“Population explosion ‘heralds disaster’ ”, The Age, 6/3. An Australian professor of reproductive biology, Professor Roger Short, gives his opinion on the overpopulation crisis: that things will get very unpleasant during this century should current growth trends continue, and that countries with high proportions of unemployable and disaffected young men make them prime recruits for terrorism.
This poster at the Public Population Forum provides an answer to the question in my last entry (2/3) of finding people to do unpleasant jobs (e.g. fruit picking) noted in my previous entry: innovate and automate!
Berg wonders whether laid-off Macquarie Bank alumni would be willing to pick pistachios, drawing on the same old tired rhetoric that immigration-as-a-cheap-labour-pool enthusiasts have used for decades. The answer to his question is that they probably would, if they were offered enough money. Which they certainly won’t be.
I know a fellow who grows nuts on a small/medium sized farm in the Southern Highlands of NSW. Using usual methods, he couldn’t gather and prepare his harvest for market by himself. Traditionally, he might have tried to employ pickers, for minimal wages, as some of his neighbours do. But the reality is that his margins are now so tight that pickers at almost ANY price would cost too much for the business to remain viable. This is where the “race to the bottom” hits rock bottom.
So, rather than sell out, or complain about a labour shoratge or how Australians won’t do certain jobs, he innovated. Drawing on his engineering background he built a machine for shaking the trees to drop the nuts ready for harvest. He built low cost and fairly low-tech machines for collecting the nuts, sorting and cleaning them, shelling them and bagging them ready for sale.
The bottom line is that he now runs the whole farm himself, without any seasonal workers. His farm remains viable. Cheap labour didn’t save it – innovation did.
The second part of SBS’s documentary on declining birthrates screened last night, this one entitled “Grey Tsunami”, about the hordes of old people who will comprise much of society in the next few decades, and the challenges entailed in preparing for this (which most governments haven’t). People will have to be prepared to work longer (which is fine if you have a fulfilling job or career, not so enjoyable if you don’t). Japan is looking at innovations such as robot helpers (I wouldn’t mind one of these!). Unless societies want to revert back to a system where women are forced to be breeders (as is the case in some countries), governments will just have to deal with the issue of aging. A society of mostly old people would likely be more peaceful and relaxed, so it is not necessarily a bad thing!
