This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Fruit and meat are very expensive in Japan per google. Citrus(the largest crop there that needs to be picked by hand) production per this source(https://calfreshfruit.com/2022/02/22/challenges-for-the-japanese-citrus-market/) is declining in part due to a labor shortage. Japan is a major importer of every category of foodstuff IIRC because the terrain's not suitable for mass agriculture, so I suppose agriculture works differently there. Oh, and Japan has southeast Asian guest workers harvesting crops(https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Agriculture/Japanese-farms-turn-to-foreign-workers-as-rural-population-ages).
This reddit thread(https://old.reddit.com/r/Iceland/comments/chin8z/what_is_animal_agriculture_like_in_iceland/) claims that there aren't enough slaughterhouses but I would take that with a grain of salt.
According to the Iceland review(I don't read Icelandic so this is probably the best source I can find easily-https://www.icelandreview.com/economy/without-foreign-workers-slaughterhouses-face-staffing-shortages/), foreigners.
It seriously looks like the native lower-classes of wealthy countries cannot be convinced to do these kinds of jobs absent compulsion(slaughterhouses in the US are well known for using parolees who will be imprisoned if they don't work), and there will be a shortage if foreign labor isn't available. I would rather have Hondurans do it than Indonesians, personally.
I'm not excluding that some automation improvements can reduce labor but I think all of the low hanging fruit has probably already been picked, considering getting labor is so difficult.
It does not appear that foreign workers are big source of Japan’s agricultural workforce: https://fas.usda.gov/data/japan-foreign-farm-labors-role-growing-japan
Just half a percent of the agricultural population in 2010.
https://www.nippon.com/en/in-depth/a06003/
Only 25k “guest workers” out of 1.5 million total agricultural workers, so 1.5%. This number is increasing though, coincidentally as the Japanese feel poorer and poorer…
We can convince them to spend 12 years in brutal school/residency to stab utensils in human flesh for 16 hour periods at a time, for nothing but money and respect. I promise you we can convince them to pick fruit — forestry workers have some of the highest life satisfaction and doctors perhaps the lowest.
I also looked and it seems that American born employees account for a little over 60% of slaughterhouse workers
https://www.epi.org/blog/meat-and-poultry-worker-demographics/
In Iceland a lot of the butchers come from Sweden: https://www.icelandreview.com/news/hundreds-foreigners-work-slaughterhouses/#:~:text=Foreign%2Dborn%20workers%20are%20now,further%20away%2C%20even%20New%20Zealand.
Also think people are missing the elephant in the room for agricultural work. Isn’t this something AI solves? We already have fruit picking robots and I think it’s fair to say they will continue to improve.
If we didn’t have illegals we would in time just automate fruit picking. Prices would spike for a few years and then my guess would be lower fruit prices. Same thing as in 2008 when oil hit $150 we invented shale oil a few years later. Getting rid of illegals would just speed up the automation process and by 2030 my guess is a fully automated fruit picking system.
I work in a related area. Picking objects (even human-made artefacts whose properties you know in advance) off a table is still an unsolved problem given real world constraints. These constraints include: equipment buying and maintenance costs must be tolerable (good cameras are very expensive, flexible grippers wear out very quickly), high picking speed, high reliability.
It's quite feasible to make Youtube videos and even tech demos, but actually rolling out the tech to make a profitable business at scale is very hard.
That said, the main barrier to AI use in robotics is that the tech is competing against very optimised pre-existing solutions. Near-slave labour is much cheaper, faster, and more flexible than AI-based robotics for most tasks. So trying to sell this stuff is very difficult because even if the AI is quite good, it's still worse than what your customers are currently using. If labour prices rose considerably, AI would be competing on a much more even playing field.
More options
Context Copy link
The barrier for automating fruit picking is not software. The software has already been written to distinguish which fruit needs to be picked/should be left on the plant. It's inventing a robot that won't destroy the fruit as it's picking it.
You can(and some people have) train a monkey to pick fruit, but robots are a long way off.
The AI companies are working very hard on robotics as well. It's not just LLMs.
More options
Context Copy link
I can’t say I am an expert at all on what can be done but I can watch YouTube videos and see plenty of harvesting machines. Some do look like they could damage the plant.
It just seems like we get a lot of what about this industry responses for illegals. When it does appear we figure out more automation when the price of labor goes up.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I lived in Japan from '07 to '11 and haven't been back since, so this may be out of date, but the idea that fruit and veggies are very expensive matches my memories, but is a little incomplete. Sushi and ramen are incredibly cheap in Japan, and I would extrapolate that most of the food-service labor force is somehow attached to those two parts of the industry--sushi because Japan just plain has the best fish, ramen because that's usually served with beer or on a chuhai run.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link