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leadfoot9 t1_iudevze wrote

Reply to comment by bingosherlock in Anyone confirm if Fifth Season is shutting down their business? by Big-Cockroach-5986

One of the biggest hurdles to automation is just how hard our economy exploits human workers. Why invest in an expensive robot when the minimum wage is $7.25*/hour? Not too mention, humans are much easier to replace when they break.

*except for disabled workers, gig workers, undocumented immigrants, etc.

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bingosherlock t1_iudl8d8 wrote

I agree with this 100% and generally believe that most people are wildly underpaid these days, but I suspect the bigger issue in this specific case is more along the lines of trying to be both a 'vertical farming' company and a robotics company at the same time without the scale needed to make vertical integration worthwhile or the market needed to pay for the robotics part of the company

like if i spent $20 million on developing hair cutting robots and then opened a couple robot barber shops that made $500,000/year, you could accurately describe me as a revenue generating hair cutting company. that doesn't necessarily mean it's good business sense to keep pouring money into r&d. if the market for the robots isn't there or if the robots aren't even market-ready, it might just be a bad idea, even if the haircuts themselves are really good (or if the robots start making really good salads)

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__she__wolf t1_iufk51w wrote

They had such a hard on for being a “robotics” company (previously called RoBotany) but the reality is, you can have a vertical farm run completely by humans if it is done safely.

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