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Won’t happen. Not in the food sector. That’s why food and Ag sector needs to be automated. Delivery is a service, but it can never cost more than the cost of f

Won’t happen. Not in the food sector. That’s why food and Ag sector needs to be automated. Delivery is a service, but it can never cost more than the cost of food itself. It won’t make sense to most customers. Which brings us to: why should food always be cheap and/or subsidized? Because everyone needs to be fed. It’s the duty of any govt to keep food prices stable. There is no way cost of food will be stable or not increase when an economy is doing well. If cost of food has to be affordable to all but labour has to be fairly compensated, this labour MUST be automated. At some point, the cost of labour will exceed the cost of automation. This might happen when momentum /scale kicks in..but that will take time. We shouldn’t stop working towards automating entire sectors. We are already a decade or two late. By 2050, population will peak at 10-11 billion and then it will start declining. There won’t be enough people to do these kinds of jobs. So we can’t develop systems and structures and processes that doesn’t take into account the eventual generational population decline. We must redesign legacy infrastructure processes and systems. Like ..the paradigm shift..we should have started yesterday or a decade ago. Some jobs simply have to disappear. What happened to horse carriage drivers and stable boys and farriers when automobiles replaced horse drawn transport? We can’t claim any advancement unless we aim to get rid of all menial jobs. This has to be a stated goal. So much human talent is wasted and especially horrible because to keep food costs low, an entire demographic is being paid barely liveable minimum wages, exploited and work under hazardous conditions. Agtech will not bring down real cost of food but it will make food accessible and affordable to all as wages/income go up as menial job workers move up to higher wage paying jobs. This is how society should make leaps and bounds. If one wants human beings to do menial job, it means one is ok with inequalities. One can’t engage in virtue signaling and harping against inequalities while still encouraging exploitative sectors to thrive and creating startups that rely on said low wage menial jobs. Door dash and it’s ilk..fooling no one. Not me anyways. I am just sick and tired of the startup community’s virtuous song and dance. The truth is that Door Dash can never..I want to repeat: never…justify its valuation. And hence all this pipsqueak drama of Shakespearean proportions.

