Founder and President Thomas Jefferson once declared, “If we can but prevent the government from wasting the labours of the people, under the pretence of taking care of them, they must become happy.”
This quote could hardly be more different from Elon Musk’s grandiose claim that AI will eliminate most jobs, or Musk’s effort to make such a potential future sound positive. The Founding Fathers held much more to the Biblical view. St. Paul said in the Bible that those who do not work should not eat (2 Thessalonians 3:10), because God commanded man to work (Genesis 2:15, 3:23) — both before and after the Fall. Being practical men, the Founders also knew from their own experience that a human being cannot be healthy, happy, or reach his full potential without having an avocation in life.
While speaking at the U.S.-Saudi Investment Forum, Musk sketched out a thoroughly socialist and blatantly un-American vision of the future. He eagerly anticipated, “If you go out long enough, assuming there's a continued improvement in AI and robotics, which seems likely, the money will stop being relevant at some point in the future.” He then made a daring prediction: “My prediction is that work will be optional. It'll be like playing sports or a video game or something like that.” Except that if all work is optional, supposing that could actually be achieved, then you are dependent for everything on whoever controls the robots.
Let’s leave aside for a moment the fact that it’s impossible to attain a future where no one works and examine the problems inherent in Musk’s view. Work is inherently good and a moral obligation. For the first time in history, with the founding of America, a nation acknowledged that fundamental Judeo-Christian truth, instead of glorifying laziness and full-time leisure. Indeed, one might accurately say that America was the first instance of the Parable of the Talents being put into practice (see Matthew 25:14ff). In that parable, Christ made it clear that attaining Heaven is contingent on how well and faithfully we work using the talents God gave us.
The Founders were as serious in condemning professional unemployment and praising honest industry as the Bible. George Washington enthused that he would rather be a farmer than an emperor and emphasized, “It will not be doubted that with reference either to individual or national welfare, agriculture is of primary importance.” Benjamin Franklin warned:
Repeal that [welfare] law, and you will soon see a change in their manners. … Six days shalt thou labor [Exodus 20:9], though one of the old commandments long treated as out of date, will again be looked upon as a respectable precept.
John Adams urged his wife, “Let Frugality, And Industry, be our Virtues.”
And like the Founders, later generations of Americans glorified honest labor. “Labor is the true standard of value,” observed Abraham Lincoln. Booker T. Washington insisted his students learned manual labor along with classical education. The American honor for work was so famous by the early 1900s that British writer GK Chesterton noted, “Americans really respect work, rather as Europeans respect war. There is a halo of heroism about it; and he who shrinks from it is less than a man.”
If Americans returned to that truly American value for work, if we rejected all the socialist jargon and programs constantly fed to us by elites, we would be much better off. Musk‘s view is socialist and destructive. The Founding Fathers like Jefferson knew better.
