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"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

"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?

marak830 9y ago
Horse and buggies too, think of the carriage and whip makers!
anoother 9y ago
Serious question -- why not? What makes this a bad idea?
- ChrisLomont 9y ago
  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.
- DINKDINK 9y ago
  Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
- jlebar 9y ago
  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.
  - fnl 9y ago
    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?!).
    - jimmywanger 9y ago
      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.
      - egypturnash 9y ago
        Or you just start taxing corporations and rich people again. Some stupidly huge percentage of dollars are just sitting in their coffers doing nothing.
        jimmywanger 9y ago
        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-renounces-his-u-s-citizenship/?hpw 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.
        egypturnash 9y ago
        We just have to start guillotining them again, I guess. You need a good revolution once every generation or three to keep capital scared.
- poke111 9y ago
  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.
  - zghst 9y ago
    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.
  - malchow 9y ago
    Nicely put. I'd add that your response makes a tidy argument against the abusive public employee unions that hold public fisc hostage in the U.S. Right now, U.S. teachers' unions have crafted a public education industry that is a lot like what this technocrat in India might have conceived .
  - hackinthebochs 9y ago
    But jobs are how those goods and services are distributed. A country like India is not in a state to transition to basic income yet.
- poke111 9y ago
  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.
- taneq 9y ago
  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.
  - KekDemaga 9y ago
    Where do I sign up to be one of the idle workers?
    - taneq 9y ago
      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.
      - KekDemaga 9y ago
        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.
        cjalmeida 9y ago
        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_rebellions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebell...
  - tspike 9y ago
- zghst 9y ago
  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.
  - kthejoker2 9y ago
    As a consultant I recently traveled to a client office; the Wifi was spotty and failed so often I literally had a mild anxiety attack and had to head back to the home office just to clear my mind. I can only imagine what privileges the next generation are going to upgrade to necessities.
- deepnotderp 9y ago
  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.
- sintaxi 9y ago
  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.
- jimmywanger 9y ago
  If you do this, you'd also logically have to ban imports or tax them at an extremely high rate. By banning any sort of technology, you're indirectly increasing the costs of domestically placed goods, by increasing the costs of production.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
bsder 9y ago
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.
- hossbeast 9y ago
  People are also it's beneficiaries
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    Problem is, the beneficiaries and the victims are often different people.
    - 794CD01 9y ago
      If they were the same people, the technology would be rather pointless.
- danenania 9y ago
  "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 cars. This change involves many levels of government bureaucracy. It will happen, but it's definitely not going to be "immediate".
  - surjman 9y ago
    This process is already under way. There are hearings in Congress regarding autonomous vehicles several times a month.
craptocurrency 9y ago
Go ahead

marak830 9y ago

Horse and buggies too, think of the carriage and whip makers!

anoother 9y ago

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

ChrisLomont 9y ago
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.
DINKDINK 9y ago
Ce qu'on voit et ce qu'on ne voit pas [1] [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window
jlebar 9y ago
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.
- fnl 9y ago
  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?!).
  - jimmywanger 9y ago
    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.
    - egypturnash 9y ago
      Or you just start taxing corporations and rich people again. Some stupidly huge percentage of dollars are just sitting in their coffers doing nothing.
      - jimmywanger 9y ago
        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-renounces-his-u-s-citizenship/?hpw 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.
        egypturnash 9y ago
        We just have to start guillotining them again, I guess. You need a good revolution once every generation or three to keep capital scared.
poke111 9y ago
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.
- zghst 9y ago
  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.
- malchow 9y ago
  Nicely put. I'd add that your response makes a tidy argument against the abusive public employee unions that hold public fisc hostage in the U.S. Right now, U.S. teachers' unions have crafted a public education industry that is a lot like what this technocrat in India might have conceived .
- hackinthebochs 9y ago
  But jobs are how those goods and services are distributed. A country like India is not in a state to transition to basic income yet.
poke111 9y ago
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.
taneq 9y ago
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.
- KekDemaga 9y ago
  Where do I sign up to be one of the idle workers?
  - taneq 9y ago
    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.
    - KekDemaga 9y ago
      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.
      - cjalmeida 9y ago
        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_rebellions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_revolutions_and_rebell...
- tspike 9y ago
zghst 9y ago
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.
- kthejoker2 9y ago
  As a consultant I recently traveled to a client office; the Wifi was spotty and failed so often I literally had a mild anxiety attack and had to head back to the home office just to clear my mind. I can only imagine what privileges the next generation are going to upgrade to necessities.
deepnotderp 9y ago
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.
sintaxi 9y ago
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.
jimmywanger 9y ago
If you do this, you'd also logically have to ban imports or tax them at an extremely high rate. By banning any sort of technology, you're indirectly increasing the costs of domestically placed goods, by increasing the costs of production.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

bsder 9y ago

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.

hossbeast 9y ago
People are also it's beneficiaries
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  Problem is, the beneficiaries and the victims are often different people.
  - 794CD01 9y ago
    If they were the same people, the technology would be rather pointless.
danenania 9y ago
"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 cars. This change involves many levels of government bureaucracy. It will happen, but it's definitely not going to be "immediate".
- surjman 9y ago
  This process is already under way. There are hearings in Congress regarding autonomous vehicles several times a month.

craptocurrency 9y ago

Go ahead