Imagine the profits companies will have when they can eliminate, or drastically reduce, their single largest expense... payroll. Not only the base pay, but 401K match, insurance, payroll taxes, etc. Poof... gone.
Imagine the profits companies will have when they can eliminate, or drastically reduce, their single largest expense... payroll. Not only the base pay, but 401K match, insurance, payroll taxes, etc. Poof... gone.
I don't know if it's enough people to buy the goods, but robot-produced goods should bottom out on price, closing in on the actual cost of materials/energy.
I don't think that's really true, or rather it's variably true along a continuum for different kinds of things. Some things sell for close to the marginal cost of production, others close to what the market will bear.
For two examples, flat-screen TVs seem to be on one end of the continuum, iPhones on the other. Lots of other things are at different points in between. Robots won't eliminate demand for luxury goods, which are not usually near the marginal cost of production end of the scale.
I don't know what it costs Apple to make an iPhone, but if they could cut it in half while people were still willing to pay $1,000, there's no reason to think they'd lower the price.
Oh no, but Elon Musk tells us that out of the kindness of his heart we're going to have unlimited abundance. The same man responsible for taking away aid from thousands of the poorest people in the world through DOGE's interruption of PEPFAR and USAID.
With a single sentence from him, he could start saving thousands of lives without impacting his wealth in the slightest. He could do that right now.