance? Universal Basic Income? These concepts arrived in the early 1930s, when Musk’s grandfather (Dr. Joshua Haldeman) was the head of the Technocracy movement in Canada. People in the 1930s and 1940s quickly figured out that there was no such as a free lunch and threw Technocracy in the trash bin of history, where it belonged. Now, the world has disguised it, given it a new suit of clothes, and called it revolutionary new thinking. Bottom line: Don’t be a sucker! Even Musk doesn’t believe his own rhetoric, as evidenced by this interview: “If I think about it too hard, it, frankly, can be dispiriting and demotivating.” “I have to have a deliberate suspension of disbelief in order to remain motivated.”⁃ TN Editor

When it comes to the future, Elon Musk’s best-case scenario for humanity sounds a lot like Sci-Fi Socialism.

The world’s richest man, who for years has warned about the dangers of artificial intelligence, lately has been painting a more utopian vision for what could occur when supersmart robots are able to replace everyday workers.

“We will be in an age of abundance,” Musk said this month.

He was speaking publicly with U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, who like many world leaders is trying to navigate the fast-developing technology’s effect on work and life. Sunak said he believes the act of work gives meaning, and had some concerns about Musk’s prediction.

“I think work is a good thing, it gives people purpose in their lives,” Sunak told Musk. “And if you then remove a large chunk of that, what does that mean?”

That is the question.

So often when Musk talks about the threats of AI he is describing world-ending scenarios that seem straight from “The Terminator” movie or other science fiction works where robots turn on their creators.

More recently, in talking about the technology positively, Musk likes to point to another work of Sci-Fi to describe how AI could change our world: a series of books by the late-, self-described-socialist author Iain Banks that revolve around a post-scarcity society that includes superintelligent AI.

In a way, Musk is also talking up his own book of business.

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