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Robots To Replace Migrant Fruit Pickers
Vicissidude sends us to Wired for a look at a fruit-harvesting robot being developed in California. Its development has been funded entirely by agricultural associations, concerned by the uncertainty surrounding migrant immigrant labor. Quoting: "As if the debate over immigration and guest worker programs wasn't complicated enough, now a couple of robots are rolling into the middle of it. Vision Robotics, a San Diego company, is working on a pair of robots that would trundle through orchards plucking oranges, apples or other fruit from the trees. In a few years, troops of these machines could perform the tedious and labor-intensive task of fruit picking that currently employs thousands of migrant workers each season."
I've been wondering why this hasn't happened yet for years. The answer, of course, is that the ag industry could rely on incredibly cheap labor, so it wasn't worth developing a technological replacement. But if anything is proof that the debate about illegal immigration has turned a corner, this is it.
Once you've seen the back-breaking labor involved in the California agriculture industry, it's impossible not to applaud the development of technology that will make it obsolete. Nobody says after years of work in the strawberry fields, "Gee, I'm sure glad I got the opportunity to explore my full human potential in that career!"
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think you misunderstand: the point is that the $3/hr labor might become unavailable, sometime soon. That's why they wanted to create a backup plan.
If the $3/hr is available, then of course machinery can't compete with that (at least not until it's rolled out on a large scale and parts for maintenance become dirt-cheap)
Did you know that "FTW" ("for the win") is a direct translation of "Sieg Heil"?
You'll find that the worst xenophobes will hire anybody if they can save a few bucks.
The ag lobby has been claiming that we need "guest workers" (or illegals, or others) to pick these crops.
This is not unlike the H1B scandal. If you pay enough, you'll find people to do almost any job. The "need" isn't for workers per se, but people who will work a brief job for roughly minimum wage and then move on as a rootless nomad.
We should view this as cruel. We shouldn't maintain an underclass which picks fruit or maintains gardens. Machines can do this work without becoming tired, bored, getting disabling injuries, suffering reactions to ag chemicals, or any of the other hazards of human labor in orchards and fields. Machines can be built as needed and scrapped when they become unusable or obsolete.
If a machine is stored in a leaky barn, it's the farmer's problem. It's not cruel to ask a machine to work in high temperatures or without toilet breaks. A machine doesn't need compensation if drought or frost or fungus ruins the crop and there's nothing for it to do one year.
The taxpayer ought to have a say too. A machine isn't going to bring in a family which immediately qualifies for food stamps and Medicaid. A machine isn't going to overwhelm schools with ESL students. A machine isn't going to add to traffic congestion or law-enforcement expenses.
People who build and maintain machines have pretty good lives. People who do the sort of jobs replaced by machines often don't. Designing and debugging and improving machines means paychecks for geeks like us.
Instead of asking anyone to do jobs we won't do ourselves, or pay enough to attract folks like us, let's make machines to do them. Anything less is hypocritical.
Sustainability and energy independence essay
Low cost, low value added labor is a loser. So is importing millions of people to form a permanent slave class.
This argument was what Southern Slave owners used with Cotton.
Funny, how that chore of cotton picking got automated.
Machines don't get tired. They don't die. They don't need medical care or costly medical plans. They can be made over and over again, and always get cheaper when you make enough of them. The whole advance of human existence has been to make more and better machines, that do more to leverage people's labor.
Hello that is WHY you are reading Slashdot.
Machines replaced slave and later tenant farmer/serf labor in the South. Machines replaced lots of deadly hand labor in coal mines (not entirely but a lot). Machines replaced a line full of low skilled labor on the auto assembly lines with a few high skilled positions.
But hey, for some people having a subservient near-slave class is a plus. Not the kind of society I'd want to live in, but some folks only feel better when they have helots to lord it over I guess.
1. Do you think the migrant workers are going to be hapy to be out of jobs?
2. What will you say when automation renders YOUR occupation redundant?
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
This one is worth a few "Funny" points, if not something else for the thought behind the sarcasm.
I doubt it. I read it as a stereotype parody of anyone who is against illegal immigration. See, if you are not for completely open borders, you are automatically a racist, xenophobe, bigot, red-neck...whatever. He refuses to consider that maybe illegals have no rights, no protection under the law (as far as they know), and they are taken advantage of and abused on a regular basis because they are illegal and are afraid to seek their rights. It makes his side a clear winner when he doesn't mention that people who want a secure border aren't against immigration. We just want a name and simple background check. We are not bigots. Hell, for that matter, I feel the immigration quota should be raised to the number of estimated illegals in the country. What is it, 12,000,000. The number of legal immigrants is capped at 250,000. That's a joke! NO wonder there are so many illegals!
Anyway, this machinery is the modern day equivalent of the cotton gin. Only, instead of helping to end the oppression of blacks, it will end the oppression of Hispanics.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Developing technology is extremely expensive. And while there is no pressure to change, usually driven by shortages in supply (whether labour or raw materials), the status quo is maintained.
It took more than one gas crisis for the American car manufacturers to design fuel efficient engines. Because while gas was cheap, there were no incentives to invest in technology. And while labour was (and still is) cheap, robotics cannot compete. I am sure that the technology for those robots has been available for at least a decade, but it wasn't cost effective in comparison to migrant workers.
But this is the way our society SHOULD have developed. So many manufacturing processes could be automated, if not for the initial investment.
I dont think they come here to pick fruit per se,
they come here because economic conditions are better,
and there are jobs that pay more. So, if the
ag jobs go away, I would not expect immigration
to stop or reverse. It might find a new equilibrium,
and slow a bit.
