'AI Will Deliver Free Goods': Elon Musk Mocks NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Over Grocery Stores

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, called New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani a 'thief and a liar' on X, mocking his proposal for city-owned grocery stores and asserting that AI and robots will deliver free goods and services. The clash began after tech investor Jason Calacanis posted a video of Mamdani discussing a Request for Proposal process for publicly owned grocery stores. Musk's comments reflect his broader claim that AI and robotics will make goods so abundant they can be provided free, a stance that has drawn criticism from Senator Bernie Sanders.

'AI Will Deliver Free Goods': Elon Musk Mocks NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani Over Grocery Stores Elon Musk has branded Zohran Mamdani a 'thief and a liar' over a city-owned grocery store proposal, while doubling down on his claim that AI and robots will one day deliver free goods and services Elon Musk https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/no-way-stop-it-elon-musk-warns-humans-will-lose-control-ai-face-extinction-2036-1811298 clashed online with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, mocking his proposal for city-owned grocery stores and insisting that artificial intelligence and robots will eventually deliver goods and services for free. The Tesla and SpaceX chief, responding on X to a clip of Mamdani outlining his plan https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nyc-city-backed-grocery-store-initiative-1811321 , branded him a 'thief and a liar' and accused Mamdani of trying to undermine the free market. The row began after tech investor and All-In Podcast host Jason Calacanis posted a video of Mamdani discussing https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/nyc-mayor-supermarket-plan-criticism-1810594 a forthcoming Request for Proposal RFP process, which would invite individuals and businesses to run a network of publicly owned grocery stores across New York's five boroughs. Mamdani, who has aligned himself with progressive causes, presented the scheme as a way to tackle food insecurity in areas underserved by private supermarkets. Calacanis used the clip as a springboard for a broader attack on the idea of government-run retail. He claimed the RFP process would be driven by diversity, equity and inclusion criteria rather than commercial competence and argued that city officials 'have no idea how to run a business.' He went on to say that chains such as Costco already offer groceries at what he described as 'zero profit margin,' implying that the private sector was already squeezing prices as low as they could reasonably go. Musk, whose politics have shifted sharply in recent years, seized on Calacanis's post. 'What they're doing won't matter,' he wrote. 'AI & robots will actually deliver the free goods & services that those thieves pretend to offer.' He then accused Mamdani's team of 'actually stealing from others' before labelling the New York figure a 'thief and a liar.' The language was unusually blunt, even by Musk's standards, and came without any immediate attempt at elaboration. Nothing is confirmed yet as to how Mamdani's grocery plan would be funded or structured. In a separate reply to Calacanis, Musk went further, alleging that Mamdani wanted 'a propaganda tool to undermine the free market' and that he did not care about 'logic arguments'. It was a familiar line from the billionaire, who has increasingly cast state intervention and redistributive economic policies as existential threats to innovation. Elon Musk, AI and the Promise of 'Free Goods' The grocery-store spat plugged directly into a wider, and far stranger, claim that Musk has made with increasing confidence. He argues that AI and robotics will one day make basic goods and services so abundant that they can effectively be provided free of charge. Musk has repeatedly cited Tesla's Optimus humanoid robot and his notion of 'space-based AI' as the future engines of this productivity boom. In previous comments, he has suggested that these systems could surpass the 'Earth's total productivity,' creating a world in which governments step in to distribute the resulting wealth and guarantee what he calls a 'universal high income.' At that point, he has mused, humanity might 'run out of things to do,' and money itself would cease to matter. Critics have reacted with a blend of scepticism and exasperation. Senator Bernie Sanders recently picked up on Musk's declaration https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/bernie-sanders-elon-musk-ai-wealth-tax-debate-1811456 that money may not matter by 2036 and challenged him to support a wealth tax on the richest Americans if he truly believes that. The implication was unsubtle. If Musk is sincere about a post-money future, Sanders argued, he should be willing to part with a significant slice of his current fortune in the present. So far, there is no hard evidence that such a post-scarcity economy is anywhere close. Tesla has said it has retooled its Fremont, California, plant from producing its premium Model S and Model X cars to focusing on Optimus, and the company has sketched an eventual ambition to build around 1 million robots a year. Tesla's vice-president of vehicle engineering, Lars Moravy, has spoken of at least 40 production lines for Optimus, citing the machine's complexity. Those are big numbers and bigger promises, but they remain projections rather than audited reality. Rival electric vehicle giant BYD has unveiled its own humanoid robot, due to debut later this month, which shows the sector is moving quickly but also underlines how speculative commercial humanoids still are. No one has yet demonstrated that fleets of robots can produce and deliver essentials to millions of people at anything close to zero cost, let alone for free. Elon Musk, Public Policy and the Politics of Blame Where Musk is on firmer ground is his instinct for the politics of resentment. By framing Mamdani's grocery-store plan as a con job run by 'thieves' who 'pretend' to help the poor while 'stealing from others,' he tapped into an old argument that public ownership is inherently 'wasteful and corrupt'. He also sidestepped a more prosaic question that New Yorkers might reasonably ask, which is whether their current supermarket landscape is serving them well. What is clear is that there are several overlapping disputes here. One is about how far government should go in reshaping markets that are failing parts of a city. Another is about whether tech-driven visions of abundance absolve today's billionaires of responsibility for widening inequality. And a third, more personal row is about whether the world's richest man is using his platform to interrogate public policy, or simply to lash out at politicians whose instincts he dislikes. © Copyright IBTimes 2025. All rights reserved.