Politics

The irony of this longshoremen's strike is that their main focus is "protection against automation" and the results are certain to be more automation. Look at the fast food industry.
Ask George Ludd how his "resist automation" movement in the 1800s worked out.

Personally I think there needs to be less automation/self serve and more human interaction - we’re getting more and more people and trying to cut more and more jobs just so a few at the top can make a better $.
 
Personally I think there needs to be less automation/self serve and more human interaction - we’re getting more and more people and trying to cut more and more jobs just so a few at the top can make a better $.
Automation is not there just to cut more and more jobs, but in a lot of cases to do more with less and/or more efficiently and with more precision. A lot of things would not even be possible without automation.

A lot of simple things we have or do are enabled due to automation and our lives are richer because of it. Imagine how much time you'd spend doing laundry without washing machines etc..
 
Automation is not there just to cut more and more jobs, but in a lot of cases to do more with less and/or more efficiently and with more precision. A lot of things would not even be possible without automation.

A lot of simple things we have or do are enabled due to automation and our lives are richer because of it. Imagine how much time you'd spend doing laundry without washing machines etc..
Automation doesn't go on strike either;)

Or call in sick, take vacations, get paid overtime. etc.
 
That's the problem the longshoremen have. Container cranes are fully automated. The people operating the cranes and loading the semis are in foreign countries getting less than $10/hr. Many longshoremen's jobs aren't going to be around much longer. They are trying to get their money now.
 
Elon Musk is the greatest internet troll ever. Politically related due to the port strike.

1727944897731.jpeg
 
Personally I think there needs to be less automation/self serve and more human interaction - we’re getting more and more people and trying to cut more and more jobs just so a few at the top can make a better $.
When the backhoe was invented, I am guessing it put a bunch of ditch diggers out of work. It’s called progress.
 
AI will put more professionals out of work than blue collar. The trades. Plummers, electricians, lineman, Etc. Are $200-$300K jobs with a four year apprenticeship.

Engineering, lawyers, even doctors will be replaced before a guy crawling under a house.

Doctors; Robots will eventually do most surgeries and diagnostics. Malpractice insurance will plummet.

Lawyers; most of their work is research, compliance, drafting documents. AI will do it in minutes instead charging by the hour.

Engineers and code writers are really screwed.

If you have kids. Steer them into the trades. Our Union trade employees make $150k with no OT
Many work 2000 hours OT per year. Often making $300-$350K and the company pays 25% of all wages earned into their retirement.

If they made $100k the company contribution is $25k into the retirement account
 
AI will put more professionals out of work than blue collar. The trades. Plummers, electricians, lineman, Etc. Are $200-$300K jobs with a four year apprenticeship.

Engineering, lawyers, even doctors will be replaced before a guy crawling under a house.

Doctors; Robots will eventually do most surgeries and diagnostics. Malpractice insurance will plummet.

Lawyers; most of their work is research, compliance, drafting documents. AI will do it in minutes instead charging by the hour.

Engineers and code writers are really screwed.

If you have kids. Steer them into the trades. Our Union trade employees make $150k with no OT
Many work 2000 hours OT per year. Often making $300-$350K and the company pays 25% of all wages earned into their retirement.

If they made $100k the company contribution is $25k into the retirement account

I must have been in the wrong trade, I made $60k/year (AUD).
 
When the backhoe was invented, I am guessing it put a bunch of ditch diggers out of work. It’s called progress.
Less people then,
What’s your solution to keep people in a job in a world that’s focussed on making there be less jobs to improve a bottom line?
 
Less people then,
What’s your solution to keep people in a job in a world that’s focussed on making there be less jobs to improve a bottom line?

The point isn’t determining how to slice up the pie, it’s how to make the pie bigger. Technological advances improve human productivity freeing humans up to perform higher value tasks. Your argument would have kept us at 40 acres and a mule.
 
Elon Musk is the greatest internet troll ever. Politically related due to the port strike.

View attachment 637884
That union boss is reported to have organized crime ties and knows how to put on the “Lunch Bucket Joe” act. But, he forgot to put on a spotless hard hat during his video rant.
 
Robots are available to milk cows. They are not cheap. To convert our farms to milking our cows with robots would increase our capital investment in facilities by 50%. So I have to ask myself, do we want to milk with robots or increase the size of our operations? i.e. more cows. And do we want to abandon the milking parlors we have that still have life left.

The answer is some of all. It's a transition. We do not have a single robot. Yet. Probably will within a year or two.

