I wonder if this is a self fulfilling cycle. I mean if migrant labor and automation were unavailable would we close all the farms and starve to death because labour costs are too high? Or would we increase farm wages and pay the higher food prices if that's the outcome.

It seems to me that the low wages on offer for farm work are a result of so many farms utilizing migrant labour and driving down wages in that sector. And if that option was unavailable we would probably have higher wages in the sector and more people developing expertise in farm work. It would likely also solve the problem of struggling rural economies.

Additionally, we'd be pinching the labor market further in whatever areas those people left to work on farms instead.

It's not like we have 18% unemployment.

That is a rather strange claim. The US is represented all up and down this list: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_producing_coun...

Certainly, farmers will complain they no longer get a cheap labor discount, this is a common refrain in any industry where their labor costs are no longer discounted due to structural demographics. The desire to pay humans the least possible for their labor is universal. Automate or die, those are your choices. If there is a need for subsidies, cost of capital assistance, whatever, we can do that; capital is a fiction, labor is real.

https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-economy/farm-labor/

https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/agriculture/our-insights...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/03/23/mexico-farmw... | https://archive.today/8rmWI

https://www.axios.com/2024/04/25/trump-biden-americans-illeg...

https://news.gallup.com/poll/647123/sharply-americans-curb-i...

(I am once again asking to think in systems)

This is tying your hands behind your back and not accepting it.

There's a difference.

There is, to my knowledge, no country that has solved its labor supply challenges with mass immigration in a sustainable manner. I am happy to be proven wrong if my understanding and model is inaccurate.

Qatar's population has been happy with their system for a while.

I’ma say most nutrition is highly-mechanized (even if it may not make up the entire grocery bill if you buy lots of produce).

Highly mechanized would also include carrots, potatoes, onions, beans/pulses, oats, the flavourless tomatoes that make up 98% of the market, peanuts, lettuce & spinach.

Plenty of fruits I’d say are semi-mechanized: apples, pears and most citrus can use a machine that violently shakes the tree onto a net to catch the falling fruit.

I meant to say cereal instead of wheat which would have caught oats and barley and some specialty cereals. Beans/pulses generally use the same machinery as cereals.

Definitely didn't mean to include tomatoes, lettuce & spinach, though. I know those are partially mechanized, but don't they still include a large unskilled labor component? Or am I out of date?

That's certainly a statement. It's ludicrous but it technically counts as a statement.

Wages are increasing, but the country is just about maxed in in productivity and looks to be at serious risk of collapsing.

Also, they're in serious trouble because even before the war they were not reproducing fast enough to replenish the labor supply, and immigration was supposed to account for that.

And, in general, the answer to your question is that more immigrant labor actually creates more and higher value jobs than are replaced by immigrant labor. Not just the services they need and want in exchange, but also the comparative advantage of non immigrant labor being able to focus on more valuable tasks.

The ideal of Hard working laborers is a lot more attractive than the concept of welfare queens, ect.

Do you believe migrant labor in the U.S. are treated with dignity and are treated well? What about illegal immigrants working in slaughterhouses? More generally speaking, do you believe there are classes of people who are treated poorly?

If such people exist then isn’t it valid to describe them accurately and to describe how “the system” treats them?

That's exactly the point. Only people with a fairly direct interest in the industry and its inputs and outputs would discuss it.

Look at how HN discusses political matters.

Look at how HN discusses computer industry matters.

Every industry that can be converted from "everybody weighs in because it's sort of a social issue" to "mostly only people with a horse in the race weigh in" is a huge plus for humanity.

> Every industry that can be converted from "everybody weighs in because it's sort of a social issue" to "mostly only people with a horse in the race weigh in" is a huge plus for humanity.

Not if that horse is just wanting to use money to make more money, consequences for humans be damned. Everything can be viewed as that, or as a "complex systems", and then the people who like abstract musings about complex systems can weigh in, and you're free to do that -- but to 99% of all living humans and 99.999% of all who historically lived that is both monstrous and uninteresting. At least that would be my "bet" -- so if your claim is that it would be "better for humanity" (not even "better for HN" where you might have a point) for only experts or capitalists or people who like machines more than vulgar, average people to weigh in, as I said, I'm very confident "humanity" would soundly disagree, and would be correct in doing so.

I'm not so sure about this argument. Migrant workers come into a country for a reason. Removing this opportunity does harm to the migrant worker. Any migrant worker human rights issues do need to be addressed, however I'm not convinced it is a good reason for automation.

I'm Canadian, moving to America would open many doors for me and put me in a better economic position and give me more well defined constitutional rights. Does this mean I have a right to migrate to America.

I understand people in desperate circumstances like refugees should be given special consideration. But expanding that to all migrant labour seems to be a strained definition of human rights

Slavery was a terrible thing but at least there was the deal that the masters had to house, clothe and feed their slaves. The government wasn't gonna do it for you. In modern capitalism everyone wants to escape their responsibilities.