[ExI] Farmville for real

[Kelly Anderson]

On Wed, May 4, 2011 at 9:54 AM, Richard Loosemore <rpwl at lightlink.com> wrote:
> spike wrote:
> Whoa!!  Most of your food comes from these illegal operations.  If these
> illegal farmers stopped hiring slaves, you would starve. ;-)  So don't be so
> quick to knock it, this is the USA you live in, so be proud of the Blind Eye
> system that keeps slavery alive and kicking in the 21st century.

While I agree that Mexican migrant workers are far from slaves...
let's do a little mind experiment.

What would happen if we were to say, "No Thanks, we'll pick our own
food... and you good folks stay in Mexico."

For the first few years, there would be a widespread shortage of
strawberries. Then Adam Smith's invisible hand would start picking the
strawberries. This could happen in a number of ways. We might import
more strawberries from Mexico. We might discover that Americans will
do that sort of work, for the right wage. More likely, IBM would stop
working on Watson, and would start working on smarter robotics for
picking our food. There would be big money to be made in that area.
There isn't now, because the migrant labor is so cheap.

What do you think? Would a dearth of cheap labor lead as the mother of
invention to better robotic field hands?

-Kelly (who actually worked as a migrant farm laborer in his teen
years... corn detassling... hay baling... picking and planting
pineapples... what great fun it all was!)