On Fri, 25 Jul 2003, Alan Cox wrote: > On Gwe, 2003-07-25 at 18:10, Norman Bollinger wrote: > > But I have always wondered why the 3rd world doesn't get lost in the > > shuffle because more and more most stuff is made by robots - not all that > > hand labor they used to be able to supply at a super low price. > > Then it doesn't much matter which country it is made in - the robots can > > work anywhere. Its the cost of energy and what is the shipping costs of > > the raw material and the end product that start to factor in more. > > For a lot of jobs people are an awful lot better than robots. I'm seeing > a shortage of programming robots for example. Software is bound to go > this way - its like farming - labour intensive, more skilled than people > think. Unlike farming its really hard to sneak huge tariffs on and its > very very cheap to transport products.
My father is a retired dairy farmer, I know a little about it. In the 50s, Dad milked a larger herd than most: I remember having to count the cows after rounding them up. I stood on a fencepost and counted One, two, three ... thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six. All present. It took two and a half hours, twice daily to milk three at a time. He had a dry season, December to (about) April. He had 220 acres of land, mostly uncleared: I think he had about 100 acres mostly cleared then. He bought a tractor similar to this http://www.rustichome.com/articles/tractor_show_2.jpg when others had a http://www.users.bigpond.com/jrduff/Pictures/Mrs.jpg Now, both are impossibly small. Now his neighbour owns/leases at least a thousand acres, milks (I think) 300 or so (certainly some do), 24 (or is it 48) at a time. milks all year round. I remember before Dad had the tractor, he used two horses. Farming has become much less labour-intensive over the past 50 years. Oh, changes in the wheatbelt have been as dramatic. Back then, a harvester was a machine you could tow behind your tractor. Now it's self-powered, a machine you need to climb a ladder to get up to its air-conditioned cockpit. -- Cheers John. Join the "Linux Support by Small Businesses" list at http://mail.computerdatasafe.com.au/mailman/listinfo/lssb Copyright John Summerfield. Reproduction prohibited.
