• Not_mikey@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    17 hours ago

    I’m a communist and don’t want to break my back using a sickle to harvest crops, but also no one does except people watching trad content and romanticizing it. This is why we’ve automated most of the hard manual labor in developed countries.

    We really need to update the symbol, besides all the baggage with the USSR it’s just out of date. Maybe on 1920s Russia most people were working with a hammer and sickle, and a lot of people still do to this day in less developed countries, but the meme is right, you ask your average Gen z in the developed world what the symbol means they’ll shrug and say idk.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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      2 hours ago

      That’s part of why I like the symbol of the DDR. Sure hammers and compasses are outdated, but they’re easy symbols for labor still vital, and instead of a sickle there’s sheaths of wheat

    • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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      16 hours ago

      Funny you should choose the sickle over the hammer. In industrialized nations commodity crops like wheat, soy, corn, and rice are predominantly mechanically harvested. But tree fruit, berries, and a lot of veggies remain hand-picked or have a mixed manual/mechanical harvesting method that’s much more labor intensive than a combine mowing down endless acres of wheat.

      The hammer however has seen a massive decline in full time use across construction sites in developed nations. It’s still a useful tool and most workers carry one, but pneumatic nail guns dominate new construction in developed countries that use wood as their base material.

      I’d also push back on your claim that hard manual labor in developed nations is automated. Mechanically assisted to varying levels, like a pneumatic nail gun instead of a hammer, or a haybaler instead of a sickle and building a stack, but it’s still got humans putting hours of physical effort into using those machines to achieve the finished product. There’s people behind home construction or remodels, strawberry picking, road construction, and wildland fire fighting to name a few.

      • ...m...@ttrpg.network
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        11 hours ago

        …i used a framing hammer to build a wood fence last weekend; it felt good but also surprisingly old-fashioned by comparison to the nail gun the builder used for the original construction…

        • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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          14 hours ago

          As the narrator says “the future farmer might not be holding a shovel, they might be holding a remote control”. Technology changes the means by which the humans do the labor, but there’s still a human behind the machine, not an automaton.

          • Maeve@kbin.earth
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            14 hours ago

            The difference is how and why AI labor is utilized from one nation to another.

            • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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              3 hours ago

              DJI is not marketing their ag drones as fully automated (source is their most recent annual report with other shots from their website) but as tool for labor reduction, precision, and for efficiency in applications like seeding/chemical dispersal, aerial surveillance, load carrying, and time saving.

              https://www-cdn.djiits.com/cms_uploads/ckeditor/attachments/9211/46fc4e7ab0c2e7161f5bccd991e57f55.pdf

              Operators use software to plot their routes and remain present during use.

              While they do discuss automated assistance and there is potential for refining such technology, there still remains a human component.

              AI does have great potential for not only reducing the demand on human physical labor, it also has promise for reducing the amount of toxic byproducts that end up in the environment due to the demands of mass agriculture. Carbon AI is a Large Plant Model that can currently identify over 150 million weeds in real time and uses precision laser blasts to kill them. However, even this is not currently a fully automated process as the machine requires human operation.

                • backalleycoyote@lemmy.today
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                  43 minutes ago

                  Your example is not AI labor, it’s a modern technological tool that improves efficiency while decreasing the physical toll on human workers that agriculture has historically taken. It’s also not a technology limited to a single country. DJI sells ag drones worldwide and their website highlites the success of their product in Brazil, Mexico, and the recent policy shifts in FAA regulations in the states to allow American farmers to adopt this tech. It’s a fantastic advancement but it’s not even close to eliminating human labor.

    • Noodle07@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      The feels when some countries do forced labor to hand pick cotton for the higher quality