Rocks Thrown at Border Patrol Chopper

Perhaps we should arm the copter with machine guns and fire back?
No, that would be barbaric.

Why? A rock can certainly bring down a civilian helicopter if it hits
something critical - a rotor disc, an oil or fuel line, whatever.
Military helicopters are armored against this - but as a result they
weigh a ton (literally that - or more) and cost a fortune to operate.

If this happens too low to autorotate but too high to put down without
energy, the pilot and passenger(s) will be injured or killed. Why is
it barbaric for the pilot to shoot back?

But what is so wrong with stopping illegal immigration?

It would make servants something only the very rich could afford.

Actually, what illegal immigration does is distort our economy and
stifle progress.

Let me give you an example. Most of the pilots at my home field don't
cut their own grass. They have someone come out to do it. It's
miserable work - riding a mower in the hot sun, loading and unloading
equipment - but the price is quite reasonable. It works out to
something like $15-$20 hr on a contract basis. The guy shows up in a
truck with an old gas-powered tractor (that spews lots of hydrocarbon
into the atmosphere) and does all the work. I suspect that he clears
maybe $10/hr at best, with no benefits, when you figure in travel time
and his expenses, and it's seasonal work at that.

This (like most of the jobs illegals do) could be automated - but not
trivially. What's necessary is a mower with some intelligence. It
would know where the boundaries of the property are, and what parts of
it are to be mowed, and it would have some simple sensors to keep from
running over the neighbor's kid (or cat). It would peobably be
electric - which would mean a limited operation time, as it would have
to go back to its station and recharge every 30 minutes - but since it
would never forget what it already did, that would be no big deal. All
the pieces are there - this would be no more complicated than
industrial automation - but there's no incentive. It would cost about
$3 million to design and test the thing, and the first batch you sold
would have bugs that would need to be worked out. Since most people
wouldn't buy one (they would just hire the illegals) you would never
recoup the R&D cost - you would need to sell 50,000 of them in the
first two or three years to make it work, and the first batch would
probably cost $1000 each in such low volumes

Of course it would be a lot different if you had to pay someone a
living wage to do the job. Then the cost would be more like $60/hr,
and people would buy the thing even at $800. Of course as the volume
increased and the patents ran out, the price would fall to where there
it was cheaper than a gasoline riding mower.

This is just one example, but it's fairly typical. Cheap labor is
always the enemy of automation, and certain segments of our economy are
addicted to cheap labor. In the long run, of course, automation is
cheaper than even the cheapest labor (unless you're willing to have
people working and STILL living in a squalor most of us would find
deplorable) but the industries that develop automation can't afford to
think in the long term. If it doesn't have a 3 year payback and a 15%
ROI, it won't happen.

Michael

On 26 Aug 2005 11:15:19 -0700, "Michael"
wrote:


This (like most of the jobs illegals do) could be automated - but not
trivially. What's necessary is a mower with some intelligence. It
would know where the boundaries of the property are, and what parts of
it are to be mowed, and it would have some simple sensors to keep from
running over the neighbor's kid (or cat). It would peobably be
electric - which would mean a limited operation time, as it would have
to go back to its station and recharge every 30 minutes - but since it
would never forget what it already did, that would be no big deal. All
the pieces are there - this would be no more complicated than

google search for automatic lawn mower comes up with 162,000 hits,
including production electric robotic lawn mowers already for sale...

Michael wrote:

the first batch you sold
would have bugs that would need to be worked out

So much for the cat or kid, eh?

Laugh

- Andrew