"Can’t pursue happiness directly": Elon Musk's advice to make money for entrepreneurs explained

Elon Musk appeared on the November 30, 2025, episode of People by WTF, where he joined host Nikhil Kamath for an expansive conversation about business, innovation, and the mindset required to build a meaningful entrepreneurial career. Toward the end of the episode, Kamath asked Musk to share a message for young entrepreneurs in India.

In response, Musk offered a philosophical reflection on what sustained a long-term entrepreneurial journey.

He explained that happiness was not something one could chase directly, but a byproduct of engaging in fulfilling work and cultivating meaningful relationships.

“You can’t pursue happiness directly. You pursue things that lead to happiness… fulfilling work or study or friends, loved ones… that as a result make you happy,” he said.

Musk then expanded on the idea that true value came from being a net positive force in society.

He noted that he was a “big fan of anyone” who wanted “to build,” and added that anyone who aimed “to make more than they take” had his respect. According to him, that was “the main thing” any young entrepreneur should strive for: to be a “net contributor to society.”

He also addressed financial success, clarifying that money should never be the primary target. For him, value creation, not the pursuit of wealth, ultimately led to financial reward.

“If you want to create something valuable financially, you don’t pursue that… it’s best to actually pursue providing useful products and services… then money will come as a natural consequence,” he explained.

Musk underscored that what mattered most was ensuring “the output" was "worth more than the input” and evaluating whether one truly was a “value creator.”

“It sounds very obvious, but generally if somebody is trying to make a company work, they should expect to grind super hard and accept that there’s a meaningful chance of failure. Then just focus on having the output be worth more than the input. Are you a value creator? That’s what really matters: making more than you take,” he said.

Elon Musk says AI and robotics are the only path to solving the U.S. debt crisis

In the nearly two-hour episode of People by WTF, Tesla CEO Elon Musk laid out his vision for the future of artificial intelligence and robotics. During the conversation, Musk emphasized that emerging technologies would fundamentally reshape productivity and might be the only mechanism capable of addressing the United States’ ballooning national debt.

“I think that’s pretty much the only thing that’s going to solve for the U.S. debt crisis, because currently the U.S. debt is insanely high… The interest payments on the debt exceed the entire military budget of the United States, just the interest payments, and that’s at least in the short term going to continue to increase,” Elon Musk said.

Musk elaborated that automation-driven productivity could counteract this trajectory, insisting that neither spending cuts nor higher taxes could scale fast enough.

“So I think actually the only thing that can solve for the debt situation is AI and robotics,” Elon Musk added.

He then shifted to inflation, explaining that prices were shaped by the ratio of goods and services produced relative to the money supply. Musk said that if AI dramatically increased output, the natural result would be a sustained period of deflation.

“It probably would cause significant deflation because deflation or inflation is really the ratio of goods and services produced to the change in the money supply,” Elon Musk said.

With AI and robotics driving a “dramatic increase” in productivity, Musk said the economy would likely experience falling price levels because output would grow faster than the money supply.

When asked why current inflation remained high, Musk said AI had not yet boosted productivity enough to counteract large federal deficits. He pointed to the U.S. increasing the money supply through “deficits on the order of $2 trillion,” noting that goods and services would need to grow faster to avoid inflation.

He stressed that they were “not there yet,” but predicted a turning point within three years, estimating that output growth would eventually outpace money creation.

Musk also discussed how large-scale AI and robotics could ultimately restructure the entire economy.

He described a future in which machines manufacture chips, produce solar panels, and even mine their own raw materials, forming a self-contained industrial loop.

Once this “cycle was complete,” he said the global economy could begin to “decouple from the monetary system,” meaning traditional measures of value, currency, and national economic activity might no longer apply.

Elon Musk is currently leading Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI, while being at the center of global political and technological debates.

Edited by Shayari Roy