It's All About the Benjamins

Jump to Comments Finally! Somebody’s actually investing in mechanized fruit harvesting. I understand that, yes, it is a little harder to pick fruit off of a tree from a technological standpoint than it is to run a combine over a field of wheat or corn. And, yes, I have both worked in a cornfield and have picked strawberries and blueberries for fun and profit, so my experiential knowledge of the subject is up to snuff.  However, this development should been perceived as a boon both to me, a person who loves robots and also farming, as well as all those people who like to couch their racism and xenophobia in talks of “illegals” and “no amnesty.” 

Migrant workers are only illegal because it’s much easier to enter the country illegally these days than it is legally, and no amount of border fence will make passage into Arizona more difficult than hiring a lawyer and several years and thousands of dollars to get a residency visa when you live in a country where a few thousand dollars is more than your annual salary, and lawyers are perceived  as even less trustworthy than they are in the US. There’s no more Ellis Island to let new people in, with the only requirements that they showed up and aren’t sick, like that which existed and likely let in the ancestors of said xenophobes. 

What ever happened to ideas of the open market and the free-flow of capital? How is a fence indicative of  these liberal (proper Smith/Locke/Enlightenment sense, not TV-news sense) economic principles which our state is supposed to safeguard and extol to the rest of the world? 

Oh right, all anyone cares about is abortion and homosexual marriage and telling people to shut up. Because, you know, anything that can’t be said in fifteen seconds isn’t worth considering. 

Where was I? Right, robots. Oh my somethingorother! They’re building orange-picking robots. This is totally awesome. It’s almost as awesome as that time when I saw a combine at the state fair that has a GPS nav with a programmable autopilot with field waypoints. I, for one, welcome our new agricultural robotic overlords.