Robot Farmers, Huh?

[Jacob Petersheim]

Some are insisting that we don't need to put welfare queens to work in the fields to replace deported illegals. In their imagination cheap farm equipment will materialize and for jobs needing hand work robots are going to do the work.



That's a lot of wishful thinking in my opinion. Those robots are not here, they are not near, and we don't have the electricity generation and distribution to support such a thing any more than we do that other pipedream of mandatory EVs. Not to mention the need for parts, supplies, and ongoing maintenance.

This guy is pretty favorable toward disability benefits and grabbing all you can get on the public dole. Not an extreme far lefty, but is does seem to be his schtick from the videos I have seen. He's also one of those crackpot fantasizers though, and pushes the notion of free automated farm equipment and field robots from... Big Juju in the sky?

Maybe he's watch a little too much Star Wars?

His main reasons for pooh-poohing the idea is the robots thing, but also that most of the slackers on the dole are on the coasts, and that they just don't want to do farm work.

And then he runs off on other tangents', I suppose to avoid the issue at hand.

Medicaid Recipient Farm Work Relocation Program

Is this Farm Work Relocation Program a real thing? Has anybody seen more on the subject?

 

[Don Alaska]

I only watched about half the video, but some of what the guy said makes sense, but a lot does not. If the Administration plans to have Medicaid recipients do farm work, it simply isn't going to happen. There are many, many reforms I would like to see to Medicaid, but making recipients work on farms is not among them. Robots doing the majority of work done by hand labor does make sense, however, and if migrant labor were not available, I am sure that farm implement manufacturers would come up with solutions. As the guy says, many, if not most, of the Medicaid recipients I have met do have some job that helps them out, often under the table cash work. I have met girls who worked to get pregnant with no partner so that they would have health coverage. You hear that that idea is a myth, but I know that it often happens, sad as that may be. I would like to see a small co-pay for Medicaid recipients, and a larger co-pay for Medicaid recipients in ERs unless it is truly an emergency. Just a $5 or $10 co-pay would decrease Medicaid usage. I worked in the medical mission field, and when I asked why they charged small amounts for services, I was told that when it was free, the patients didn't respect or value the care they received. We usually charged a bunch of beets, turnips, or a few potatoes as a "co-pay" and everyone was happy with that arrangement. I have mentioned before that I think there should be Medicare-Medicaid clinics set up by ;local hospitals and clinics with help from the Feds. That way, Medicare recipients who cannot find healthcare would have a place to go where they would see the same provider for every visit. The same would be true for Medicaid people. In my mind, there would be no co-pay for patients who signed up at these clinics, and the hospitals and clinics who set up and operated these clinics would be "boosted" by the Feds and the states with quicker reimbursement, and perhaps a revised reimbursement schedule that would help pay the M&M clinic overhead. Of course, hospitals would then also receive the benefits of referrals to ORs, cardiac care, and ERs for things that could not be handled by the clinics.

 

[Jacob Petersheim]

I'm not sure where he got his premise. I haven't seen anything suggesting such a program anywhere else.

I think blueberry-picking robots are a long way off though, and would be pretty expensive in the first years until they can be refined down to an appropriate price point and longevity.

I don't think people realize that physical automation has reached a plateau for now. The advances recently have all been very expensive with a lot of problems. If automation is to replace significant work in the short term it is likely to be the type of white collar paper-pushing that most cities are currently designed to support.

 

[Don Alaska]

I visited the plant materials center here yesterday. Automation guided by AI can be truly amazing. They have purchased, although not received, a seed sorting machine. The manager said he purchased the smallest one available. It will sort 3,000 pounds of seeds an hour and the it cascades the seeds in front of a set of opticale sensors and (reportedly) can detect and color variation in seed coat at which time a quick blast of air from an array of jets can blow a single seed from the cascade into waste. The entire machine set up cast $5 million, so it would not be within the reach of the average farmer, but coops might pull it off. In any case, it shows how far automation has come in a short time, I suspect the same type of technology could be used to pick berries. Technology becomes cheaper over time, so in less than a decade, this stuff might be obtainable by farmers. This machine, by the way, can sort grass seed this way, so that tells you the precision. A ton and half of grass seed is a LOT!

 

[Axel Slingerland]

Automation guided by AI can be truly amazing.

Even though nobody called it AI when Automation was first introduced, it is AI. Some people would argue that is not, that Automation simply performs tasks. I say, yes, it does. It follows it's programming. As does AI...

 

[Axel Slingerland]

I meant to say that as long as Automation sticks to the tasks it was programmed to perform, I see that as a necessary evil. Just speaking of auto manufacturing, Automation was supposedly going to put a lot of auto Workers out on the street. But it didn't. It made their jobs easier and production levels increased. But if Automation continues to evolve into AI, and it starts to turn into Skynet and T-1000s show up and start killing people, I want a hand held EMP gun...