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by astrange 594 days ago
You can't get native Americans to do farm work for any amount of money, because they'd have to live in the middle of nowhere near the farm and that's no fun.

(That is, you'd have to pay them so much they could buy the farm and then hire someone else to work it. But you're not going to do that.)
1 comments
15155 594 days ago
The market will take care of this: people will do the work or pay for it or they won't eat.
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astrange 594 days ago
"They won't eat" is a perfectly possible outcome of this, and a bad one. That is called a recession.
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15155 594 days ago
No, it's called a famine and wouldn't happen. Recession would imply that the market was completely incapable of adjusting to allocate resources correctly.

Promoting a second-tier, legally-disenfranchised workforce isn't the win you seem to think it is.

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astrange 594 days ago
> Recession would imply that the market was completely incapable of adjusting to allocate resources correctly.

It doesn't have to be "complete", just a shortfall in demand, and of course eventually it ends. But if the market doesn't clear for a while, that's still people having to eat less for a while.

> Promoting a second-tier, legally-disenfranchised workforce isn't the win you seem to think it is.

Almost everything is better than farm work, which is why everyone ditches it as fast as they can. Even being a sweatshop worker is better. Nevertheless, the migrant farmworkers are doing it because it's better than their alternatives, presumably because they get paid better than doing it in their own country.

Btw, I'm not even thinking of especially poor countries here. Japan is a respectable first-world country but has surprisingly low wages and a bad exchange rate, and there are recent cases of Japanese people leaving for Australia to do work like this and making 2-3x what they can at home.

And of course back in Japan it feels like every convenience store worker these days is an immigrant from China, India or elsewhere.

This is fine, really. Productivity will increase over time, they'll save money over time, and their kids will have better jobs.

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