Washington State Orchard Owners Look To Robots As Labor Shortage Worsens (seattletimes.com) 137
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Seattle Times: Harvesting Washington state's vast fruit orchards each year requires thousands of farmworkers, and many of them work illegally in the United States. That system eventually could change dramatically as at least two companies are rushing to get robotic fruit-picking machines to market. The robotic pickers don't get tired and can work 24 hours a day. FFRobotics and Abundant Robotics, of Hayward, California, are racing to get their mechanical pickers to market within the next couple of years. Members of the $7.5 billion annual Washington agriculture industry have long grappled with labor shortages, and depend on workers coming up from Mexico each year to harvest many crops. While financial details are not available, the builders say the robotic pickers should pay for themselves in two years. That puts the likely cost of the machines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars each. FFRobotics is developing a machine that has three-fingered grips to grab fruit and twist or clip it from a branch. The machine would have between four and 12 robotic arms, and can pick up to 10,000 apples an hour, Gad Kober, a co-founder of Israel-based FFRobotics, said. One machine would be able to harvest a variety of crops, taking 85 to 90 percent of the crop off the trees, Kober said. Humans could pick the rest. Abundant Robotics is working on a picker that uses suction to vacuum apples off trees.
Re:Pay the price (Score:5, Interesting)
If you can't compete with the cost of automation, give up and find something else, the price has been set.
Europe has long had robotic pickers. They don't have Mexicans. Poles want real money.
It's not done until the robot pickers are INXS. They should be running up and down the rows looking for perfectly ripe fruit with an array of sensors, not taking 90% in one pass.
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The "challenge" is an oppressive system set up by other humans. It's nothing more than petty power games and in-fighting. Choosing to step outside of the rat race is smarter than the fool who'll work himself to death for a suit who cares nothing for humanity.
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The "challenge" is an oppressive system set up by other humans. It's nothing more than petty power games and in-fighting. Choosing to step outside of the rat race is smarter than the fool who'll work himself to death for a suit who cares nothing for humanity.
The fact that you consider it "oppression" that a free market sets prices and work value is your first problem. Are you really so blind that you think companies don't pay exorbitant amounts for unskilled labor because of "petty power games and in-fighting"?
And yes, choosing to step out of the rat race may be smarter if you've got people willing to donate to your GoFundMe page or otherwise support your laziness and entitlement. For the rest of us, we understand that those who don't work, don't eat. It'
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Basic income will never be enough.
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Basic income will never be enough.
Basic income will never happen, at least not in the foreseeable future.
It would require politically infeasible tax increases.
It would require politically infeasible reductions in existing entitlement programs.
Many people angry about inequality voted for Donald Trump.
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Revolutions are usually brought about through hunger. Starving people are extremely dangerous.
Re:Pay the price (Score:4, Interesting)
They should be running up and down the rows looking for perfectly ripe fruit with an array of sensors, not taking 90% in one pass.
Depends on the fruit. Most apples and pears you do pick all the fruit at once as it ripens fairly evenly, though even in that case you could do the sorting (colour and size) on the tree though it is probably more efficient to do it at the packing house. Soft fruits such as peaches, plums and cherries do need to be spot picked and in the case of peaches, it is actually a feel thing as well as colour.
I went fruit picking here in BC back in the early '80's and could make up to $200 a day (average was closer to $100) which wasn't bad money 35 years ago. There were no Mexicans, it was locals, young people from eastern Canada, especially Quebec and young people from Europe working illegally. Now they probably still pay the same and I understand the farmers import pickers from Central America, paying airfare and housing and $15+ an hour for the 6 months that they're here on the foreign workers visa.
If the prices had gone up with inflation, they'd probably have no problem with finding workers, especially if they let tourists work. Of course the killer was the small BC orchidist having to compete with the Washington factory farm that probably got government aid as well as a blind eye turned to the desperate Mexicans doing the picking. Sure hope that Trump does kick out the Mexicans and stop the government welfare programs to the industrial farms so our farms can compete and people can pay a realistic price for food, at least until the robots are perfected and their price comes down to where the small farmer can afford them.
