Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India will ban driverless cars in order to protect jobs

engadget.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 124 posts

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

#31

Post by zghst »

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?

Seriously limits technological progress. Pretty much insures Indian tech companies cannot develop this IP in their homelands. Who knows what kind of tech driverless car might beget, like space navigation, etc? What kind of economy of scale it would enable? The quality and lifestyle and savings from freeing people of having to be fully present during this dull activity. People could use that time in the car to do so many things.

Cars could be available always, not just when people are up. This could lead to a stronger economy, the car delivers the customer to the product, instead of he customer having to think about it. Less friction in decision making, more freedom.

For people of developed nations that get used to that lifestyle, it would be a world of night and day when they arrive in a place that is actively against the conveniences of life afforded by technology. Life, for these people banned from this awesome experience, would appear more bleak and torturous. Even viewed by some as primitive.

Locally developed military technology suffers, with the lack of local talent they would have to accept inferior technology.

There are probably endless implications for banning things. They could have been smart and just taxed this tech very high in place of taking jobs.

It is a silent catastrophe as a governing decision.

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

#32

Post by surjman »

danenania wrote: post #24
bsder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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." It will probably take 12 months just to form the exploratory committee that will form the actual committee that will even begin to consider legalizing fully driverless…

This process is already under way. There are hearings in Congress regarding autonomous vehicles several times a month.

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

#33

Post by seanmcdirmid »

danenania wrote: post #24
bsder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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." It will probably take 12 months just to form the exploratory committee that will form the actual committee that will even begin to consider legalizing fully driverless…

Depends on the government. Beijing could go driverless overnight if Xi Jinping thinks it's a good idea. And considering Beijing's extreme traffic woes, they just might....

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

#34

Post by ceejayoz »

danenania wrote: post #24
bsder wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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." It will probably take 12 months just to form the exploratory committee that will form the actual committee that will even begin to consider legalizing fully driverless…

The "once self-driving cars hit" point would be their legalization in your scenario, with the same rapid uptake described unless government implements some sort of quota system allowing only a small number to be added at once.

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

#35

Post by seanmcdirmid »

rgbrenner wrote: post #29
theprop wrote: post #20

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.

China had 260k: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_traffic-r... If you sort that by per 100k people or vehicles, India isn't doing too badly. They just have a lot of people.

And it's not even the main reason they need it, which is to optimize the usage of much more limited road infrastructure. Even china has been building roads like crazy, there is only so much space to put them when population density is so high....

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

#36

Post by deepnotderp »

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?

What's the purpose?

Companies are obviously not going to do that if they have autonomy since it's inefficient production. Instead, the government will have to do so, and at that point they only do so to pump money into the economy. Why not instead spend that on NASA like space programs instead?

I've long advocated for a "techno-Keynesian" approach to economics.

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

#37

Post by sintaxi »

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?

Its like thinking breaking windows adds to the economy because someone gets paid to fix it. In the end the window gets restored to its original condition and money is simply transferred from one person to another but no value has been created. Stifling innovation in a way is like handing everyone a hammer and telling them to break things to stimulate the economy.

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

#39

Post by zghst »

poke111 wrote: post #21
anoother wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Because you create wealth by producing goods and services. Jobs are a cost, not the end goal. Sacrificing production for jobs gets it exactly backwards and makes us, in the aggregate, poorer, even though it makes a few people richer.

And it ensures that the economy is based on time and low pay rather than valuable skills or invention. It removes the incentives to innovate in areas of life that are time consuming but have lots of workers.
Post reply on HN