Comment by jallmann | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jallmann | Hacker News Reader

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> When I was in India ...

Useless jobs are endemic in India. Once, I was in a Mumbai apartment building with several elevators, and one of them had a full-time operator, despite being a normal, modern elevator. Why? "Because he needs a job."

Many places in India, the lawn is "mowed" by a bunch of guys bending over with scythes. Not even when the job could be easily done by one person with a push mower. Why? "Jobs."

And there's construction. Laundry. And so on...

To be honest, India has so many people (and labor is so cheap) that I'm not sure what a better solution would be. Would the poorest still be able to make a living after being displaced by automation? I don't know enough about basic income to say how it could work in a nation of 1.2 billion people.

I worked in an office in Delhi which had one of those automatic Nescafe machines: place cup under spout, press button, horrible coffee/tea comes out.

There were two people employed, full time, to operate the machine. Boss-guy would ask for your order, worker-guy would operate the machine and would hand you your drink. They and the machine were in a little windowless supply cupboard niche, maybe 2 meters square, and boss-guy had a plastic lawn chair, while worker-guy did not.

And yes, they were both very unhappy if you attempted to operate the machine yourself.

Funny that you mention elevator operator. When I moved to San Francisco, I saw a few elevator operators in some of the city's buildings. Where did you get the idea that the elevator operator in India had a job "Because he needs a job."?

Because the friend I was with (who lived there) said so, after I asked about it.

This elevator didn't need an operator. Especially considering it was one elevator among several other operator-less elevators.

There are useless jobs everywhere though, including San Francisco. Was this an older building with a manually operated elevator? That would make more sense.

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