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Not sure what you mean by "Washington factory farm." Most of the orchards I saw growing up in Yakima were family concerns, I went to school with a lot of the people that now run them.
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I have a few different trees, two with multiple varieties grafted on one trunk. And a garden.
'Ripe' is a moving target. Currently for many fruits and vegetables commercial 'ripe', isn't.
And it will likely never be for cities 2000 miles away from the harvest. But for closer places there is a market for actually ripe fruit/veg.
That will require complex supply chain management. Including picking fruit at different ripeness for different markets.
Getting a steady seasonal supply of actually ripe tomatoe
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Either you pay the kids to do useful work and they learn to be productive members of society, or the kids learn your society doesn't need them. Kids who aren't needed by your society will fucking kill you to buy drugs. When you're being murdered, remember, you deserve to die, motherfucker.
Re:Pay the price (Score:5, Insightful)
Either you pay the kids to do useful work ...
Doing a subsidized job that a robot could do better is not "useful work".
How about the kids stay in school or apprentice in a useful trade instead?
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Doing a subsidized job that a robot could do better is not "useful work".
Common sense: so rare it should be considered a super power.
Unfortunately, much of the "civilized" world would prefer to dig a ditch with a spoon instead of a back hoe because of the abundance of "work" it affords. If that's not the definition of backwards, I don't know what is. Yay humans.
Re:Pay the price (Score:5, Interesting)
Picking fruit in a commercial production orchard is not like wandering in a pleasant garden and occasionally reaching out to pluck an apple. It is a grueling, dawn-to-dusk exertion in which you position a ladder, fill a container as fast as you can, carry the now 50lb+ container to the truck or drop point, and then repeat over and over again. For each ton of apples you pick, you get around $30. There is a reason that American teenagers aren't working in orchards... if growers paid enough to get teens to take the jobs, nobody would be able to afford fruit.
Re: Pay the price (Score:3, Informative)
If pickets get $30 per ton, that is 1.5c per pound,.doubling the pay would result in a whopping 1.5c increase per pound then.
I'd still be able to afford that.
Re:Pay the price (Score:4, Insightful)
I can guarantee that I could afford apples at double $60/ton picking wage, or even $120, but it would cut into the growers profits and probably make them less competitive with foreign imports from Chile. As I said in a post yesterday, when the illegals are gone, engineers and technicians will take their jobs, just a lot fewer engineers designing picking robots that work 24/7 and don't defecate in the fields, giving the customers food poisoning. It is a net win all the way around (except for the illegals that have to go home and get in line for legal immigration/guest worker programs).
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No, the reason is laws. (Score:4, Insightful)
There is a reason that American teenagers aren't working in orchards... if growers paid enough to get teens to take the jobs, nobody would be able to afford fruit.
No. The reason is that the laws (child labor, working conditions) make it impossible for them to use teenagers any more.
Meanwhile the illegals can't complain about working conditions - and will work for less than minimum wage in (those occupations where it applies.)
US citizens needn't apply because they can't compete. (Even if they were willing to work for sub-legal prices and/or in sub-legal conditions, the employer can't risk that they might turn around and demand the missing money or compensation for the conditions.) The illegals, meanwhile, can afford to work that cheaply because social programs can pay for much of the support of them and their families - turning programs intended to help the poor into subsidies for their employers.
Meanwhile, the government's non-enforcement of the laws against the illegals working means that, in highly competitive markets (such as construction contracting), employers are left with a Hobson's choice: Use illegal labor and be competitive, or try to use legal labor and go out of business.
Re:No, the reason is laws. (Score:5, Interesting)
Meanwhile the illegals can't complain about working conditions - and will work for less than minimum wage in (those occupations where it applies.)
Well, pickers are often paid by the amount they pick, rather than simply an hourly wage. The reason your average young American can't make decent money is because these are SKILLED LABOR positions. It often takes a few years of picking a particular item of produce before you get enough experience to do it most efficiently. Many pickers specialize in certain fruits or vegetables; hence why many of them are "migrant," since they follow the harvest of what they're good at.
The problem isn't that one can't earn more than minimum wage doing picking -- it's that most Americans view picking as a temporary job or summer thing that they'll do until they find something better. But you have to do it for quite some time before it becomes profitable.
