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India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

engadget.com

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Re: India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

#11

Post by bsder »

aphextron wrote: post #2

"We won't allow any technology that takes away jobs. In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs" I guess we should spin up the weaving looms when the next recession hits?

Oh, so letting an economy go into free-fall recession is good for people?

Once self-driving cars hit, the switch will be immediate and massive. I would predict 10% to 90% penetration in probably less than 12 months--the limitation will simply be building the cars fast enough. That's a lot of people suddenly with no income.

Protecting people against that disruption for 50 years? Probably a bad idea. Protecting people for 5 years? Maybe a good idea.

An efficient market is a ruthless market. And people are its victims.

Re: India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

#13

Post by ChrisLomont »

anoother wrote: post #8
aphextron wrote: post #2

"We won't allow any technology that takes away jobs. In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs" I guess we should spin up the weaving looms when the next recession hits?

Serious question -- why not? What makes this a bad idea?

Historically, society ends up poorer when doing things sub-optimally, and if society does it long enough, it also becomes obsolete and non-competitive, ensuring that society stays behind for longer than simply allowing the tech changes to evolve as they can.

So if your goal is temporary employment gains for long term poverty, this is a good way to start.

Re: India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

#14

Post by DINKDINK »

anoother wrote: post #8
aphextron wrote: post #2

"We won't allow any technology that takes away jobs. In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs" I guess we should spin up the weaving looms when the next recession hits?

Serious question -- why not? What makes this a bad idea?

Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas [1]

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

Re: India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

#15

Post by jlebar »

anoother wrote: post #8
aphextron wrote: post #2

"We won't allow any technology that takes away jobs. In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs" I guess we should spin up the weaving looms when the next recession hits?

Serious question -- why not? What makes this a bad idea?

Because automated weaving makes clothes a lot cheaper.

Put another way, when workers become more efficient -- one factory worker able to control many weaving machines, or a relatively small group of programmers able to control many cars -- people's standard of living increases.

Maybe you're willing to pay more for clothes, or transportation, or any one thing. But paying more for all of the things that have gotten cheaper due to increases in efficiency since time X is tantamount to going back to the standard of living of time X.

Re: India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

#17

Post by mandeepj »

justboxing wrote: post #6

Forget the part about protecting jobs, how confident will the driverless cars companies be even otherwise, sending their cars out into the chaotic traffic in India, where you routinely share the road with bicycles, motorcycles, scooters, rickshaws, handcarts, buses, lorries (trucks), cows and the occasional sheep and donkeys? Related video => [2006] India Driving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjrEQaG5jPM

Now traffic has increased at least 6 times

Re: India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

#18

Post by denzil_correa »

Reminds me of this story

> The story goes that Milton Friedman was once taken to see a massive government project somewhere in Asia. Thousands of workers using shovels were building a canal. Friedman was puzzled. Why weren't there any excavators or any mechanized earth-moving equipment? A government official explained that using shovels created more jobs. Friedman's response: "Then why not use spoons instead of shovels?"

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405270230407010457639...

The attribution for the quote is a bit disputed though : http://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/10/10/spoons-shovels/

Re: India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

#20

Post by theprop »

What a complete idiot in soooo many ways...now you can understand the situation of India's development when such utter morons are "leaders" of India! India actually needs driverless cars more desperately than any country in the world given it's world-leading 200,000 fatalities every year.
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