The Age of Robot Farmers • Hacker News Board

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#41

Post by ngold » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 6:04 AM UTC

swelz wrote: post #36

thinkloop wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Georgia farmers lost more than a hundred and twenty million dollars > H-2A workers are still among the lowest paid in the country Why don't they pay labour $100M?

I think a larger issue is that food/resource prices may be too low. Obviously, the farmers need to charge for the food/resource, but if they aren't able to turn a profit when properly hiring and paying staff/contractors to work for them, that's an issue. We don't know if the $100MM would cover the new cost or not. I believe there is an issue where we've (the US) relied on such low-cost labor for farms far too long an…

These are the tough questions that are going to have to be answered until another robotic cotton gin is invented.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#42

Post by stevenhuang » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 6:28 AM UTC

thinkloop wrote: post #37

ajmurmann wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's obviously because of the way our economy is set up. One possible outcome of more automation could be higher standard of living while doing less work for everybody. Another possible outcome is a large part of the population being unemployed or underemployed, without health care and trouble to keep housing and even put food on the table, while a small portion of the population that owns the robots lives in luxury.…

Jobs are useless vestiges of the past. There is nothing honorable about jobs and no one cares about them. By their very definition they are things we don't want to do but have to for survival. This is all industrial work-centric brainwashing. If we can get survival without jobs that would be a great win for human kind. > Another possible outcome is a large part of the population being unemployed or underemployed, wit…

You and GP likely agree on the same points, but are talking past one another concerning time scale. Their concern is if we automate the pickers of their jobs, what is their immediate recourse? Waiting years for society to establish a better safety net is not an option. One can retrain, but options are limited, and will be more so with greater automation.

The point is to be more mindful of the immediate effects of displaced labour due to automation. Is it a net social/economic gain to have prices slashed by say 10%, while at the same time seemingly externalizing both the social and economic costs of those who lost their jobs?

It makes sense to ask these questions to ensure such a paradigm shift goes smoothly for those affected by minimizing undue hardship.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#43

Post by SubiculumCode » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 6:40 AM UTC

Sounds like yet another argument for why we might need Universal Basic Income sooner rather than later, or some other innovative solution. Isn't there a candidate for president whose campaign is based on that?

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#44

Post by thinkloop » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 6:45 AM UTC

stevenhuang wrote: post #42

thinkloop wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jobs are useless vestiges of the past. There is nothing honorable about jobs and no one cares about them. By their very definition they are things we don't want to do but have to for survival. This is all industrial work-centric brainwashing. If we can get survival without jobs that would be a great win for human kind. > Another possible outcome is a large part of the population being unemployed or underemployed, wit…

You and GP likely agree on the same points, but are talking past one another concerning time scale. Their concern is if we automate the pickers of their jobs, what is their immediate recourse? Waiting years for society to establish a better safety net is not an option. One can retrain, but options are limited, and will be more so with greater automation. The point is to be more mindful of the immediate effects of dis…

I agree with this. The transition will be tricky and potentially long. It needs to be managed. And you're right that GP was hinting at that stuff too, but I saw a little bit of the misguided mainstream talking-points creeping in that I felt I needed to address.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#45

Post by onetimemanytime » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 7:01 AM UTC

thinkloop wrote: post #29

brianpgordon wrote: post #10

> In 2011, for example, Georgia enacted a strict immigration law that targeted undocumented workers and their employers. Later that year, the state reportedly lost eleven thousand crop workers. To fill the gap, officials established a program whereby nonviolent offenders nearing the end of their prison terms could do paid farmwork. The program had few takers, and many prisoners and probationers who did try it walked…

> Georgia farmers lost more than a hundred and twenty million dollars > H-2A workers are still among the lowest paid in the country Why don't they pay labour $100M?

>>Why don't they pay labour $100M?

Because they'll go bankrupt. Big AG can afford to take loans or to buy machinery or to pay extra to labor, most others can't.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#46

Post by devoply » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 7:06 AM UTC

choonway wrote: post #38

devoply wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering how abusive the human relationship is with the land and the animals, why don't we have an agricultural revolution and creates 10s of millions of jobs for farmers? Modern human imagination is so constrained to think that this is impossible. But really it's just political and as easy to do as it is to automate millions of jobs away.

The green revolution eliminated a lot of farming jobs. It is a step forward in the right direction. If I wanted a burger, wouldn't it be more humane to have an automated system that takes in raw material and synthesizes it on demand instead of on using third-party human labor? The key is that these collection of machines are also able to repair and maintain themselves. Some kind of hardware CRC.

