WHEN BILLIONAIRES (TRY TO) ABOLISH ECONOMICS, they find they can't. Economics isn't about money.

The appeal of the post-scarcity narrative is understandable. It offers a vision in which economic tensions dissolve, and policy becomes a matter of distribution rather than discipline. But that vision rests on assumptions that collapse under closer inspection. Technology can expand the frontier of what is possible and available. It does not eliminate the need to choose among possibilities and evaluate trade-offs. It does not erase the importance of how resources are allocated, how incentives are structured, or how information is conveyed through prices. If anything, the arrival of powerful new technologies makes sound economics more important — not less.

Elon Musk (and many of his associates) have been reading far too much of Isaac Asimov's robot series.