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Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

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Re: Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

#31

Post by hugh4 »

wcummings wrote: post #26

I don't know, people are really really good at things like this (picking fruit), which robots are generally speaking very bad at, and migrant labor is cheap. Why is this a disruptor?

For starters, not every country is the US, we don't all have vast hordes of illegals willing to work for next to nothing.

Secondly, and without wanting to start a political thread, the US might not either soon because President Trump.

Overall there's a point at which this becomes economical (just as there was a point at which automated harvesting of every other crop became economical starting with the 19th century) and it depends on labour costs in each country. It won't be super-soon, but it will happen eventually.

Re: Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

#33

Post by hugh4 »

wolfram74 wrote: post #8
sitkack wrote: post #6

I think this would free migrant farm labor from having the burden of income, freeing them to be wondering poets. Reminds me a recycling sorting robot, which in my country is done by the mentally disabled. Just the kind of person you want to take a job away from.

Jobs are pretty shitty, they get in the way doing any real work. If we can have a functional society where robots deal with all the manual labor, the owners of the robots get half the profits and the other half get spread uniformly amongst the populace, anybody who wants to work on things that demonstrably unprofitable like writing linux kernel, or teaching their children to read, or advanced math or analyzing advent…

And remind me why I, as a farmer (hypothetically) who spent millions of dollars buying a piece if land and millions more to buy robots to work on it, then spends all his time worrying about maintenance and shipping and prices and pruning and planting and weeds and so forth... remind me why I should consent to having my profits confiscated and given to other organisms for no reason other than that they happen to be of the same species?

Imagine the social unrest when a large portion of the populace is literally of negative value. It's not going to be pretty.

We need to start thinking now about how we're going to achieve a smaller but more elite population, so only useful people get born.

Re: Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

#34

Post by rndmind »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #27
moron4hire wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, that's not what is going to happen. The owners will just take all of the profits, maybe even get themselves a subsidy passed to promote the use of robots under some "green energy initiative" or something.

What's going to happen is decided by what everyone does. Owners keep all of the tech for themselves? We reverse engineer it and distribute it. Economics is simply a game/system that shifts every couple of decades/centuries. Keep in mind the rules you're playing by can change at any time.

Would you recommend some reading that might elaborate upon your comment? I am inspired by this, and would like more information on this idea that economics is just a game that shifts throughout the decades between 'owners' and the rest of the population

Re: Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

#35

Post by toomuchtodo »

rndmind wrote: post #34
toomuchtodo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's going to happen is decided by what everyone does. Owners keep all of the tech for themselves? We reverse engineer it and distribute it. Economics is simply a game/system that shifts every couple of decades/centuries. Keep in mind the rules you're playing by can change at any time.

Would you recommend some reading that might elaborate upon your comment? I am inspired by this, and would like more information on this idea that economics is just a game that shifts throughout the decades between 'owners' and the rest of the population

"Capital in the Twenty-First Century" by Piketty would be an excellent place to start.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2014/05/ec...

"From this history, Mr Piketty derives a grand theory of capital and inequality. As a general rule wealth grows faster than economic output, he explains, a concept he captures in the expression r > g (where r is the rate of return to wealth and g is the economic growth rate). Other things being equal, faster economic growth will diminish the importance of wealth in a society, whereas slower growth will increase it (and demographic change that slows global growth will make capital more dominant). But there are no natural forces pushing against the steady concentration of wealth. Only a burst of rapid growth (from technological progress or rising population) or government intervention can be counted on to keep economies from returning to the “patrimonial capitalism” that worried Karl Marx. Mr Piketty closes the book by recommending that governments step in now, by adopting a global tax on wealth, to prevent soaring inequality contributing to economic or political instability down the road."

Re: Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

#36

Post by compostor42 »

Automation like this is why I call BS on the "we need more immigrants to keep the economy going!" folks.

We will be struggling to keep our existing population employed. The last thing we want to do is import even more low-skilled labor who will soon be made redundant.

Increasing automation means a declining population is a godsend rather than a problem.

Policy makers must be aware of this. I suspect the call for increased immigration are politically motivated (replacing the existing population with a more reliable voting block) rather than sincere economic concerns.

This recent article is a great example. The author gleefully explains how replacing the existing white population with immigrants will reduce the NRA's base.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/10/19/...

Re: Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

#38

Post by xtian »

forrestthewoods wrote: post #29
xtian wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, it might not be yours; neither of those statements are true. Investigate how much the U.S. government spends on farming subsidies per year and then consider the fact that nutritious food which isn't loaded with pesticides, hormones, radiation, etc is currently considered a luxury good.

Crop insurance is one of the greatest advances in human history. I'm not even being sarcastic. It turns out subsistence farming and dying of starvation was pretty shitty.

Oh ok, so that's what the subsidies are preventing.

Re: Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

#39

Post by oldmanjay »

compostor42 wrote: post #36

Automation like this is why I call BS on the "we need more immigrants to keep the economy going!" folks. We will be struggling to keep our existing population employed. The last thing we want to do is import even more low-skilled labor who will soon be made redundant. Increasing automation means a declining population is a godsend rather than a problem. Policy makers must be aware of this. I suspect the call for incr…

The calls for restricted immigration are certainly politically motivated (mainly variations on "I don't want them getting mine") so what's the difference? National borders mean less and less all the time. Clinging to them to weather this upcoming economic storm is like using an anchor as a liferaft.

Re: Fruit-sorting robot ‘will disrupt the industry’

#40

Post by wolfram74 »

hugh4 wrote: post #33
wolfram74 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs are pretty shitty, they get in the way doing any real work. If we can have a functional society where robots deal with all the manual labor, the owners of the robots get half the profits and the other half get spread uniformly amongst the populace, anybody who wants to work on things that demonstrably unprofitable like writing linux kernel, or teaching their children to read, or advanced math or analyzing advent…

And remind me why I, as a farmer (hypothetically) who spent millions of dollars buying a piece if land and millions more to buy robots to work on it, then spends all his time worrying about maintenance and shipping and prices and pruning and planting and weeds and so forth... remind me why I should consent to having my profits confiscated and given to other organisms for no reason other than that they happen to be of…

one: taxes are your subscription to the society plan that offers you property rights and other elements that allow an investment in farm equipment to be profitable.

two: the metric you use to determine the value of a person is highly arbitrary, based on GDP, divorces are better for society than marriages, despite the fact that children going through divorces suffer in school and later go on to accomplish less, capitalism is generally too myopic to actually address any existential risks to the human race.

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