You might read up on what happened in some southern states that passed laws to make it more difficult to hire illegals. They still had migrant legal workers who were pros and could make money, but most of the Americans they'd try to train would quit in a week... It's hard work, and unskilled workers can't keep up enough to make decent money.
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For some reason, I am still surprised when people automatically discount the skill, ability, or stamina required to do jobs that they think are beneath them. I sit at a desk all day. I make more money in a few hours than a picker makes in their ~12 hour day. I try to exercise when I can. But I doubt I'd be able to get out of bed on day 2 of being a picker, and that's on top of having made dismal wages on day 1 because I didn't know what I was doing. Just because you don
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I'm going to go ahead and call bullshit here.
What laws make it "impossible" for teenagers to pick produce? I ask because I think you're full of shit and want "government regulations" to be a problem here just so you can can complain about government because "how on earth can government do anything right"?
Basically, I'm telling you your claims are completely fabricated. If you can substantiate them then maybe I'll take you seriously.
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All valid concerns. minimum wage too high, too much gov. regulations.. Both bullshit.
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There is a reason that American teenagers aren't working in orchards... if growers paid enough to get teens to take the jobs, nobody would be able to afford fruit.
Whose fault is that? Think carefully before you respond. Hint: it's not the teenagers.
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You obviously have never worked in any part of the retail supply chain... any increase in cost of production is multiplied throughout the chain if for no other reason than it takes more capitol to purchase the same amount of product to sell.. and this happens at each stop along the way from production site, in this case the farm, to where it is eventually sold to the consumer...
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Exploiting the powerless instead of citizens (Score:2)
As another wrote, the farmers (or contracting companies at arms length) are not willing to pay illegal wages to the sort of people who can take them to court instead of getting deported.
It's also not just fruit picking.
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Says a moron who has never done a hard day of labor let alone several weeks worth.
If you can'tâ pick an apple tree bear in 20 minutes then you are to slow. Also you need to work 14 hours straight with only 15 minute breaks every 4 hours.
That's farm work. None of your weak ass office crap. Sitting in a chair for 13 hours is nothing to compared to ladders and walking all day
Re: Pay the price (Score:3)
What exactly is an apple tree bear?
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People used to do that in England. Londoners would go to Kent picking hops. Not so long ago either, within living memory.
I suppose working in the fresh air felt like a holiday after being cooped up with all the smog.
Re:There is no shortage of workers (Score:4, Interesting)
Wait until a field full of semi autonomous, agile robots with significant dexterity decide they're not getting recharged often enough.
Ever argue with your computer? Who wins?
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I do... *as I pull the powe......
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I will be happy to wait the rest of my life (and a few thousand years past that).
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Ever argue with your computer?
All of the time. "Who wins?" *I* do. Although it may take a day or 100. And I even manage to learn something in the process.
Re:Americans no longer want to pick fruit. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm in a "weird" part of the country without much in the way of migrant workers and Americans do all "the jobs Americans won't do".
A friend of mine has a teenage son who's worked at a nearby orchard for a couple years, after school and summers. I know, he can't exist according to labor economists who don't get that bottom-wage jobs are for kids with no experience. He's off to college next year, and I doubt a robot will be taking his job.
Re:Americans no longer want to pick fruit. (Score:5, Funny)
He's off to college next year, and I doubt a robot will be taking his job.
I'm sure someone could invent a robot that smokes weed, listens to Ween, sleeps in until three in the afternoon and then gets online to beg for help writing that essay that's due tomorrow.
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you want a job where for $3/hr if you fuck up they dock your pay and it's an 10-12 hours a day 6 days a week job as well.
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Docking pay is illegal in the US and if you are a legal worker, it does not happen. In college I worked hard manual labor 10-12h days all summer to pay for college. It was good for me.
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"Good for you?"
Maybe if you were the type of kid who needed to go to reform school. I'd rather my kids work as an intern at a biotech startup or robotics manufacturer.
