Comment by Aurornis

> How do you keep companies from using the replaced talent as a seat warmer? Hire 1 or 2 accountants, give them a chair and a cubicle, and let AI do the rest of the work.

I don’t think the proponents of these ideas care about who does the work. They see it as protection for specific jobs. Basically a jobs program with the costs forced on to large corporations.

As you said, it becomes a great gift to the few people lucky enough (or more usually, with enough nepotistic connections) to get those easy street jobs. It would not help everyone else in the economy.

It would also accelerate moving jobs overseas. Any company that regulates productivity that far downward would be crazy to continue doing automatable work in that country. It just gets moved to foreign offices where they can use AI. There are regulatory maximalists who say we’ll just regulate that, too, but then the whole company relocates to another country. Then some want to try to regulate that, and so on ad infinitum but it’s all layers of holding back your domestic companies so their international competitors can eat their lunch.