Elon Musk’s Birth Rate Crisis vs AI Revolution: Future of Global Trade & End of Corporations

Can Elon Musk be right about both of these at the same time?

• Collapsing birth rates are the biggest threat to civilisation
• AI + humanoid robots will make almost all human jobs obsolete in the next 10–20 years

If robots do all the work… why is he Elon Musk asking the world to have more babies? And what does this paradox mean for the future of corporations and global trade?

- Elon Musk’s births and robot paradox 

- Global fertility collapse – the shocking numbers 

- Musk’s comments at the 2025 Saudi Investment Forum: “Work will be optional… money may become irrelevant”

- Universal High Income and the real future problem 

- Mr Nelson’s 1980s prediction vs today’s self-checkout hell

- Ronald Coase, zero transaction costs, and the coming death of the corporation 

- Electronic personhood for robots – the 2017 EU Parliament resolution 

- R2-D2

- Could droids get bank accounts and become consumers? 

- Intra-firm trade and the blockchain future 

- The Tesla that does 0-100 mph in 2 seconds when the speed limit is 55 

- What every company must do before the AI asteroid hits (McKinsey 2025) 

- Kodak, the East India Company… and the morning the multinational dies

Elon Musk | AI | Robotics | Optimus | Birth Rate Crisis | Fertility Collapse | Future of Work | Global Trade | Universal Basic Income | Transaction Costs | Corporate Death | Demographics | Automation | Tesla | Trade Policy | Geopolitics

Hosted by Justin Hayden Miller – global trade advisor & strategist, former partner at a top-tier European law firm and former senior leader in Big-4 international trade and tax practices.

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Chapters

• 0:00 Framing Musk’s Paradox
• 1:08 Fertility Trends And Collapse Fears
• 2:23 Work Optional And Money Obsolete
• 4:00 Tech Promises Versus Lived Reality
• 6:30 Self‑Service Burdens And Hidden Costs
• 8:10 Meaning, Labour, And Human Purpose
• 10:25 Who Buys In A Robot Economy
• 12:05 Coase, Zero Friction, And Firm Death
• 14:20 E‑Personhood And Robot Consumers
• 16:10 Trade Without Multinationals