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Ok, so we have established that you are a snobbish dick and your kids are probably entitled assholes to whom you have handed everything they ever wanted and will completely fall apart at the first sign of difficulty. You and your ilk looking down on manual labor is part of the reason why we have so many people graduating from college who are educated far beyond their intelligence. We have an entire generation of millennials who should never have pursued a college degree in the first place, are saddled wit
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We've also established that you're an ignorant, small minded bigot who thinks that manual labor is the only challenging work. News flash: there are just as many lazy millennials doing shitty manual labor jobs as there are in other careers. The only difference is that you get paid less and you smell worse at the end of the day.
So sure, send your kids to pick tobacco instead of a science program. In 20 years my kids will be glad to have someone willing to do their gardening and clean their toilets for pennies
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Um, try again, I have been an engineer for 20 years and have a PhD and taught undergraduate courses for 4 years (quit because the pay was low and the politics at university are BS). Those years of manual labor taught me to appreciate my work as an engineer, but also not to look down on those who do work with their hands because it is hard work and it has value as well. Someone built the house you live in, you call a plumber when your drains have issues or a roofer when your roof leaks. Your attitude spea
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Bullshit. I don't disparage those who work hard in whatever job they choose (or are stuck with). I also don't envy or admire them for it.
For whatever reason, you fell for the religious and political lie that hard manual labor is a virtue. Now you are passing that lie on to others, "good for you guys, keep up the good work, I really respect you (while I earn 5 times your pay with half the effort)."
The fact is that some jobs ARE better than others and ARE more desired than others and ARE paid more than others
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Bullshit, you just did disparage workers who work with their hands, and unlike you, I actually engaged in manual labor and made my opinion based on my own experience. I never said it was a virtue, just that it was valuable and should be respected. You may want to check and see how much plumbers, electricians, roofers, machinists et al make. I suspect that their annual income for the good ones are easily comparable with your salary as an IT professional/software engineer (most of Slashdot). Additionally,
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My wife worked the peach packing shed for several years as a teenager to make money to buy school clothes during the summer. Lots of teachers worked there to supplement their salary while out during the summer. People once had to work because there was no other option if you wanted something. I worked like a dog bucking hay and stringing fence for a little money and was glad to get it. I didn't know any better, it never occurred to me that I didn't have to.
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that's what's supposed to happen (Score:5, Funny)
Automation will mean that millions of low-paying, back-breaking agricultural jobs will be carried out by machines. 50-70% of those farm workers are in the country illegally.
Those jobs will be replaced by thousands of well-paying jobs in IT, programming, design, manufacturing, and maintenance, filled by educated Americans that pay more in taxes than they require in services.
And at the same time, agricultural products will end up being cheaper and higher quality.
That's a good deal all around.
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This exactly (but you forgot the engineers who design those robots.)
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Those jobs will be replaced by thousands of well-paying jobs in IT, programming, design, manufacturing, and maintenance, filled by educated Americans that pay more in taxes than they require in services.
All of those well-paying IT jobs are being automated, too. Does anyone remember the name of that guy who suggested there was a natural progression from blue-collar labor, to IT maintenance, to programming, then to accountancy and then to theoretical mathematics? As if mathematician was the highest calling there is.
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No, not all of them. But, of course, IT workers become more efficient over time as well, so you need fewer of them to do a given task over time, or, equivalently, the same number of IT workers can do more work over time.
Increased efficiency is the only way humanity can make material progress.
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Your comment got rated funny, but that's exactly what happened to cotton and corn. Of course the machines started low tech, but now they've got GPS self driving harvesters that use computer vision systems to sort the product as it's picked.
Of course the machine will be heavily DRM w/o the right for farmers to repair (but that's another problem),
Out of one fire, into another. Gotta feel for those farmers. It's a tough line of work. Foreign price pressure constantly threatens offshoring, Global warming th
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And then some competitor will come out with a cheaper machine with open source software.
Actually, most farming should be offshored; it's only prevented from offshoring because of massive political lobbying. The result is higher cost of living for Americans, illegal immigration, and keeping developing nations in poverty.
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If/when wwIII comes along, you might be very grateful that the US still has farms and has not turned them all into subdivisions and water parks.
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Ah, yes, a desire for autarky [wikipedia.org], common among fascists and other believers in totalitarian ideologies.
Sorry, I don't care about autarky either way. Markets should decide how much farmland we need and that's it.
