Elon Musk’s “Free Money” Future Is a Real-Life WALL-E Nightmare
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Elon Musk tells a horror story, not a jump scare horror story. Let me put it through. One of the honestly frightening movies for me, obviously the Exorcist, but it’s a children’s story. WALL-E. That’s right, that picks our film WALL-E. After I watched that movie, I was disturbed.
I was genuinely disturbed. It stayed in my mind. I remember seeing this with my kids ages ago, but yeah, that movie scared me. And why did it scare me? Well, it was a world where people didn’t People didn’t work. I had to throw the whole climate thing into the movie. was a Pixar film. We destroyed the planet, destroyed the planet and there’s this robot down there cleaning things up.
and all the human beings are up on a spaceship, enormously obese, sitting in chairs, sitting in chairs, being pushed around, sucking on various different drinks, doing nothing. Nothing. You know, I remind you, I don’t go to Disney because I can’t stand watching people that can walk, drive around on chairs. I’m just leaving it at that. But anyway, so the movie really bothered me.
It did. And Elon Musk came out and he suggested that the federal government start paying citizens a universal high income. And he says that’s the best way to combat AI related job losses. Universal high income via checks issued by the federal government is the best way to deal with unemployment caused by AI.
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AI will produce goods and services far in excess of the increase in the money supply so there won’t be any inflation. I’m sorry, Elon. You know, I love many of the things that you do, but you don’t understand, quite frankly, you don’t understand human nature. And I’m going to I’m going to dig up another movie reference for you. The Matrix. And I cited this movie countless times.
seen in the movie The Matrix, where Morpheus, one of the lead characters, is being tortured. Tortured by essentially a computer program. And if you’re not familiar with The Matrix, basically it’s a world where everyone’s living a simulation. Well, this computer program tells him that the original Matrix was designed to be a utopia for human beings, and it didn’t work.
It didn’t work. You know, human beings didn’t it didn’t compute with them. It’s like we lost all sorts of humans. Can humans are plugged into the system. You have to see the movie. Okay. But I happen to be a big believer it’s something we talk about all the time here on the program.
the importance, the necessity of hard work. Third movie reference. Third movie, Morgan Freeman playing God in Bruce All Mighty, reminding Bruce, or telling Bruce that some of the happiest people in the world come home from work smelling just foul.
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It’s true. There’s no doubt about it. I was being interviewed about this topic today and I told the radio show host that was a guest on. said, you know, I remember the best tasting beer I ever had in my entire life. Vividly remember the best beer, the best ice cold beer I ever had in my life was
The day I mowed my lawn and did yard work on my first house after I was done. That was the best beer I’ve ever had in life. First home, just moved in, my yard, I’m doing the lawn, I’m pulling the weed, I’m doing all that stuff. That that beer, I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget that. Elon, you’re not gonna have those experiences.
when you’re just handing over money. It just, doesn’t work that way. God has given us all certain abilities and talents. They’re all different, okay? When I was a kid, when I was a kid, when I was younger, I was such a, I was an enormous baseball fan, collected all the cards. I mean, I was certain. I mean, I practiced like crazy.
Practice like I wanted to be a major league baseball player. I just didn’t have the talent. It was good. It’s good. It’s not not great. OK, not at that level was to be OK. It’s OK. It is what it is. OK, what was it? What had God had in store for me? Everyone has a unique talent and ability and we have to figure out what that is and we have to figure out what we have to do with that and what our mission is.
in life. Some of the problems that I have with all of the way welfare programs are structured in this country. And I’ve written about this extensively, talked about it extensively over the years. And we’ll talk a little bit about that in a bit. Say, professor that is a Harvard professor that I have an enormous deal of respect for and he’s
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makes the rounds quite frankly, he really does. He does make the rounds out there. His name is Arthur Brooks. And he’s social scientist, I guess you want to call him that. And he he basically basically talks about happiness and being happy in life and work. Work. And I agree with this wholeheartedly. Okay, prove me wrong.
is one of the four essential pillars of a happy life. Alongside family, friendship, faith, philosophy. It’s not just about earning money. It’s not just about obtaining some status. It gives you meaning, gives you satisfaction. And again, we need that sense.
of being needed. And again, I was interviewed about this Elon Musk statement today. And from my perspective, from our family’s perspective in what we do, because we care for many families, many very wealthy families from around the country. And times we have to remind them.