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Elon Musk says that collapsing birth rates are the biggest threat to civilization, but at the very same time he's racing to build the very AI and robots that could make human workers and the companies that employ them completely obsolete. If AI and robots will take away human employment, what's the urgency of increasing the human population? Especially if it will simply increase the unemployment rate? Today, we'll ask whether Musk's call to increase population and to develop robotics are compatible, even logical, and what it could mean for global trade. Because if AI really does kill the company and corporations as we know them, the entire foundation of world commerce will not only need to be redesigned, but rebuilt. I'm your host, Justin Hayden Miller. Decoding the policies shaping global trade and emerging trends. This year, Elon Musk has reiterated yet again that low fertility rates could lead to a slow motion collapse of civilization. When I read that, I remembered a car accident I had on the motorway. I was in the passenger seat, and it's true that for the last few seconds everything went into slow motion. Everything came out okay and no one was seriously hurt. But what will Musk's slow motion slowdown of humanity because of robotics result in? He points to places like Europe where he warns countries could die out unless fertility returns to replacement levels to keep populations stable at least. That's about 2.1 children per woman. And on a global scale, UN data confirms that fertility rates have plummeted to around 2.3 births per woman today, with many developed nations dipping below 1.5. The US currently being around 1.6, female fecundity rates in powerhouses like Japan and South Korea hover below 1.3. Musk calls it a bigger risk than climate change, saying that it threatens everything economies, consumers, and culture. But at the very same time, Musk is developing robots to replace nearly all human functions, and his Optimus robot is designed to handle mundane tasks. In November 2025, Musk said at the Saudi Investment Forum that work will be optional. It would be like playing sports or a video game or something like that, he said, comparing it to growing your own vegetables rather than buying them in a store. He even went on to say that assuming there is continued improvement in AI and robotics, which he sees as pretty likely, then even money will stop being relevant. In the most extreme version of his vision, money itself eventually becomes irrelevant, because intelligent systems can fulfill any material want instantly. The real challenge, Musk repeatedly warns, will not be economics, but human meaning. Figuring out why we should get up in the morning. But ignoring the nuances, he's predicted that AI will make work optional in 10 to 20 years, saying that humanoid robots are for solving labor shortages, dangerous work, elder care. Even Goldman Sachs predicts 300 million full-time jobs could be replaced just by 2030. When I was at primary school, I had a teacher called Mr. Nelson. Some of the children in the class weren't interested in certain subjects, including extracurricular activities such as reading or playing sports. It frustrated him. And he would sometimes say really quite exasperatingly, you know, when you'll be adults, these new computers will do everything. You won't have any work to do. You'll need to think about how you're going to use up all your time. And that's why it's important, he said, that we learn to enjoy reading and doing sports in the freezing snow in our shorts. Because you'll have to do these things to fill up your time when you're older, he said, because you won't need to work. Well, I'm a few years older now and I've been an adult for many years, and his predictions, well, just haven't happened yet. What has happened to date is just quite the opposite. Personally, I've never been so busy in my life. Far from having nothing to do, the days just aren't long enough. In fact, I regret I don't live on Venus or something where days equivalent to 243 Earth days. Certainly, the personal computer has increased productivity, but it's also increased in many respects the work burden on many people, because the expectation of the amount to produce has exceeded the efficiency savings that technology allows. Let me give you an example. Decades ago, you'd go into a supermarket, you'd choose the food that you wanted, you'd go to the checkout desk, the cashier would add up the total price of the products, you'd probably pay in cash or a check. Now, not only is every item equipped with a barcode, but you have to scan every single item yourself. Each machine and each shop is different with a different software that you have to learn and work out just to scan the bleeding product, and just to buy a few things to eat when you get home. Before, you'd go into a travel agent, explain where you wanted to go, explain the type of holiday that you wanted to have. The travel agent would perform all the administrative tasks, ask you for payment, and then provide you with the tickets, with your itinerary. Very little mental charge and energy. Now, when you want to go on holiday, you basically have to research where you want to go, then you have to find a hotel, then you have to use an application in order to book it, then you have to choose the flight by choosing an airline company. You even have to input your number, your passport number into the application, its expiry date, sometimes even scan it. Otherwise, you get charged hundreds of euros or dollars extra when you arrive at the airport. Without any exaggeration whatsoever, soon you'll even have to fly your own aeroplane. No joke, when aeroplanes become pilotless at some point in the future. Massive advances in technology have not led to more free time, less administrative stress, but rather a lot more. If Mr. Nelson promised us leisure, instead we're getting self-check RL. And I really do wonder whether AI will ultimately have the same effect, and a lot more grief. If machines take over, do we really need more people? It's perhaps surprising to many, but for Musk it's not necessarily about economics, but more about preserving human existence. Humans won't necessarily be there for economic purposes, but to add meaning. That's where I become a little skeptical. Because artists, people who sell things that give meaning to people's lives, statistically die pretty poor. Unless you're at the top of the chain like Taylor Swift, for example. But this is a podcast about upcoming tendencies on global trade. So let's consider what a post-AI quantum society might just look like economically and commercially. Will demand plummet? Who are the customers? Could robots be considered as legal persons with economic agency? And crucially, do companies survive? Or will AI mean that they actually disappear as well? Back in 1937, Ronald Coas