Monday, September 05, 2022

The Role of Robots

 Matt Yglesias has a piece at substack on the need for robots, attacking the thesis that robots will take away workers jobs.

I didn't study it, but it did cause me to think about farming and robots. My impression is that robots and AI are making rapid progress. Robotic milking in dairy, self-driving tractors, flame-throwing weeders, big data and precision agriculture. At least in the world of farming I don't see robots taking jobs.  What seems to be happening is two-fold:

  • reduction in immigration, which mostly supply the low-end work. When TFG tries to build a wall reducing immigration, that increases the incentive for robots. When robots are developed that reduces the incentive for immigration.  
  • reducing the number of real farms--most obviously in the world of dairy. The investment in robotic milkers means you need a bigger operation to make it economical, which means the big farms drive out the small dairies. 

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