Remind them that, yeah, I guess we all do it. We all spoil our kids. There’s that line in The Godfather where he’s lecturing his son, Sonny, for opening his mouth when he shouldn’t. As you can see, I spoil my son. I spoil my kids too. Okay, you’re gonna do that. But you must. You must instill in them.
a work ethic you must you must instill that they’ve got to figure out who they are and what they want to do. My situation right now. My eldest son, my eldest son, working in New York City in finance, how come he’s not working for you? I want him to figure it out first on his own. I want him to go and struggle. Like I had a struggle.
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I want him to go through the he’s got to go through the same types of trial to plant He’s got to make sure he’s got to figure out what his path is. They’re gonna force my kids or push my kids To working with me. I hope they decide to something. We’ll see how works He some will some won’t but I would never force that upon them It was the same same thing with them when they were growing up I played sports
Man, was also when I was young I did music too, but I left that when I was in high school just to concentrate on sports I never pushed up. I said listen you have to do something extracurricular, I don’t care I Don’t care if it’s a school play. I don’t care if you play the piano I don’t care if play the fight or you play a sport whatever it may be But you are gonna go all in on something. I don’t care if it’s a math club doesn’t make any difference to me Whatever it is, okay
You’re going to have to do something where you’re going to have to bust your ass. You’re going to have to practice at it. You’re going to have to work at it.
that instills in them a lot.
And you don’t think I’ve seen it? And what we’ve done and who we hit for 30 years, parents that don’t do that regret it.
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regret it. then, you know, sometimes they hand their business over to their kids and their kids are ill prepared. They can’t handle it’s why so many businesses fail. Second generation, the third generation forget about it. But Arthur Brooks, he draws on research, he can he does just look to wisdom. Okay. So I got like, maybe why I kind of like Arthur Brooks, the same thing that he’s talking about happiness.
And that is the same way I talk about the right way of investing using ancient wisdom, the Bible, philosophy, that humans are wired for purposeful activity. Even the Garden of Eden story, tending the garden was part of paradise before any curse of toil. Work becomes meaningful when it serves others and allows you to earn success through your efforts.
Service to others. Joy at work comes from creating value and knowing your contributions to help people. Brooks often says joy doesn’t stem from money, power, or prestige, but from earning your success, creating value, serving others, and knowing you are needed. When work feels like an act of love, love made visible, it sanctifies daily efforts. Earn success.
This is the feeling that your hard work produces real results and recognition. Leaders should help employees see how their specific role serves others and reward genuine achievement rather than relying on perks or gimmicks being needed. Dignity. The essence of dignity is feeling indispensable, not managed like a liability. Modern workplaces sometimes erode this through a surveillance or
impersonal system leading to despair, meaningful work appreciation and daily enjoyment predict happiness far better than salary or flexibility alone against Arthur Brooks, highly recommend his work. He’s a brilliant guy. Back to the horror story. Back to the horror story. I don’t I don’t see how this is possible. and I was I was hammering my brain over the
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course the weekend well if you gonna get universal he wants high income you’re gonna get universal high income should the government demand that maybe you study something become I don’t know
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I don’t know. But again, if it turns into, you know, the old 1970s 80s FM radio station, there were three o’clock and we’re giving away cash.
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It’s not going to end well. Not going to end well. I don’t know if Elon was a bit disconnected during COVID as well when they were just giving away cash.
And you know, I am face planting. I go back this point in time. I’m face planting every single day on the podcast, even though, know, again, I had basically start over the algorithms hated me because it was a COVID truth. But anyway, neither here nor there. I’m listening to commercials on the radio. People talking about, you know, bring your stimulus check into so and so jewelry store and buy this. Bring your stimulus check into
So and so appliance store and buy yourself a new this. And I’m like, what are we doing? People, what are we doing? Again, I can’t imagine a world. I can’t imagine a world where you can’t have that experience of having that beer that tastes that good. And that’s what we’re going to take away.
from humanity if we head in this direction. Watchdog on wallstreet.com.