explained why companies exist at all, to cut transaction costs. Fast forward AI and real-time data make those costs basically zero. And what could be the result of that? No transaction costs could potentially mean no need for companies at all. Now, companies are required in modern society as well in order for limited liability. But in an economically frictionless world, one might envisage that such a requirement itself might not be required. AI is likely to merge in economic production such as innovation, idea creation, and manufacturing with substantial scaling, where AI robotics could conceive and create a product and produce it in a single go, such as a new drug, for example. It designs the drug, immediately produces it. Companies consisting of different teams that were previously necessary just might no longer be needed at all. We've lived in an epoch where companies merged to eventually become huge corporations, powerhouses, at the top of the food chain, becoming even larger when all of a sudden and without warning the AI asteroid comes along, wiping out megacorporations, but almost everything else as well. Economies provide goods and services to people and companies, so let's consider the intriguing idea that robots could become independent people, legal persons. Electronic personhood or e-personhood is an idea where advanced AI systems or robots would obtain legal status as a person or a bit like the form of a limited liability company with personality under law that a company has. And before you say that this is science fiction, there was even a non-binding 2017 European Parliament resolution on the point. Who knows? An extended form could make machines human-like, with full rights, such as voting, citizenship, or even marriage. But analysing the global trade angle for this podcast, let's imagine robots even with bank accounts, purchasing products, boosting demand alongside humans by creating artificial consumers, injecting new economic flows that economies would need to cater for. I can remember the first time I went to the cinema. I remember it really well. I think it was with my uncle that took me, but the first film I saw, I'm sure, was undoubtedly Star Wars. Not bad for a first movie to see either. The characters that I most connected with were R2D2 and C3PO. These droids weren't just tools, they had personality. R2D2's plucky beeps and C3PO's fussy, nerdy complaints about admin and protocol. They had human traits for sure, but if they also took on economic traits as well, well that would be seismic, and it could happen. For global trade, this would be huge. Today, intra-firm trade, multinationals shifting goods internally, accounts for a significant share, often cited around 30 to 50% by the OECD. But if companies vanish, trade becomes AI agent swaps via blockchains. The shoots are already occurring. But let's get back to the question though, whether Musk's call to increase population and to develop robotics are compatible. They seem paradoxical, or can Musk square the circle? I don't believe that Musk wants human population to increase simply to create meaning, or to ensure the survival of the species, which does not necessitate billions more humans. It might increase the chances of survival, but it's not a logical necessity, especially in a modern world, where the species could be conserved simply by a DNA sequence. No, Musk in my opinion wants to increase human population as well for demand. Even if bots have legal personalities and bank accounts which create demand, their demand would be logical and rational, buying goods and services according to their requirements. But demand led by humans is unpredictable and messy, even irrational. Humans don't always buy because of necessity, but because of unpredictable desires and whims. This is what drives demand. The fact that individuals buy a hell of a lot of stuff that they don't actually need, like a Tesla that can do 0 to 100 miles an hour in a couple of seconds, even though the maximum speed limit may be 55. The robot might see it as illogical and buy the slower, cheaper car. Humans want the next best thing, whether they really need it or not. And in fact, this is what ultimately drives the US economy, and most economies. The consumer society, which might disappear if entirely led by rational robots. So let me answer the question that I posed at the beginning. Elon Musk's urgent call for more babies and his simultaneous race to replace human labour with AI and robots are not contradictory at all. Based on the idea that future humans will exist to add human meaning to an AI world. And I say it's not incompatible, but for different reasons. We will need humans in a world full of robots to maintain unpredictable, excessive, irrational human demand because maximized global trade is based on human desire and human excessive demand. So what do I think companies should do? Firstly, they should adopt AI. The world is moving far, so get on with it. A 2025 McKinsey report concluded that organizations with ambitious AI agendas are seeing the most benefit. It also said that AI high performers are more than three times more likely than others to say that their organizations intend to use AI to bring about transformative change to their businesses. To modernize. Secondly, they should fully embrace AI by adapting now. Before it's too late, jobs most exposed to automation are seeing much faster productivity growth when humans oversee the machines. It's also what happened in the Industrial Revolution. This necessitates retraining staff working side by side new AI technologies, not necessarily an either or approach. Make your organizations flexible, with systems and protocols in place that secure risk management elements, but at the same time permit fast changes in directions and working practices to be able to adapt to fast moving trends. Because your company may depend on it. Kodak had time to change, but it didn't. Companies will have much less time than Kodak to make crucial decisions upon which their survival might depend. Hold tight. One morning you'll wake up and the multinational corporation might be as dead as the East India Company, with AI agents running the show, and most trade ministers won't have seen it coming. If you're listening to this, then thank you for having listened to the podcast from beginning to end. The content of this podcast is intended only to provide an information resource of interest and does not constitute legal, tax, business, or financial advice of any kind. Should you require advice, then you should engage an appropriately qualified person to provide you specific advisory services in the field. The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this podcast are my own and do not necessarily represent the views, thoughts, or opinions of any law firm, nor that of any third party, other person, company, or organization. Stay tuned for the next episode.