Re:New autonomous farm wants to produce food without human w...
by akira2501 on Wednesday October 03, 2018 @10:13PM
(#18136563)
> What frustrates me is the tendency to use technology to replace humans beings.
It's a huge cost center, and the amount of labor required to operate a farm is considerably less than what it has been in the past. It seems like the major bottleneck is harvesting, packaging and shipping the majority of your product to market, it's a natural place to look for gains.
The moneymakers are the landholders anyways.
> Then you don't know how to solve the shortcut in jobs.
Most harvesting work is done on a "piece work" system. These aren't jobs that have any future in them because there are absolutely no skills required and no reason for an employer to develop them and they're highly seasonal.
> Couldn't we just slow down tech a little bit and let people do some good old hard work to keep getting their cut?
There may be cases where this is true, but when the labor is literally "just pulling food out of the ground and putting it in a box" I don't think the use of technology is an inherent problem.
It's a huge cost center, and the amount of labor required to operate a farm is considerably less than what it has been in the past. It seems like the major bottleneck is harvesting, packaging and shipping the majority of your product to market, it's a natural place to look for gains.
The moneymakers are the landholders anyways.
> Then you don't know how to solve the shortcut in jobs.
Most harvesting work is done on a "piece work" system. These aren't jobs that have any future in them because there are absolutely no skills required and no reason for an employer to develop them and they're highly seasonal.
> Couldn't we just slow down tech a little bit and let people do some good old hard work to keep getting their cut?
There may be cases where this is true, but when the labor is literally "just pulling food out of the ground and putting it in a box" I don't think the use of technology is an inherent problem.