> It is a step forward in the right direction.

Perhaps there were many positives as well as a few significant negatives.

> takes in raw material and synthesizes it on demand instead of on using third-party human labor?

Replicator tech isn't coming down the line. In the meantime yes in a bath of chemicals you can produce an overpriced engineered patty of cells. This is highly processed food and I can't wait to see what cost cutting and business optimization will do to this ethical food.

In the meantime automation most likely means more chemicals, more genetic engineering, more intensive agriculture.

Why can we get away with all of this? Well because it works. That's its claim to fame. For how long? No clue. But for now it works and feeds billions and generates profits, at least for the billion dollar corporations at the very top of the game... at what cost? We don't have to actually account for those, we'll just declare bankruptcy and the profits will already be doled out.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#47

Post by ggm » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 7:11 AM UTC

chongli wrote: post #23

ggm wrote: post #16

I'm solely in the consumer camp: I don't produce food, I buy and eat it (I don't buy and sell it either). I think we've been trained to assume cheap food is a goal. I think the goal should have been clearer: cheap enough but not too cheap The economics here are complicated. It benefits me to have cheap food, but if the cost is ag workers with systematic health problems, low income, farmers going bust, prison labor be…

The price of strawberries needs to reflect the real costs here which include paying pickers a living wage. Replacing pickers by robots only masks the problem What? If we had robot pickers then maybe we could get strawberries to be cheap enough that everyone could afford them, not just those who are wealthy enough to not worry about such jobs.

Displacing workers without considering the workers is an externality in action: everyone else picks up the cost. That's what I feel has happened every time work is automated: the specific company sheds labour cost and society at large has to remediate.

If we automate farm work equitably I'll be all in favour: the injury rates and low pay are horrendous. Equitably means we have to man up and address what happens to the farm workers.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#48

Post by ggm » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 7:15 AM UTC

thinkloop wrote: post #31

ggm wrote: post #16

I'm solely in the consumer camp: I don't produce food, I buy and eat it (I don't buy and sell it either). I think we've been trained to assume cheap food is a goal. I think the goal should have been clearer: cheap enough but not too cheap The economics here are complicated. It benefits me to have cheap food, but if the cost is ag workers with systematic health problems, low income, farmers going bust, prison labor be…

> if they aren't picking, what are these people doing, and whats the wider cost? This idea needs to die so fast. It's an incredible psychosis that people fear the utopia that is automation. Imagine telling people 1000 years ago that everything around them will be done by robots, but that the people of the future would fight it. Psychologists are going to study this for generations. It's also pretty offensive. The onl…

Please don't reply like this, it's not helpful and its abusive. Nobody is a sick fuck here. Robots displacing workers is not a black and white story as a follow-up says, much less gratuitously

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#49

Post by thinkloop » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 7:33 AM UTC

ggm wrote: post #48

thinkloop wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they aren't picking, what are these people doing, and whats the wider cost? This idea needs to die so fast. It's an incredible psychosis that people fear the utopia that is automation. Imagine telling people 1000 years ago that everything around them will be done by robots, but that the people of the future would fight it. Psychologists are going to study this for generations. It's also pretty offensive. The onl…

Please don't reply like this, it's not helpful and its abusive. Nobody is a sick fuck here. Robots displacing workers is not a black and white story as a follow-up says, much less gratuitously

It was a figurative "sick fuck" not an insult to op, although I see now how it could look that way.

Re: The Age of Robot Farmers

#50

Post by true_religion » Wed, Apr 10, 2019, 8:31 AM UTC

thinkloop wrote: post #31

ggm wrote: post #16

I'm solely in the consumer camp: I don't produce food, I buy and eat it (I don't buy and sell it either). I think we've been trained to assume cheap food is a goal. I think the goal should have been clearer: cheap enough but not too cheap The economics here are complicated. It benefits me to have cheap food, but if the cost is ag workers with systematic health problems, low income, farmers going bust, prison labor be…

> if they aren't picking, what are these people doing, and whats the wider cost? This idea needs to die so fast. It's an incredible psychosis that people fear the utopia that is automation. Imagine telling people 1000 years ago that everything around them will be done by robots, but that the people of the future would fight it. Psychologists are going to study this for generations. It's also pretty offensive. The onl…

Even if we are in a robot Utopia, the benefits are not going to be passed down to illegal immigrants directly via a basic income. You still have to ask what will this group do instead because the option of "stay home" isn't always on the table.