from the maybe-they-can-be-tech-support-for-the-cars dept.
India is resisting the push towards driverless cars in order to protect jobs, its transport minister has said.
Nitin Gadkari said the government would "not allow any technology that takes away jobs".
He said India needed to recruit about 22,000 more commercial drivers and would be opening 100 training facilities to address the need.
India's road system and sometimes chaotic traffic makes it a difficult place to develop the technology.
The Hindustan Times reports Mr Gadkari as saying: "We won't allow driverless cars in India. I am very clear on this.
"In a country where you have unemployment, you can't have a technology that ends up taking people's jobs."
Wonder what Mr. Gadkari's position is on the technology that has outsourced jobs in America and Europe to India?
(Score: 5, Funny) by Justin Case on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:58AM (8 children)
Protecting jobs is just the cover story. India knows a lot about the quality of most software development.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:39AM (4 children)
Meh, lame arrogance. Are you just mad that India has politicians who actually will look after their own nation's best interests?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:17AM
Yes.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:36AM (2 children)
But is it in the nation's best interest? Imagine what would have happened if, back when the car was invented, the government had decided to protect all the jobs in the horse-powered transportation industry.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:48AM (1 child)
Some things transition more readily, but self driving cars will eliminate a lit of jobs very rapidly. There are real economic consequences that might need to be addressed. The car was a better horse and crested a large industrial sector. Self driving cars eliminate a lot of jobs without creating all that many new ones.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @01:44PM
Why do people need to work jobs? They need money.
Why doesn't the Indian government simply pay people to dig holes in the morning and fill them up in the afternoon? That's certainly “hard work” and physically exhausting too. However, everybody can plainly see that it's a pointless activity. It's obviously make-work.
Automated cars are labor-saving devices. They perform the same task that we all need, transportation, with less human labor. Another way to say that is that we will get the thing we need, transportation, but we will lose something we don't need: the other guy's job. I have no intrinsic, selfish need for the other guy to have a job. I merely need transportation.
However, given a more enlightened view of self-interest, I may continue to be my naturally selfish self and conclude that it is in my self-interest for the other guy to continue going to Macy's and JC Penny and McDonalds and TGI Fridays. Those are place that I, being a consumer whore (with questionable tastes), would like to stay in business and continue to provide me the things they provide me: clothing with on-site changing rooms so I can instantly know whether that skirt is going to look good with that top and work with the shape of my body to look good. I want that. I want somewhere to go with friends to sit down for a very informal dinner, maybe before seeing a movie. If the other guy can't be a customer of those places, they'll go out of business, and I certainly can't keep those places in business based on showing up once a month or so to enjoy their goods and services!
Long story short: UBI.
Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. Maybe it needs to be phased in. Maybe next year we'll enact the “gimme free shit” law and everybody will get a check for some small amount relative to the cost of living for India or the USA once per month or once every two weeks. In the USA, perhaps it would be $10 or $25. Not much at all. Maybe even in 10 or 20 years society doesn't have the excess production to completely support the jobless masses, but we do have excess production right now, today! We need to get that excess production into the hands of the masses in a way that the traditional instrument of capitalism, investment accounts, simply cannot effectively do. Maybe in theory they can, but in theory, practice and theory are the same thing. In practice, practice is totally different from theory, and we can see hypercapitalism in practice, and the masses are hurting and exploited by it.
(You didn't get DJT because of political correctness. You didn't get DJT because of transsexuals or feminists. You didn't get DJT because of black lesbians. You got DJT because the masses know they are hurting and being exploited, and there was no credible alternative. The only thing the other team brought to the table was more of the same, more hypercapitalism, more of this system that only works in theory but does not work in practice.)
My hope is that humans will, in the post-scarcity Star Trek utopian future, want to do product things for no other reason than to do them. People will still innovate because there is something there to be innovated, like climbing a mountain. Why climb the mountain? Because it's there. No other reason.
The social sciences (including especially economics, perhaps the worst, most unscientific of the social “sciences”) provide very little credible guidance for whether the economy can continue to grow, first by replacing human workers with robot workers, and then by exponentially increasing the capability of the robot workers beyond what any amount of human workers could hope to achieve.
Better and better. That's a rule. Stick to it.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:53AM
Also, have you seen Indian traffic? It would indeed be the final triumph of any AI.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Wednesday July 26 2017, @12:20PM
I think you're right that it's just a cover story, but for a different reason. Indian politicians get to collect some populist points while outlawing something that's a long way from making economic sense anyway. Because first of all, drivers are really cheap there. If you're in the class that can afford to travel by car at all, you can probably afford a driver. Hell, even if you aren't, you might be able to afford to pay someone to pedal you where you're going, and it's often actually faster for short distances in a city. Add to that the fact that Indian traffic is complex on every level, from bizarre street patterns to constant road work to almost total lack of signals and lane markers to a bewildering mix of vehicles and animals in free-for-all mode. When that can be negotiated by software I'll be impressed. So who's going to pay extra for self-driving car development in such an environment? The only real demand category I can think of is unmarried couples wanting a semiprivate place to make out, but I think social Westernization has created that "problem" and will also "solve" it eventually anyway, by relaxing the traditional restraints. So the politicians are getting points for the moment at no real economic cost.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:58PM
Driverless pedicabs?
(Score: 2) by Absolutely.Geek on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:00AM (4 children)
Do all trenches get dug by hand in India?
Nail guns & power saws take away jobs; do they have those?
A thousand other examples exist. Where do you draw the line? I would say nail guns take more jobs then driverless cars would.