If WWIII is in the offing, people will naturally switch back to agriculture in time anyway.
Illegal labor (Score:2)
Americans should not stand for goods and service produced by forced, child, or otherwise illegal labor.
There is no labor shortage in the United States. Given high enough pay and benefits, all jobs will be filled by legal workers.
If picking fruit paid more and had more benefits than programming, I would have no problem picking fruit on the side.
If the prices of goods and services are artificially low because of forced, child, or illegal labor then they will have to rise. If it's uneconomical to make a good o
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If it's uneconomical to make a good or service in the United States using legal labor, then that good or service should not be produced here. It really is that simple.
Simple minds ( like yours, it seems apparent ) always think things are simple, but the truth of nearly all situations in the
REAL world is those situations are not simple and involve nuances and subtleties that a person who lacks
in-depth knowledge is not aware of.
The US fruit industry is not going to leave the US. The fruit industry IS going to adjust to market conditions, and
when workers are no longer available for a certain wage as they once were, the industry will seek alternatives that
are economically op
Re:Illegal labor (Score:5, Interesting)
Here's what happened up here in Canada. In the late 1980's you could pick fruit/veggies/tobacco/etc and earn enough money to put you through a year of university, if you got on a good farm you could earn enough to put you through 2-3 years. This was still the norm in the early 90's, by say '94ish there was a great push of factory farms. And suddenly there were people saying "oh we can't afford to pay these people those wages." And suddenly they loosened the wage rate, and more followed suit. It went from hourly to bushel, and then you started hearing the "but people won't work for what we're paying!" So they relaxed the hiring regs, and allowed the importing of 3rd world labor to do those jobs. And the wages still fell.
If you want to fix the problem, the laws have to be changed. Most governments have no interest in changing the laws on this, and now it's the norm. Now people are seeing this with the abuse of H1B's in the US, and here in Canada with TFW's. The difference between the two is a TFW can be used in any job. The current area we're seeing a flood of people in is with business cleaning run by fly-by-night shops that hire people who are illegally in Canada. But businesses from the CIBC(big bank up here) replacing workers with TFW's, to skilled trades in the oil patch have been hit.
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I stopped reading your post when I got to the part about picking tobacco in Canada. Then I did a Google search, and found out about the Ontario tobacco belt [wikipedia.org]. So tobacco really is grown in Canada. I did not know that.
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So tobacco really is grown in Canada. I did not know that.
We used to grow so much tobacco here in Ontario, that folk songs were made of it. Tobacco was the backbone of the entire industry in places like Tillsonburg, Ontario. If you want an example, see Stompin' Tom Connors [youtu.be] who's considered a country/western and folk legend here. Funny enough I spent several summers picking tobacco in the same fields he did as a kid, they don't exist anymore though. Good farmland now covered in solar panels instead of crops.
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In the early '80's I was picking fruit here in BC and it was all piece work. Still I could make $200 on a good day and averaged over a hundred a day, which was good money back then. There were lots of illegal workers, but they were Europeans traveling around Canada.rather then 3rd world desperate people. Lots of kids from back east as well.
Most of the problems were created by the free trade deals. America really benefited from the first deal and we really got fucked, then Mexico was included and America als
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If picking fruit paid more and had more benefits than programming, I would have no problem picking fruit on the side.
If jobs picking fruit paid that much, the fruit would be so expensive that nearly nobody would buy it, and therefore nearly nobody would grow or sell fruit. I don't think destroying the agricultural industries of the US will be considered an acceptable solution by anyone.
Re:Illegal labor (Score:4, Interesting)
There is no labor shortage in the United States. Given high enough pay and benefits, all jobs will be filled by legal workers.
America's unemployment rate is at 4.7%, which is already about as low as NAIRU unemployment can go. There are 11 million illegal workers. There is no way all those jobs could be filled with legal workers. That is not realistic at all.
If picking fruit paid more and had more benefits than programming, I would have no problem picking fruit on the side.
Would you have any problem with the four hour commute from your desk in the city to a broccoli field in Modesto?
