> we all live in a world of abundance where money doesn't matter
So how do we distribute all of this abundance? Do we all get private jets? Is it more important to solve sustenance before transitioning to private jets for everyone? What about the high level cut between r&d, upkeep and "legacy costs"?
Because here's some cold facts: the total amount of available material is finite as is the total solar energy and even if you cheat the latter with space mirrors, the total amount of heat that can be radiated into space is finite.
I agree the idea seems unrealistic. What's proposed sounds like fully automated luxury communism. Which is especially strange when promoted by the world's richest capitalist.
I guess the idea is that communism will actually work when central planning is managed by AI instead of people. Which, OK, maybe, but even if it's true, the question of how we get there from here without a violent revolution and/or the disempowerment of the human race seems unanswerable.
Elon talks about how the AI will saturate all human desires for material goods. And when I hear that I always think of Han Solo saying "I don't know, I can imagine quite a bit".
I can imagine that potentially mostly working for some goods like food and clothing and personal electronics, but without at least some pretty strict limits on what you're allowed to consume, a tiny minority could cause insane levels of waste. And as soon as you have limits you're going to get people trying to exploit them. That's just human nature.
Then for some other resources I can't see it working at all, chiefly land. Even if we accepted dramatic modification of the natural landscape, which we probably shouldn't, there will never be enough tropical islands or palatial ski chalets for everyone to own one for themselves.
I can imagine (or at least describe) a googolplex.
And once I have that, my frenemy from the next street over will want one too.
economies can be constructed and artificially maintained. for extreme examples, see any MMORPG, but this happens today in the US at a lesser level.
if one was a true believer, then they'd probably say, all of this will work itself out on its own and there is no reason to worry about human resource markets collapsing.