- Elon Musk stated that wealth has no intrinsic power and money is just a database
- He explained money facilitates exchange of goods and services and time-shifts them
- Musk used a shipwreck analogy to illustrate money’s uselessness without goods
A resurfaced clip of Elon Musk saying that wealth holds no intrinsic power has gained fresh traction online after the billionaire responded “Yes” to the footage. The interview dates back to April 2022, shortly after Musk revealed plans to acquire Twitter.
“People get confused sometimes, they think an economy is money, but money is a database for the exchange of goods and services and for time-shifting the exchange of goods and services. Money is a database. Money does not have power in and of itself,” Musk said in the video.
“You can run the thought experiment: if you are shipwrecked on a remote island and you have a trillion dollars in a Swiss bank account, it's worthless. You would rather have a can of soup. You can have all the Bitcoin in the world and you're still going to starve. The actual economy is goods and services,” he added.
The post generated several reactions. A person said, “Money is just simply an abstraction to make it easier to commodify things and exchange with each other. No amount of zeros will change whether your economy produces enough goods and services to meet people's needs efficiently. Zimbabwe learned that the hard way.”
Another user wrote, “Real money is something that has Monetary value. The world is finally a barter system - Exchange of Goods and Services. Money is just an artificial construct as a via media. Exceptions are GOLD and SILVER, which have great Utilities and are the Real Money, as JP Morgan said.”
Musk's comments assume importance against the backdrop of debates surrounding cryptocurrencies, interest rate and investments in AI. The tech mogul underlines that the “actual economy is goods and services.”
“Money's just the scoreboard keeping track of who gets what. He makes it a point to not get so wrapped up in arguments about inflation, crypto, interest rates, etc., as the real economy is production,” entrepreneur Mario Nawfal posted on X.
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