qwytw 5y ago
People still buy bottled water even though the container costs more than the water inside. But yeah, I don't inherently disagree with what you're saying, yes eventually it will might become cheaper to automate most menial jobs than to hire people to do them. However I think the harder problem is figuring out what the millions of people whose jobs cease to exist can do instead. Unless we do that unskilled labour will continue to be very cheap, in fact so cheap that hiring them might still be cheaper than automation (so it won't make much sense for companies to invest in it). And I'm not sure that every single person can be an engineer or the type of sales or management professional who would remain useful in a 'fully automated' society.
- jelliclesfarm 5y ago
  I agree. But ..on the other hand..I can only see jobs disappearing. We are so used to the idea of 8 hour work days and 5 days/week. This is not normal. It shouldn’t be the norm. A lot of undocumented immigrants when they get their legal status or their next generation do not come back to farming. They go into construction jobs or landscaping. They have tools and machinery and higher wages and medical etc. One might want to consider why people even work in such awful conditions when literally even being household help or a blow/mow gardener will be able to make more $$. Most farm workers are out in the fields through labour contractors. Not hired by the corporate farm themselves. It is an exploited sector. It is a shadow labour market. They won’t toss lettuce on the road because they didn’t get a tip like the dashers or come late for work or skip work(they live 4-6 to a room and still rely on coyotes to cross the border. They start work before daylight and are transported by the labour contractor in vans to the fields. Many work here for 9 months, send home money and go back during off season or simply live here illegally to avoid risking border crossings.) That’s one kind of menial job. They’d gladly deliver food without ‘food wastage’(door dash euphemism for undelivered orders), but if they can do it, they fall in the same trap of living in a first world country with third world wages. Startups like door dash have brought third world jobs at third world wages(because food delivery can’t be outsourced like coding jobs) to a first world country. This business model will never take…whatever we are reading in the article is just temporary optics. To sum up: 1. Jobs will disappear. 2. We don’t have to work 40h/week. 3. We don’t need human beings to do menial jobs. There are ways to automate jobs and work flows to eliminate human input. 4. You don’t have to be an engineer to be an artist or a farmer or a teacher or a musician. In America, we are losing basic survival skills and arts. We are lagging behind in education, healthcare and manufacturing. There are other jobs. We should be upskilling and reskilling our population in America. Another worrisome trend is that America is the third largest populated country in the world and we are arrogant that we can absorb more. But India and China don’t have first world living conditions and Americans are number one in consumption. Everything we import is coming from a place and with labour Americans won’t do…if we don’t have the tech or talent(math is racist in America and so they are trying to cancel calculus in schools), let’s import or outsource the tech with our dollars. Just like Saudi Arabia is doing. They are investing in future tech. Our attitude is to implement what works for the workforce in India and China. I am sorry to say this but a lot of startups are mimicking what’s working for countries with 1.3+ billion people and hence has a lot of economic inequalities. It simply won’t translate in America. They have ended up importing the inequalities and housing unaffordability m, crowded cities, bad infrastructure and debt traps while giving up what those countries want to emulate about us. Leisure..high paying jobs and cutting edge tech. Young immigrant entrepreneurs should realize this and they are rightfully lauded (by VCs/investors because they see the numbers and nothing else) because everything that works in China and India is a brilliant hack but honed over hundreds of years and only matches their eco systems. Menial jobs in india and Xmas tree sprayers in China would love to be dashers as it’s a step up in a poor country with not enough jobs for their billion plus population. It will be a thorn…a poisonous thorn..on America’s side. It’s not a good fit…this gig economy. It’s like purposely buying a shoe many sizes small just to experience discomfort. When there is no need to.. Young entrepreneurs should ask themselves..what kind of world are you helping to create? It’s YOUR children who will inherit this world. Look how we live in the Bay Area…350k/annum is breaking even. There was even a discussion about it on HN. It’s like we are trying hard to import income inequalities with some misplaced nostalgia Or romanticization to be a developing economy rather than be comfortable with our developed rich nation status. It’s is the self flagellating attitude that seems to have pervaded this country since 911. We have to snap out of this trauma or drama or whatever the fuck is happening to our country. Maybe someone can psychoanalyse our nation and explain that in a separate thread. But this HAS to stop. It’s like someone pretending to be sick so they can hang with other sick people who are the majority. Healthy people can guide others to become well. They shouldn’t forget their blessing and join the sick ward party because the flowers and get well cards and balloons looks like fun. True Abundance is not the ability to support 100 billion world population. Real abundance is when resources needed to survive as a species is available to all without scarcity. In America, we can afford to not work 40 hour work weeks and Crete cutting edge tech. Why are we not doing it? Why are we making first world population do menial jobs that the poorest of third world population does to escape poverty? And why are we surprised that it’s not working here?

qwytw 5y ago

People still buy bottled water even though the container costs more than the water inside. But yeah, I don't inherently disagree with what you're saying, yes eventually it will might become cheaper to automate most menial jobs than to hire people to do them. However I think the harder problem is figuring out what the millions of people whose jobs cease to exist can do instead. Unless we do that unskilled labour will continue to be very cheap, in fact so cheap that hiring them might still be cheaper than automation (so it won't make much sense for companies to invest in it). And I'm not sure that every single person can be an engineer or the type of sales or management professional who would remain useful in a 'fully automated' society.

