From: An Anonymous Automation Enthusiast [Send him mail]

This month I had my first experience with a portable traffic control system that acts like an automated "flagger." (Note: Flagger is the Politically Correct word manufactured to replace the now-unacceptable term "flagman.") Here’s a video of what it looks like:

(The Youtube video illustrates a Canadian product; the device I saw was made in the U.S.A.—and the product's name did not contain the word "Flagman"!)

It worked fine both day and night. We're all used to obeying automatic traffic lights, and it actually felt safer doing that, instead of interpreting the listless hand signals of bored, and potentially fallible, human construction workers.

So, replacing a "flagger" at each end—times three shifts a day—reduces the required work force by six at each construction site that requires temporarily closing one of the lanes on a two-lane road.

As automation such as this inevitably continues to replace humans with machines. The very last thing America needs is to increase the labor force by eleven million unskilled illegal "immigrants."

James Fulford writes: Automation is an old theme here at VDARE.com; one of the first things I did here was an article on robotic lawnmowers. See also Don Collins here.

Here’s a quote from Sam Francis:

In 1979, President Carter's Agriculture Secretary Bob Bergland ended government financing of research into farming technology because he didn't want to replace "an adequate and willing work force with machines." That was just about the time we started hearing about how Americans wouldn't take those jobs anyway. The"adequate and willing work force" Mr. Bergland was talking about was made up of immigrants. [Economic Man Turning Against Mass Immigration, April 1, 2004]

Sam’s article was about the mechanized canopy shakers which are starting replace immigrant workers at harvest time Florida orange groves . One manufacturer says that one pair of their harvesters “will harvest a million pounds of fruit a day and can replace as many as 120 laborers.” [Ad for Oxbo Citrus Harvesters.]

They're big, scary machines. But the workers are kind of scary, too.