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It's particularly import for people who are legislating minimum wage laws to read articles like this. Most of the legislation I've seen drafted, always has an

It's particularly import for people who are legislating minimum wage laws to read articles like this. Most of the legislation I've seen drafted, always has an exception for farm labor - and here is an example why. If you didn't have that exception, then it would quickly become the case that automation/machinery ends up being cheaper (or soon will), and those jobs will vanish pretty quickly. Now, that might not be entirely undesirable, from the perspective of the legislator (I.E. Move people up the feeding chain to more productive, better paying jobs, and automate the drudge work like raking berries) - but at the very least, they need to be aware of the impact of what they are doing.

venomsnake 11y ago
Basic income is coming. Like it or not. Better if created with debt free fiat money. This way we can have nice inflation - 2-4% yearly.
- blazespin 11y ago
  Basic income is a bad idea. Idle hands do the devils work. People need to do something or they go crazy. Let's pay people to go to school. Better educated citizens means fewer Donald trumps. Add a consumption tax as well to discourage consumption so our economy can shift away from bullshit jobs.
  - rosege 11y ago
    isnt there already a consumption tax? ie sales tax.
    - eru 11y ago
      It has lots of exemption. Eg consuming your own rental property is free.
  - modfodder 11y ago
    Plenty of corporate drones, upper middle class, millionaires and billionaires have done the devil's work with 12hr+ work days, they just do it on such a grand scale and under the protection of corporations they are rarely punished. While moving to a basic income might require a shift in society's values, it's no more likely to cause criminal behavior than the ever increasing income disparity here in the U.S. A basic income would also likely usher in a new age of entrepreneurship once members of all economic classes can entertain the thought of doing work they love rather than forced to take any work they can get. But I guess it's better to just quote a folklore and pretend the idleness is bad (of course Donal Trump got an education because he could readily afford it, didn't make him less wrong).
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
brc 11y ago
My local McDonalds is experimenting with touch screen menus. I guess automated kitchens won't be far behind. It will be a shame when such an entry level job is no longer available to teenagers to learn about doing a job and working in a team.
- blazespin 11y ago
  No, it won't. The sooner we shift from labor to education as our source of social dignity the better. Let's pay people to go to school rather than to flip burgers.
  - generic_user 11y ago
    Its ridiculous that people think the destruction of menial labour will be destructive given all the evidence to the contrary. Jobs have been render obsolete for centuries and the outcome has been an increase in education and skilled labour to do more rewarding jobs.
    - ecoponderosa 11y ago
      An exception is small scale local artisanal natural/organic market gardens and family farms that rely on skilled hand labor almost exclusively. You will never and should never consider replacing that with automation and machines. The quality products made available to the public from these operations benefit from the extra attention to detail and experience gained from a lifetime spent in this type of agriculture, sometimes called peasant farming. If you want to know more about peasant sovereignty read the following: Peasant Sovereignty? http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/peasant-sovereignty/ http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/peasant-so... By Evaggelos Vallianatos See also: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture Permaculture
      - ghshephard 11y ago
        I would take the opposite perspective - I would think that artisanal/organic gardening, in particular would benefit from automation. Automation will give us the ability to spend significant periods of time on each specific piece of produce, in a way that no human being ever could. In particular, with organic gardening, you can completely eliminate the need for insecticides and pesticides AND not rely on inherently insect/pest resistant produce (which can be innately toxic) by growing in clean rooms. The key reasons to automate, is it allows us to make this type of food available to masses for fractions of the cost of what it would take for a human to grow it.
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danieltillett 11y ago
Well no. The reason you and I are wealthy enough to pontificate on HN is because we as a society have mechanized most of agriculture. The sooner 100% of the back breaking labor involved in growing food is replaced with machines the better [1]. 1. I am not counting home gardens as these are a fun hobby (I miss having a garden).
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[deleted]

venomsnake 11y ago

Basic income is coming. Like it or not. Better if created with debt free fiat money. This way we can have nice inflation - 2-4% yearly.

blazespin 11y ago
Basic income is a bad idea. Idle hands do the devils work. People need to do something or they go crazy. Let's pay people to go to school. Better educated citizens means fewer Donald trumps. Add a consumption tax as well to discourage consumption so our economy can shift away from bullshit jobs.
- rosege 11y ago
  isnt there already a consumption tax? ie sales tax.
  - eru 11y ago
    It has lots of exemption. Eg consuming your own rental property is free.
- modfodder 11y ago
  Plenty of corporate drones, upper middle class, millionaires and billionaires have done the devil's work with 12hr+ work days, they just do it on such a grand scale and under the protection of corporations they are rarely punished. While moving to a basic income might require a shift in society's values, it's no more likely to cause criminal behavior than the ever increasing income disparity here in the U.S. A basic income would also likely usher in a new age of entrepreneurship once members of all economic classes can entertain the thought of doing work they love rather than forced to take any work they can get. But I guess it's better to just quote a folklore and pretend the idleness is bad (of course Donal Trump got an education because he could readily afford it, didn't make him less wrong).
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

brc 11y ago

My local McDonalds is experimenting with touch screen menus. I guess automated kitchens won't be far behind. It will be a shame when such an entry level job is no longer available to teenagers to learn about doing a job and working in a team.

blazespin 11y ago
No, it won't. The sooner we shift from labor to education as our source of social dignity the better. Let's pay people to go to school rather than to flip burgers.
- generic_user 11y ago
  Its ridiculous that people think the destruction of menial labour will be destructive given all the evidence to the contrary. Jobs have been render obsolete for centuries and the outcome has been an increase in education and skilled labour to do more rewarding jobs.
  - ecoponderosa 11y ago
    An exception is small scale local artisanal natural/organic market gardens and family farms that rely on skilled hand labor almost exclusively. You will never and should never consider replacing that with automation and machines. The quality products made available to the public from these operations benefit from the extra attention to detail and experience gained from a lifetime spent in this type of agriculture, sometimes called peasant farming. If you want to know more about peasant sovereignty read the following: Peasant Sovereignty? http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/peasant-sovereignty/ http://www.independentsciencenews.org/environment/peasant-so... By Evaggelos Vallianatos See also: http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/permaculture Permaculture
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      I would take the opposite perspective - I would think that artisanal/organic gardening, in particular would benefit from automation. Automation will give us the ability to spend significant periods of time on each specific piece of produce, in a way that no human being ever could. In particular, with organic gardening, you can completely eliminate the need for insecticides and pesticides AND not rely on inherently insect/pest resistant produce (which can be innately toxic) by growing in clean rooms. The key reasons to automate, is it allows us to make this type of food available to masses for fractions of the cost of what it would take for a human to grow it.

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

danieltillett 11y ago

Well no. The reason you and I are wealthy enough to pontificate on HN is because we as a society have mechanized most of agriculture. The sooner 100% of the back breaking labor involved in growing food is replaced with machines the better [1]. 1. I am not counting home gardens as these are a fun hobby (I miss having a garden).

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]