Don't trust the police or the government - Shihad: My mind's sedate.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:29AM (2 children)
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:57AM
You know, most of us recognize this without the lame spoiler label. Besides that faux pas, pretty decent. Nice details, good size and orientation. Not to mention tasty subject!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:56AM
Looks more like the front view of a horse's head. Maybe a donkey with those ears!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @02:41PM
Actually you might not have not experienced a 3rd world shit-hole with extreme abundance of labor. Coincidentally that is what some people want to turn Europe into. In India a lot of jobs are done by hand that are ridiculously automate-ible. One part is lack of infrastructure, but that is only tangential, because adding said infrastructure would totally destabilize the society. India is a place where Designated Shitting Streets are cleaned BY HAND of shit daily. And most people doing the cleaning do not even get paid with cash, but scraps. But shoudl you do away with this, which try as you might you cannot, the people who clean them would starve! Let that sink in.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by MadTinfoilHatter on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:13AM (6 children)
Almost all technology exists for the purpose of making our lives easier, i.e. to reduce our workload, i.e. enabling fewer people to do the same amount of work, i.e. taking away jobs. Thinking that you actually solve problems by banning technology is so shortsighted and lacking in understanding the issues that I fail to see how one could become such a luddite short of a lobotomy.
So why stop at banning driverless cars? Ban all cars. Trucks have taken away a huge amount of jobs, previously handled by camel caravans or some shit. And why stop there? Ban the wheel, while you're at it - it will create more work after all. Let's roll all of society back to the stone age! Iron tools are the work of the devil, because they take away jobs that would require much more manpower when using stone tools! Let's bring India into the 21st century! All hail the genius of Nitin Gadkari!
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:21AM
Under normal conditions, you'd be right to say that not adopting new technology that improves productivity and quality-of-life in order to encourage employment is the same as the broken window fallacy. However, the automobile market is already managed using planned obsoleteness, regulated fuel-prices and the forced supply of car parts. So, depending on the circumstances, preventing self-driving cars might be beneficial for India \ most Indians at least until the technology becomes prolific enough to cover the lost wages.
It's sorta like picking up a new smartphone nowadays: Even if it has a few more bells and whistles, it's still a waste of money for 99.999% of the population.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:16AM (2 children)
I do very much wonder how he would feel if western countries adopted the exact same concept - but applied it to things such as off-shoring - which certainly costs jobs in those countries... I suspect that Mr Gadkari might have a rather vocal opinion on the matter actually.
Hi Pot, this is Kettle... I think you know what I'm calling to say right?
(Score: 3, Funny) by maxwell demon on Wednesday July 26 2017, @06:39AM
Something racist, obviously. ;-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:18PM
Will Nitin Gadkari ban robocallers to provide full employment for Indian scammers?
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 26 2017, @07:35AM
There's a reason why some countries thrived early on and other didn't..
Culture and virtues, DO play a part.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @08:53AM
I'd be more enthusiastic about such stuff if the workload and job reductions are clearly leading towards people having fewer and fewer working days a week for the same wealth/week (ala the Jetsons).
However that doesn't seem the case to me.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:50AM (6 children)
China is pro-Globalism, as in everyone manufactures everything here, thank you. Remember to also provide all the know-how while at it.
Want to open a business? No, only 49% for foreigners and the rest must be Chinese.
Do what I say, not what I do.
Some Western business are finally waking up and realizing how this Globalism thing works. Asymmetric and maybe late to stop. But they loved those extra profits for a handful years. Their dream is over, now the nigthmare starts: know-how gone, factories gone, local customers poor or on the path to poverty. Who is the wise guy now?
Even those Westerns pushing for the political face of Globalism should wake up and notice they are not alone in the race for the boss chair. Maybe not them, but child and grandchilds better start learning other languages to serve new masters, if they are accepted as servants.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:09AM (2 children)
What's even worse: with the life quality going down, USofA won't be at the happy end of the brain-drain [wikipedia.org] as it used to be when it was building the know-how it's now losing.
My opinion? Actually, nobody is wiser.
I must have missed the moment: when was globalism about "who is the boss"?
My impressions was that, at any time, globalism was "move you capital where you're able to make the highest profit, don't give a fuck about anything else 'cause it's irrelevant".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:25AM (1 child)
The boss owns the gold (and makes the rules). That is the race, Globalism is the shape it has taken for USA and Europe, thinking others would play along and not check for their own interests. So no, not very wise when some countries play as they want instead as of told.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Wednesday July 26 2017, @05:21AM
The gold (money) is a convention (rational or not), but when the convention finishes by no longer being socially useful, I bet the society will pat the "winners" on the back or on the head (possibly using pitchforks) to "congratulate them for wining" and move along with other "rules of the game".
Will the "rules of the new game" be wiser? I doubt it, but in any case the "old game" is close enough to its end to have me with good chances of seeing the start of the next game beginning to happen.
It will happen, the "small-percenters" need the rest of the population more than the other way around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by caffeine on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:34AM
I suspect globalism is not the main game. The real game is ownership of western assets.
The Chinese government has wisely pegged the Renminbi, and as a superpower, are free to produce as much of it as they like. They are using this to purchase real assets all over the world. I don't think their balance of trade figures explains all the assets they are purchasing.
With so many governments around the world privatising assets like mines, ports, power stations, airports, it is a good time to be cashed up.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday July 26 2017, @07:32AM
Insert rule on reciprocity and maybe they see the light. China has problems with innovation, they can be run over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 26 2017, @03:51PM
The manager who made the decision, got the bonus, and left the company before the disadvantages started to show up?
(Score: 2, Funny) by Hyper on Wednesday July 26 2017, @04:08AM
He's dead.
Get over it.