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In competitive environments, low-tech occupations tend to lose as a group. Take any mass farming. Tea collectors, for example, I believe they're paid so little
by guard-of-terra 14y ago
In competitive environments, low-tech occupations tend to lose as a group.
Take any mass farming. Tea collectors, for example, I believe they're paid so little they are in constant poverty. Why are they paid that way? They collect all the tea people around the world drink. Paying them the increase of the cost of a tea bag by 1 cent will make them comparatively rich. Why isn't it done? They have no bargaining power. Anyone can collect tea badly enough, this is true for most agricultural labour. It is physically hard but you can teach it in half an our. So they can always be easily replaced either with local population or with some illegal immigrants.
In the developed world, a lot of people just pass documents around and make phone calls. It's the sophistication of zooplankton and physically much less demanding than agricultural jobs, but you can't quite teach it to anyone in the world in half an hour - you need locals for this (they connect to other people and need to fit culturally) and they need some even very basic skills. So they get paid with actual money you can buy things with.
Take coders. Training a coder is not easy and it even requires some aptitude. Thus, even mediocre coders can often command their rules to their employers. And great coders are true citizens of the world, employable anywhere on their terms.
So, to make farming cool we have to make it high-tech.
Another problem is that farming doesn't seem very profitable even on the large / capital scale, because the barrier to entry is so low.
- randomdata 14y ago> Another problem is that farming doesn't seem very profitable even on the large / capital scale, because the barrier to entry is so low. For what it is worth, I make considerably more money per hour farming than I do programming, and I get paid quite well to be a programmer. With farming, however, the barrier to entry is actually quite high. That barrier being access to capital. It is the massive debt any normal person has to take on to even think about farming that cripples most. Programmers are quite lucky that you only need one reasonably affordable tool, which almost everyone already owns, and you are eligible to enter the market.
- guard-of-terra 14y agoThat's because you're a high-tech farmer, aren't you? Profits - capital = slim margins. If you have some "free" capital then you're lucky.
- mamoswined 14y agoWhat are you growing?
- DamnYuppie 14y agoThis just goes to show you have very little knowledge of how farming is done in the US. Here farming is very high tech, in fact they have some of the most advanced land navigation and machinery there is! Also your argument is based on harvesting of a product, only one aspect of farming, that is manly produced in third world countries.