The progression in the dairy industry has been slow but steady. My grandparents milked a few cows by hand. Then went to bucket milkers which meant one person could run 2 or 3 buckets that milked all 4 teats at once instead of 2. So really 4 to 6 times as fast but also much less work, carpaltunnel. This is the technology my grandparents used as adults as did my parents. Grandpa built a 54 cow barn in I think 1954. That was about doubling his herd size... It was a very large operation for that neighborhood. They handled the milk in 10 gallon galvanized steel cans. Loaded into the refrigeration by hand. Pulled out and loaded on a truck by hand. Unloaded onto a conveyor with a man taking the lid off and dumping each by hand. I disticly remember my dad and I taking our two snowmobiles to town to fetch extra milk cans during a blizzard where the milk truck could not get to the farm. That must have been about 1974. Still using 1954 technology. I would have been 11 years old.

Then they switched to bulk milk with a 400 gallon tank. That would only have to be picked up every 2 days and it was pumped so no more tossing 100 pound cans around. BTW my dad ran one of those can trucks when he was about 17. They were double decked and loaded by hand from the ground. So he had to lift 100 pound cans over his head and slide them into racks.

After high school I was hired to milk cows at that farm. I talked them into installing a pipeline milking system which allowed me to milk the cows myself instead of 2 of us (my uncle). I was also able to increase production such that the 400 gallon tank was full each day, not two. About 60 pounds per cow average... My uncle was running 14 before I started there.... The little creamery up town that had dumped the cans went out of business and the milk was taken to a plant about 60 miles away that processed a million pounds of milk per day into cheese. I was not able to work into ownership with my dad and uncle so rented a 30 cow farm when I was 19 but thats not germain to this. We are up to 1983.

Central Minnesota was very slow to adopt newer technologies, especially on farms. I had bought my first farm in 1985. I had wanted to build a milking parlor and switch from a tie stall barn to free stalls then but couldn't get a banker to go along. This farm had 50 tie stalls. In a tie stall barn, each cow has her stall and the farmer brings her feed to her, beds her, takes manure away (a conveyor chain system that is high maintenance and tends to break New Years eve). And brings the milking unit to her, squats down to milk her.

It was 1996 before I was able to build a Double 6 milking parlor and further increase efficiency. It had automated take offs meaning the milking units come off automatically when the cow is finished. 6 units on each side easily handled by one person with cows coming in pushed by a remote controlled gate (crowd gate), and the cows stand about 40" higher than the person so no bending down. Less getting kicked too. The cows live in a free stall barn meaning they can come and go as they like from their stalls (they have a much better life). They are fed with a large truck or trailer TMR (total mixed ration) that is loaded with a payloader. Scales to measure precisely each ingredient, it is a much healthier diet for a ruminant to have forage mixed with her grain. Production went to 80 pounds per cow. 1 person milking about 450 cows.

Today we are building a 100 stall rotary parlor that will require 3 people operating it milking 5200 cows 3x per day.. Mostly prepping cows and attaching milking units. Everything else automated. Not robotics except for a primitive one spraying post dip on the cows teats. Automatically tracks Production, conductivity (tells if a cow has mastitis), rumination, activity (to monitor estrous and health), automatically ID's every cow and automatically sorts off any cows needing attention including insemination (with sexed semen). We spent the extra $150,000 to include a car wash type thing that cleans the parlor during lunch breaks so it is only down 45 minutes each shift for cleaning. The milk is chilled almost instantly and pumped directly onto a semi trailer. We are building 5 loadouts and plan to ship 8 loads per day from that site.

I hope to install the first full robots we'd have in about a year, maybe two. (The technology has been available at least 20 years but of course is just now beginning to cross the intersection of capability and cost effectiveness. Hogher labor costs are going to advance this technology more quickly.. For us this would be a conversion of a dry cow barn with no milking facilities. It will likely have 16 box robots milking a total of 1000 cows. It will not save much labor cost (maybe 20%) but considerable hours. The people working will be much higher paid, more skilled. We expect higher production like well over 100 pounds per head per day average. The extra production will have to pay for the higher investment.

BTW, that cheese plant now processes something like 7.5 million pounds per day. Producing a much higher quality product with less labor than before as it is highly automated also.
 
Trump and a few of his friends donated $1 million to hurricane relief.

Meanwhile, Biden and his friends are siphoning off money from FEMA projects to feed house and give $1500 a month to illegal aliens
And FEMA is out of money because they stole it from the disaster fund to give to illegal immigrants.

"Here's your goodies, a place to live and your monthly stipend. Vote Democrat!!!"

When will Congress or the Courts stand up and hold these crooks accountable? Never in my life did I expect to live in such a Banana Republic.

I do not understand how a rational person can do anything other than vote for Trump at this point!
 

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Grz63 wrote on x84958's profile.
Good Morning x84958
I have read your post about Jamy Traut and your hunt in Caprivi. I am planning such a hunt for 2026, Oct with Jamy.
Just a question , because I will combine Caprivi and Panorama for PG, is the daily rate the same the week long, I mean the one for Caprivi or when in Panorama it will be a PG rate ?
thank you and congrats for your story.
Best regards
Philippe from France
dlmac wrote on Buckums's profile.
ok, will do.
 
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