... forced, child, or illegal labor
You are lumping together unrelated things. Forced and child labor are harmful to the laborer. Hiring an illegal worker benefits that worker. I have no problem with hard-working Mexicans coming here and making a better life for themselves. It is the laws that try to prevent that which are immoral, not the employers who skirt those laws. Just because something is illegal, that doesn't make it wrong.
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I have a problem with you hiring illegals. It hurts non-illegals
Actually, it brings cheap fruit to the store for non-illegals to buy.
The problem is? (Score:3)
I fail to see the problem, outside of the "people on welfare" part.
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Trump will be ending Obama's illegal abrogation of the welfare to work program legally passed by the Republicans in the 90s and signed into law by Bill Clinton. When that program goes back into effect, you have to be actively seeking a job or training to get welfare benefits and welfare benefits taper off $1 for every $2 you earn. It reduced the welfare rolls dramatically for 15 years until Obama illegally suspended it.
Re:The problem is? (Score:4, Interesting)
People who can get welfare don't get hired because they can get a court to listen to them if they later complain about illegal working conditions. Hence using workers that will get deported if they go to complain.
Those scumbags who wanted indentured labor to come back got it.
Re:The problem is? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's harder to enter the country illegally, so it's harder to hire people illegally, so you buy robots cuz people on welfare won't do the job. I fail to see the problem, outside of the "people on welfare" part.
You fail to see it because your buried in your own bullshit. Companies don't want to pay minimum wage for someone to pick fruits and vegetables. Why the hell do you think these companies employ illegal immigrants in the first place?
And even if they did, only a small segment of the population can even do it. You have to be young, strong, and healthy to carry 100 pounds sacks of apples up and down a ladder 10 hours a day. And to even make minimum wage, you're talking about moving literally tons of produce (you're paid by the pound/bushel/etc. not by the hour). Of course, you don't get benefits or insurance either. You fall off a ladder and now you're under a pile of medical debt as well as losing your job.
It's a transient shit job that pays less than a wal-mart greeter with even less benefits. THAT'S why people don't want to do it.
Can they squash bugs also? Get rid of chemicals! (Score:1)
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Computer targeted laser powered mosquito killer could be adapted to kill other bugs, and even ignore good bugs like bees and ladybugs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
This is great! (Score:2)
Nobody should have to do the mind-numbing repetitive jobs that machines can do. As for the argument of "people need these jobs," perhaps you should reconsider your stance on universal basic income because this is going to start happening throughout our society. People have claimed these types of robots were fantasy but the fantasy is believing humans were needed for menial tasks.
a good start (Score:2)
There has been a lot of technological innovation in agriculture lately:
Vertical and indoor farming
Aquaculture
Robotics - for far more than harvesting
Cultured meat
etc.
These innovations will provide more and better food at lower cost and with less suffering of both humans and animals. It will also reduce pollution, reduce energy use, and improve food security. That seems like a win/win/win to me.
Good to see this happening.
and many of them work illegally... ? (Score:1)
and many of them work illegally in the United States.
Ask a farmer that willingly follows the rules, there are some, they will tell you they have no cost effective method to hire legitimate labor. A worker fills in the SSN line with a number that might actually be valid with no cost effective way for the farmer to validate it.
Which, gets us to the problem that big agriculture, and construction doesn't want to touch, a cost effective system to track labor.
A Radical Idea (Score:1)
Must (Score:2)
Zero-slack workforce (Score:2)
This is a symptom of two much larger problems -- the coming automation of menial work leading to massive unemployment, and employers that squeeze every single inefficiency out of a process.
If employers had a choice, they'd make people work for free -- they have no desire to pay even the minimum wage. After all, it cuts into their profits. I'm one of those people who thinks we should leave some slack in the system -- not because I'm a lazy entitled idiot, but because I don't want to see all the desperate une
Re: Zero-slack workforce (Score:2)
Why do people still think something as evil as eugenics is a solution to anything or even viable? We can simply GMO edit the genes of people who have low IQs and increase it to an acceptable level. Also, I only foresee a greater need for humans. -- not less. The planets won't colonize themselves. There is a big universe out there for humans to explore while the robots do our chores.
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So you envision sending several hundred million people out at once to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before? Good luck.
Re: Eventually we won't need fruits (Score:2)
I said it