India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by jimmywanger » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 4:24 AM UTC

egypturnash wrote: post #86

jimmywanger wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you give people a universal basic income, you need to both increase taxes a lot and completely restrict immigration - a basic income in the US is incredibly luxurious for people who live in sub-saharan Africa. Or else the universal basic income is going to be too low in first world countries to make a difference.

Or you just start taxing corporations and rich people again. Some stupidly huge percentage of dollars are just sitting in their coffers doing nothing.

Corporations and rich people have ways (completely legal) to get around taxes. If the tax burden becomes too onerous, they'll just move residences and/or stop doing business in your country.

You can see this in one of the founders of Facebook - he renounced his US citizenship, because of the onerous tax burdens. (https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/11/a-facebook-founder...)

It's foolish to just say "we should tax rich people and rich corporations more." You're incentivizing them to not play the game, and wealthy people generally have more abilities to evade taxes than people in the lower upper class or middle class, which is who the burden will inevitably fall upon.

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

#92

Post by prawn » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 4:26 AM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #59

fnl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more radically, you might as well just give everybody a universal basic income instead of heading back for a pre-industrialized way of life (though the Amish people seem to like it?!).

UBI seems unlikely now, maybe very low level like 500 dollars per month, but definitely not going to support a comfortable living, that is only fantasy.

Perhaps if the costs to maintain a comfortable living are lowered? It might be that people end up choosing between city living and the 40 hours a week of work required to support that, and living in a regional area where you can get by working 10 hours/week.

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

#93

Post by hn_throwaway_99 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 4:28 AM UTC

fellellor wrote: post #75

It is easy to shit on the politician's statement, but at least try to understand where they are coming from. India is facing massive crises on multiple fronts. Huge number of youth enter the job market every year and there simply aren't enough jobs to go around. Driving employs a lot of people who vote, so he can't just ignore their concerns. In many states, unemployed youth are likely to create a law and order crisi…

I think it's already the case that there are tons of "make work" jobs in India. When I visited, in the hotel I stayed at there were like 4 doorman at the entrance. In the shared office building where I was working, there were 2 people manning the copier - if you wanted to copy something, you had to hand it to the copier attendant, who would make your copies and then bring them back to you.

I think your comment is pretty accurate. It's one thing for us to laugh at the minister, but we don't really have any other solution for the huge numbers of people who will be put out of work if driverless cars take off in India.

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

#94

Post by manigandham » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 4:43 AM UTC

tanilama wrote: post #59

fnl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more radically, you might as well just give everybody a universal basic income instead of heading back for a pre-industrialized way of life (though the Amish people seem to like it?!).

UBI seems unlikely now, maybe very low level like 500 dollars per month, but definitely not going to support a comfortable living, that is only fantasy.

> not going to support a comfortable living

It's not supposed to.

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

#95

Post by zaptheimpaler » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 4:47 AM UTC

malchow wrote: post #70

denzil_correa wrote: post #18

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 shove…

The brilliance of the Friedman anecdote is that it reveals something Higher-Life-Form types like Nitin Gadkari, who propose to save you with the wonderful power of regulation, miss. What they miss is that in their world there's no logically sound riposte to Friedman's question. It should be spoons. Teaspoons, even. Creates more jobs. But actually what works is, perhaps, shovels. And then, if you can afford it, earth-…

Prices don't simply say shovels are best. Economic theory says that under some ideal conditions, prices reflect what is most efficient, and that whats most efficient is best.

That is, your argument is more an assumption that ideal economic models apply than a justification. Ideal economics don't always apply, prices aren't always transparent, competition isn't always perfect, cows aren't spherical.

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

#96

Post by abhi3 » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 4:59 AM UTC

denzil_correa wrote: post #18

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 shove…

The thing is if the goal is to create jobs then this policy is counterproductive. It's a great way to ensure that in 20 years time India has no car industry left. When foreign companies have had decades long lead in autonomous tech there's no way Indian companies will be able to compete with them either in foreign or even domestic market when self-driving cars are allowed.

Create a few extra jobs now and destroy an entire industry in the long run. Just like India has a blanket ban on all small drones which just means that whatever innovations come from the drone industry, India will only be its importer.

The sad thing is Nitin Gadkari one of the more sensible ministers and yet this is coming from him.

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

#97

Post by cjalmeida » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 5:31 AM UTC

KekDemaga wrote: post #57

taneq wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Give it 10-20 years and you won't need to sign up, you'll just receive your UBI into your bank account every week. Well, that or the country you live in will have to let 30-40% of its people starve because there's nothing they can do better than a machine. Remember, those idle workers aren't being paid a nice pay packet. They'll be on subsistence wages only. You'll still want to work a job if you want nice things.

If I'm one of those skilled workers who can do something better than a machine it seems the rational course of action is to move to one of the places where they let people starve and keep more of the fruits of my labor.

Until those people decide they should forcefully separate your head from your neck. See France (1787), Haiti (1791), USA (1861), Turkey(1908), Russia (1917), China (1949)...

Those are only the most notable major civil wars, but it's amazing how revolts are common across the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebell...

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

#98

Post by tspike » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 5:33 AM UTC

taneq wrote: post #28

anoother wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because it's busywork, and it's wasting all those peoples' time. It's strictly inferior to letting a few workers use machinery to do the job, while paying the rest of the workers to sit around idle, because when using machinery you can rapidly increase output if required and the idle workers have the option to find something more useful to do.

Strictly inferior by one metric. There are other factors to optimize for, e.g. rate of environmental destruction, median life satisfaction, social cohesiveness, breadth of knowledge vs specialization.

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

#99

Post by tomhoward » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 6:34 AM UTC

nashashmi wrote: post #66

jlebar wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 che…

What's the point of making things cheaper when it centers the wealth on just a few owners? When there are lots of workers working low income jobs versus just a few workers working high income jobs, it creates a healthier more distributed economy.

An estimated 2.3 Billion people now own smartphones. That number is growing at about 10% per year. All those people have access to the sum of all human knowledge and the ability to educate themselves almost as well as (some would argue even better than) the students of the most expensive universities.

They can communicate with anyone else at almost zero marginal cost, and can sell products and services to basically anyone else on the planet. All because things keep getting cheaper.

That's the point of making things cheaper.

Sure, a consequence of that is that the founders and executives and financiers of Google, Samsung, Apple etc are wildly rich. And that means they can (and do) invest in new products and services to keep improving peoples' standard of living, as well as funding benevolent projects.

It's pretty amazing if you ask me.

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

#100

Post by dorian-graph » Tue, Jul 25, 2017, 6:59 AM UTC

tomhoward wrote: post #99

nashashmi wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the point of making things cheaper when it centers the wealth on just a few owners? When there are lots of workers working low income jobs versus just a few workers working high income jobs, it creates a healthier more distributed economy.

An estimated 2.3 Billion people now own smartphones. That number is growing at about 10% per year. All those people have access to the sum of all human knowledge and the ability to educate themselves almost as well as (some would argue even better than) the students of the most expensive universities. They can communicate with anyone else at almost zero marginal cost, and can sell products and services to basically a…

> All those people have access to the sum of all human knowledge and the ability to educate themselves almost as well (some would argue even better) than students of the most expensive universities. They can communicate with anyone at almost no marginal cost, and can sell products and services to basically anyone else on the planet.

Is this even happening though?