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Comment by HarHarVeryFunny | Hacker News Reader

> Limit what AI corporations can use? Other countries would love that more than anything. Basically a free gift to any competitors or any startup that quietly avoids the rules.

Sure - look at what is being done today with H1B visas and tariffs.

What is more important to you - having a job and a functioning economy/society, or upholding some "free market" doctrine you've bought into?

Just as with H1B visas, you restrict usage. For example, don't allow AI to replace any job that pays under $250K.

If foreign countries make things cheaper, just as China is making EVs that cost a fraction of a Tesla, then slap tariffs on them.

A government should be primarily concerned about the people it represents, not about the profitability of the companies who are lobbying/bribing it.

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Jobs are going to evolve because of AI. Some jobs will be automated. New jobs will be created. It's like saying we should have never created car factories and automated much of it because we should think of the horse handlers and maintainers.

There will still be a market for "trust". And its customers will never trust the machines. And within that market a lot of new startups will emerge for those who actually get to work and seize opportunities rather than lament a bygone era.

> New jobs will be created.

In the short term yes, but in the long term no.

What makes AI different to previous technological shifts is that it is (or will be) a general purpose technology, equally capable of itself doing the new jobs that it creates (so yeah, they'll be created, but also immediately taken away).

The saving grace is that this won't happen immediately, or as soon as we get something the AI companies slap an "AGI" label on in a couple of years, and it will likely take decades until we have an "artificial human" tech that genuinely could do any job (if we choose to allow that future).

> Sure - look at what is being done today with H1B visas and tariffs.

I have some bad news for you if you bought into the idea that the tariffs were good for domestic jobs and the economy.

> What is more important to you - having a job and a functioning economy/society, or upholding some "free market" doctrine you've bought into?

This is the definition of a false dichotomy, and you also ignored (or missed) the point completely.

I did not make an argument out of “free market doctrine”. I explained the second order effects that would provide a net reduction in jobs in this country.

My wife’s company is going through this right now. H1Bs are expensive and unpredictable, so the solution is to relocate more of the operations outside of the country and build up those offices.

Failure to understand second order effects and international economies is pervasive in these arguments for heavy regulations. You can do a lot to hold back your country’s companies to force them to pay for employees they don’t need and those few employees benefit for a while, but it collapses when those companies stop hiring in the regulated countries and resume hiring where they can actually operate a business. If you try to regulate them from doing it anywhere, you’ve given their competitors a wonderful gift to come destroy the company completely. Then they’re not making any jobs for anyone.

Do you think outsourcing and offshoring of jobs, whether manufacturing or software development, has been a positive for the US economy?

Does it make sense to you for US companies to be sending wages overseas, supporting a foreign family and economy, when there is someone here in the US, unemployed and equally capable of doing the job?

Trump has certainly been ham-fisted about tariffs, but in a world without tariffs then the country with lowest cost of production, closely related to lowest cost of living, and lowest wages, wins, and this is not going to be the US in most cases. If you follow that path then a high cost country like the US will end up utterly reliant on other countries as it imports almost everything, and loses all domestic manufacturing capability. Sounds familiar?

free market doctrine is an axiom to your second order effects. its so embedded into all your assumptions that you havent even considered it

Whatever you are calling "free market doctrine" is a physical law. Why would a business owner subject themselves to shitty conditions if they could find workers in better places? Some would of course, but not most or all.

They won't - they'll act purely in their self or shareholder's interest.

If the government wants companies to act in a way that benefits the country and its people, then they need to pass laws to make that happen, for example by things like H1B quotas, or by tax penalties that make the desired behavior the most profitable.

Why do you think protectionism works in benefit of the country's people? Ask Brazilians what they think of tariffs and protectionism. Ask for instance how many of them fly to the USA to buy electronics.

I think you need to take tariffs case by case and ask if this an industry worth protecting - do you need to have it domestically, or are you ok to rely on imports? Maybe you want to protect high margin industries supporting good jobs, and are willing to rely on imports for things like clothing, food, electronic assembly. OTOH some things should have strategic importance - so then maybe you want to make sure you (the country) are if possible self-sufficient for things like defense, semiconductor manufacture, etc.

People, just like companies, are most likely to act in their own self-interest rather than in the interest of society as a whole. Sure, you'd like to be able to buy everything as cheap as possible, which in a high cost of living (which translates into high cost of manufacture) country like the US would mean relying mostly on tariff-free imports, and the death of the entire industrial base. Is that really what's best for the country?

That doesn't work. What happens is that industry sells for a bit less than the price of the imported good and everyone suffers. It has no longer any incentive to compete and just sits and withers off while countries and companies participating in the market overtake it. It does the opposite of protecting the industry. While its still anti capitalist, I would consider state subsidies of certain industries more palatable than tariffing of competition.

Tariffs need to be credibly perceived as more or less permanent in whatever sector you're targeting for businesses to invest the large amounts of capital needed to reshore manufacturing.

Which is one of the main reasons Trump's arbitrary tariffs are ineffective policy, businesses see his capricious approach to tinkering with tariffs on a daily basis and instead make a rational decision to eat the costs under the assumption they are temporary.

Because he may change his mind in a week, SCOTUS may strike them down, Democrats win budgetary leverage in Congress, the right bribe gets paid for an exemption, etc. He could have enshrined them into legislation with the GOP's majority but politically they don't have enough support even within their own party, making the whole tariff saga pretty much pointless and self-defeating for any kind of long term restructuring of the US economy.

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