Farmers fuming over CA’s ban on driverless tractors, other robots

Partisanship be damned, the stranglehold we allow lawmakers and special interests to just block automation is increasingly damaging and increasingly frustrating

I’m gonna double post because I’m furious at this bit:

>Violating ban on autonomous tech calls for hefty fines, but California hasn’t issued a single citation

>Some companies operating in California, that do not wish to be identified, told the NBC Bay Area Investigative Unit they regularly sell driverless tractors and other autonomous agricultural equipment to farmers in the state

*THIS IS IN MY OPINION THE WORST OF BOTH WORLDS*. You have a law that harshly penalizes violators, but you let every violation slide. So the good honest people who want to do right and follow the law get fucked over by the selfish fucks who will break any law for a buck.

Worse yet, if everyone is using this illegal technology then the sword of Damocles hangs over your head. Everyone is breaking the law but no one is being punished, so selective punishment can be used to punish people for other reasons that aren’t actually illegal. You ratio’d one of the regulators on twitter? Surprise visit to fine you for an autonomous tractor that you and every other farmer uses.

So law-abiding citizens get outcompeted by lawless ones, and state actors always have a law to punish you with, even if they’re only mad at you for something else.

My city has some of the shittiest, most aggressive red-light running I’ve seen in my entire life and it infuriates me to see so much dangerous lawlessness going unpunished while I’m trying to drive safe. Then a sheriff was reported to have pulled over their ex for running a red, after sitting at the corner and watching a dozen or more cars run the red prior.

Fuck that fuck that fuck that, enforce your damn laws.

What the fuck? You allow driverless cars but ban driverless tractors?

> Despite the urging from Monarch Tractor to revise the state’s regulations, the state board voted four to three to reject the request, citing safety concerns.

Let me explain to you how stupid this regulation is. Right now in precession agriculture we have been able to automate 85% of actually operating a tractor. You can buy a John Deere tractor and using their tools basically automate the process yourself to the point that you can literally just sit in the cab and watch movies all day. The current debate for precision ag going forward is between Big Iron and Little Iron. Big iron is what we are doing currently which is making the biggest, fastest machines possible but we’ve hit the point of diminishing returns. The size, cost and complexity of this new equipment is getting to the point where it just doesn’t make both practical and economic sense. The other option is “little iron” which is instead of massive expensive equipment you instead have more smaller simpler machines that all run at the same time. So instead of one big sprayer spraying 1,000 acres a day you have 10 smaller ones spraying 100 acres a day. The benefits of this are clear cheaper, simpler, scalable and redundant the only thing holding them back is labor. Only one person is needed to run the big sprayer we’re as you would need 10 people run the little sprayers unless you were able to automate them.