Joe Rogan spent another episode of his podcast doing free public relations for Elon Musk, and this time the topic was artificial intelligence and money. Comedian Brian Simpson, a regular at Rogan’s Comedy Mothership, sat across from him as Rogan worked through Musk’s vision of a future where AI solves the economy for everyone.
“Imagine a world where there’s so much wealth because of artificial intelligence,” Rogan said. “And this is what Elon is discussing, like he brings up this concept of universal high income… and everyone will have so much money because there’ll be so much value that’s been created by AI. Now I don’t know if that’s possible.”
Simpson’s response was blunt: “Sounds like bulls**t.”
Rogan kept going anyway, painting a picture where “you have a nice house, you have food, you have a car, you have all your needs covered, you got a TV, you got a high-speed internet, do whatever you want,” and where people no longer need to chase money to survive because AI supposedly generates enough wealth for everyone.
When Simpson asked the obvious question, “Who’s doing all the labor?”, Rogan answered that AI would do everything humans currently do, and that instead of jobs, people would simply be handed money generated by that automation.
He said, “AI is doing all the labor. AI is doing everything that people do and instead of jobs, you just get money from AI and it just generates ins*ne amount of wealth that way.”
Simpson, to his credit, saw the hole in the argument immediately, telling Rogan he needed an economist on the show. He said, “See, I feel like I feel like you got to have an economist on for this one.”
He wasn’t wrong. Nowhere in history has a concentration of resources in the hands of a few owners led to those owners voluntarily distributing the wealth downward. Oil-rich nations did not turn their reserves into shared prosperity for their citizens. Mining companies profiting off natural resources routinely fight to avoid paying their fair share of tax rather than redistribute earnings. There is no precedent for billionaires who control emerging technology simply deciding to hand over the profits.
Rogan even repeated a figure, suggesting each citizen could receive $500,000 a year under this system, without pausing to consider what that would do to prices, inflation, or the value of currency itself. It is the kind of number that sounds impressive until you ask a single follow-up question, which nobody in the room seemed prepared to do.
This is the pattern with Rogan’s AI conversations lately. He absorbs a talking point from Musk’s social media feed, repeats it to a friendly guest who won’t push back, and calls it a discussion. Simpson, an admittedly uninformed guest by his own description, still had more financial common sense than Rogan managed to summon over three hours.
