Politics

[freefall]

Sounds to me like consumer choice. Doubling down on low cost and forgo quality.... or spend more and get better quality. Consumers still win.

But often the better quality disappears, because the vendor doesn't wish to deal with complaints about damaged-in-transit produce. So just sell the cardboard tomatoes, and who giveth a shit about quality?

 

[freefall]

As an aside. For years, merchants (and the state) have been running ads about "buy local, support your neighbors". I had a smallish John Deere tractor, 2640, bought it from the military. They had removed,lost, most of the 3-point hitch parts. I went to Craig Taylor Eqpt, the local John Deere dealer. They greeted and treated me as a royal pain in the ass, quoted me a price of around $3000 (this was 30 years ago) for the parts I needed, said I must pay in advance and pick up the parts at the shop in Wasilla, 90 miles one way.
I called the john Deere dealership in Iowa where I came from, the said, "Yah, be about $275, we'll stick them in the mail". I asked if they wanted a credit card, they said "Nah, send us a check when they get there, we know your brother".
More automation isn't necessarily progress.

 

[cwpayton]

Growth always means pain in the near term. It is as monotonously predictable as gravity.

Who would have thought in the days of buggy whip making that job titles in the future might be
optimization engineers
coders
statistician
machine learning specialist
maintenance specialists
technical personnel

Automation absolutely wiped out jobs in agriculture. But it led to (today's market price) corn being around $6/bushel. An actual bushel of corn is 56# (I'll spare the boring ag part why it isn't necessarily 56#, but close enough for the purpose of this discussion).

Compare the price of corn to the foodstuffs that are WAY, WAY more expensive. There is no way you're ever getting a bushel's worth of broccoli or peaches or bananas for $6. And the reason is because there's no way to automate away one of the most crucial functions of those commodities - harvesting them.

Almost every job function in existence today owes itself to a very long string of technological advances and automation that were inconceivable a century ago. Few of the jobs which existed a century ago still exist today. And thank God for that. If ag hadn't been heavily automated, we'd still have around 90% of our population directly involved in it in some way, which would mean far fewer doctors, engineers, coders, rough necks, directional drillers, welders, electricians, pilots, et al.

I'm now 56 and have re-tooled 4X in my life. I'd hate to have to do that again, but I know I could if I needed to. Most people can, they just have to decide to get it done if life makes it a necessity.

trouble is I think we may eventually out smart ourselves, have you ever tried to buy something when the computers are down, maybe we can go the way of Sweden( i believe, it was) that has a chip installed under the skin, then digital currency, wont that be great, then finally an EMP bomb( electro magnetic burst) that shuts down everything electronic, Then back to basics.

 

[Tanks]

As an aside. For years, merchants (and the state) have been running ads about "buy local, support your neighbors". I had a smallish John Deere tractor, 2640, bought it from the military. They had removed,lost, most of the 3-point hitch parts. I went to Craig Taylor Eqpt, the local John Deere dealer. They greeted and treated me as a royal pain in the ass, quoted me a price of around $3000 (this was 30 years ago) for the parts I needed, said I must pay in advance and pick up the parts at the shop in Wasilla, 90 miles one way.
I called the john Deere dealership in Iowa where I came from, the said, "Yah, be about $275, we'll stick them in the mail". I asked if they wanted a credit card, they said "Nah, send us a check when they get there, we know your brother".
More automation isn't necessarily progress.

What does this story have anything to do with automation? It just seems your local dealer was not someone to do business with.