jelliclesfarm 5y ago
I agree. But ..on the other hand..I can only see jobs disappearing. We are so used to the idea of 8 hour work days and 5 days/week. This is not normal. It shouldn’t be the norm. A lot of undocumented immigrants when they get their legal status or their next generation do not come back to farming. They go into construction jobs or landscaping. They have tools and machinery and higher wages and medical etc. One might want to consider why people even work in such awful conditions when literally even being household help or a blow/mow gardener will be able to make more $$. Most farm workers are out in the fields through labour contractors. Not hired by the corporate farm themselves. It is an exploited sector. It is a shadow labour market. They won’t toss lettuce on the road because they didn’t get a tip like the dashers or come late for work or skip work(they live 4-6 to a room and still rely on coyotes to cross the border. They start work before daylight and are transported by the labour contractor in vans to the fields. Many work here for 9 months, send home money and go back during off season or simply live here illegally to avoid risking border crossings.) That’s one kind of menial job. They’d gladly deliver food without ‘food wastage’(door dash euphemism for undelivered orders), but if they can do it, they fall in the same trap of living in a first world country with third world wages. Startups like door dash have brought third world jobs at third world wages(because food delivery can’t be outsourced like coding jobs) to a first world country. This business model will never take…whatever we are reading in the article is just temporary optics. To sum up: 1. Jobs will disappear. 2. We don’t have to work 40h/week. 3. We don’t need human beings to do menial jobs. There are ways to automate jobs and work flows to eliminate human input. 4. You don’t have to be an engineer to be an artist or a farmer or a teacher or a musician. In America, we are losing basic survival skills and arts. We are lagging behind in education, healthcare and manufacturing. There are other jobs. We should be upskilling and reskilling our population in America. Another worrisome trend is that America is the third largest populated country in the world and we are arrogant that we can absorb more. But India and China don’t have first world living conditions and Americans are number one in consumption. Everything we import is coming from a place and with labour Americans won’t do…if we don’t have the tech or talent(math is racist in America and so they are trying to cancel calculus in schools), let’s import or outsource the tech with our dollars. Just like Saudi Arabia is doing. They are investing in future tech. Our attitude is to implement what works for the workforce in India and China. I am sorry to say this but a lot of startups are mimicking what’s working for countries with 1.3+ billion people and hence has a lot of economic inequalities. It simply won’t translate in America. They have ended up importing the inequalities and housing unaffordability m, crowded cities, bad infrastructure and debt traps while giving up what those countries want to emulate about us. Leisure..high paying jobs and cutting edge tech. Young immigrant entrepreneurs should realize this and they are rightfully lauded (by VCs/investors because they see the numbers and nothing else) because everything that works in China and India is a brilliant hack but honed over hundreds of years and only matches their eco systems. Menial jobs in india and Xmas tree sprayers in China would love to be dashers as it’s a step up in a poor country with not enough jobs for their billion plus population. It will be a thorn…a poisonous thorn..on America’s side. It’s not a good fit…this gig economy. It’s like purposely buying a shoe many sizes small just to experience discomfort. When there is no need to.. Young entrepreneurs should ask themselves..what kind of world are you helping to create? It’s YOUR children who will inherit this world. Look how we live in the Bay Area…350k/annum is breaking even. There was even a discussion about it on HN. It’s like we are trying hard to import income inequalities with some misplaced nostalgia Or romanticization to be a developing economy rather than be comfortable with our developed rich nation status. It’s is the self flagellating attitude that seems to have pervaded this country since 911. We have to snap out of this trauma or drama or whatever the fuck is happening to our country. Maybe someone can psychoanalyse our nation and explain that in a separate thread. But this HAS to stop. It’s like someone pretending to be sick so they can hang with other sick people who are the majority. Healthy people can guide others to become well. They shouldn’t forget their blessing and join the sick ward party because the flowers and get well cards and balloons looks like fun. True Abundance is not the ability to support 100 billion world population. Real abundance is when resources needed to survive as a species is available to all without scarcity. In America, we can afford to not work 40 hour work weeks and Crete cutting edge tech. Why are we not doing it? Why are we making first world population do menial jobs that the poorest of third world population does to escape poverty? And why are we surprised that it’s not working here?