Nobody in Wilder, Idaho expected this. The tiny farming town of 1,725 people—where nine out of ten voters backed Donald Trump in 2024—is now scrambling to figure out what comes next after federal immigration agents swept through in mid-October and arrested more than 100 Hispanic workers at a local horse racetrack. So far, 75 people have been deported, and the farms that keep this place running are facing a labour shortage with no easy fix in sight.

      • WoodScientist@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        It turns out robots are much more useful as an excuse to suppress workers rights and wages than they are at doing real work.

        • ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca
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          2 days ago

          People give the Soviet Union a lot of shit for their 5 year plans that never seem to fully pan out. But no one gives a fuck about Elon Musk’s predictions.

          Similar to how the Ford Pinto is still a joke in the auto industry even though Teslas are much, MUCH more fire/explosion prone than a junk car from the 1970s and have killed far more people. The death rate of Pintos vs. other cars of the period was not as different as some people think, but the death rate of Teslas? That is higher.

      • jaybone@lemmy.zip
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        2 days ago

        We’re on mars now, just like he said we would be ten years ago when he said we would be there in ten years. Just like he’s converting his tesla factories to build AI robots that will totally be ready ten years from now.

    • Canaconda@lemmy.ca
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      2 days ago

      No that’s climate change and hyper integrated global food supply chains you’re thinking of.

        • Canaconda@lemmy.ca
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          2 days ago

          Fully agree!

          But IMO regardless there is going to be major global food supply chain interruptions, as industries that take years to decades to mature disappear faster than they can be re-established.

          In my region we have had entire fruit crops destroyed by cold snaps following an unseasonably warm winter. Meaning there was multiple year gaps in output from an entire region.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      2 days ago

      In some other country, maybe (assuming the USAID cuts haven’t done it already). Even poor people in the US are rich enough to outbid people in the developing world on food imports, if it were truly necessary, so if we did fuck up our own harvest enough to cause a real shortage we’d just buy somebody else’s.

      • ArmchairAce1944@lemmy.ca
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        2 days ago

        so he’s going to cause famines in OTHER countries then? That isn’t much better. Just like this destruction of USAID (as you mentioned) had already killed hundreds of thousands of people.