"Think of it as evolution in action". A reader of
"Oath of Fealty", perhaps?
emt 377 emt 4
You'll find that the worst xenophobes will hire anybody if they can save a few bucks.
I think a Xenophile will go out of their way to hire minorities they think less of because they can feel snooty in being "above" their employee.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
We're already dependent on cheap energy for our food supply - it is just that instead of coming in power lines it's currently in tortilla shaped fuel cells.
www.voiceofthehive.com - Beekeeping and Honeybees for those who don't.
There will be the typical outcry that it's being proposed to either stop Mexicans from migrating, deprive Latinos work and money (vast chunks of central America and Mexico are now completely dependent on migrant labor money that is sent home) And there will of course be comments from what is typical of ignorant people that call themselves liberal (and aren't).
The fact is immigration reform that removes illegal migrants and eliminates even agricultural migrant's will be good for America in every way. The US economy has moved to a very strong dependence on what can only be called slave labor. Illegal migrants are frequently put in job's that pay less than US minimum wage standards and don't meet US minimum safety standards. There can be no argument that the continual immigration of people to the US helps the American economy, even illegal migration helps, the question is does it help more than controlled immigration does. But the fact is, how illegal workers are treated in this country is akin to the sharecrop system of virtual slavery that developed in the south after the civil war. It's also a fact that eliminating the cheap slave labor will force technological solutions that in the end will generate a significant number of high paying tech jobs.
As citizens we have to decide if we believe in the values we enshrine. If the wholesale exploitation of people to keep fruit and veggy prices low fits with our values. Sure, the migrants will tell you that they love living in America and that they do the hard work so their children have a chance that they wouldn't have in their home countries. Again, we have to ask ourselves, wouldn't it be better to allow REAL immigration instead of speaking out about illegal migration while we turn a blind eye to the illegal migration (US policy for the last 20 years).
How many people do you know that have turned in the local small businesses that are employing illegal migrants and in the process pricing out everyone else that is playing by the rules ?(Construction is by far the worst for this)? Illegal migration artificially deflates labor prices, it's the reason the republican's have used to keep the minimum wage from changing and it's also the reason that some jobs have such low labor rates that no one but illegal migrants can afford the job, thereby providing an excuse to right wing policy makers that the migrants are only taking jobs that American's won't. Without illegal migrants in the equation labor rates would be forced by supply and demand to provide a real living wage.
Well, to address the issue of would everybody let their robot earn them a paycheck... If robots are cheap enough to be owned by an individual, why the heck would any sane corporation hire individual robots from many small contractors instead of either leasing from another large company or buying their own? I've heard other people ponder the notion of each individual owning a robot and letting it do their work, but this seems like a really silly idea, and nobody has ever explained to me how it could actually work in practice...
As for how somebody who isn't in knowledge work makes a living... Land speculation. Ultimately, location is the only scarce tangible. There is a lot of space, but people want to be in particular places, so a particular location will always have some intrinsic value, even after robotic exploitation of asteroids and the like makes the mineral value of land for raw resources negligible.
There is quite a difference between a minority and an illegal immigrant, although they are not mutually exclusive. People like me do not like illegal immigrants not for racial reasons. I don't like illegal immigrants because in the case of Mexico they ruin the economies of both countries involved, and they often have a huge enmity towards my country, always talk about how great their country is and how much ours sucks, but in reality they know that their home country sucks so badly that they would outright refuse a free pass back there, and they'll be damned if they give up the free government handouts that they receive from this country that they hate so badly. Honestly, when they think you can't understand Spanish, they openly talk about how stupid they think Americans are for giving them all of these freebies; I've heard this on well more than one occasion.
And again I need to emphasize that this has nothing to do with race. This is one reason I don't like George W. Bush, and most of the left, is because if you say you are anti-illegal immigrant then they try to label you as a racist when that is quite simply not the case. I am not racist, but I hate illegal immigrants, and I am really not afraid to say so. FWIW there are many Mexicans who just by looking at them, you can't even tell they are from Mexico. You have to remember that many of them are of European descent.
If it were up to me, I would make it so that people who cross the border illegally must forfeit all property they own when they are found out, and their employer may sue them for all money that they have earned while working for them due to fraudulent employment (employers can already do this to legal citizens who e.g. provide false credentials or fake degree certificates when they apply for a job.) America would NOT be the only first world country to do these things. Then also remove birthright citizenship, which the US is the only first world country to have. If we made those three changes, just you watch how fast the illegals move south of the border. The "12 million here" problem will be solved so fast it'll make your head spin because it would be damn near impossible for them to make any kind of living here. The problem is that our politicians (left and right) really don't give a crap about what most Americans want. Like Osama once said; we have a soft underbelly.
Also FWIW, a xenophile would of course hire an illegal immigrant. Note the differences between the two suffixes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phob-
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-phil-
Xenophile technically isn't a word in that it isn't in any official English dictionary, but it would mean the exact opposite of xenophobe.
Disclaimer: Yeah I used wikipedia, and under normal circumstances I never would use it as a source, but I couldn't be assed to find another one right now.
Careful with names containing L slashdot.org/~AiphaWolf_HK slashdot.org/~AlphaWoif_HK slashdot.org/~AiphaWoif_HK
They only cost $3 an hour if you DON'T consider they make up the majority of
the prison population in southern California, and that their free medical
care isn't paid for by taxpayers.
When they reproduce for free, and you wonder why your taxes went up 100%
on you house, it is because your paying to educate their kids.
If they want to pay their fair share, and become law abiding citizens then so be it.
It will make jobs damn scarce for awhile as anyone all over earth can come here,
but it beats what we have now.
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
...can't wait to live off the fruits of robotic labor.
Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/
-Tom