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Comment by alexandros | Hacker News Reader

I understand the general sentiment against child labour, but somehow a 15-year old doesn't seem incapable of working at a factory. Child and teenager are diferent words, except when they're not. People have been working the fields from small ages throughout history. As long as the child didn't drop school or something else to go there, maybe getting a job was the best idea. Having a hard age limit just seems arbitrary, outsourcing the worries about worker mistreatment (a real problem) to a magical number. Perhaps, counterintuitively, not being able to get the amount of workers necessary for the cost allowed by apple's contract, leads manufacturers to press workers to work longer.

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agreed.

"Child labour" should mean either young children or sweatshop style working. How many US/EU teens work paper rounds for less than minimum wage? :D

Regardless of what the term should mean, if the law says it's illegal to employ a fifteen year old, and fifteen year olds are employed, then the law was broken. Routinely broken age labour laws, where records are purposely falsified, creates an environment where other labour laws, and laws in general, can be seen as obstacles to be subverted rather than protections and responsibilities.

It's not a trivial thing.

P.S I had two paper routes simultaneously when I was fourteen.

P.P.S Can kids even get paper routes in the US these days? My limited observation is that it's now large routes driven by adults who throw papers from car windows.

P.P.S Can kids even get paper routes in the US these days? My limited observation is that it's now large routes driven by adults who throw papers from car windows.

I think it's a combination of fewer newspaper subscribers (meaning larger distances between each subscriber, so less practical for bikes/walking) and a culture where parents are afraid that their children will be harmed if allowed to bike around delivering papers (because cars or pedophiles or something else).

Yes agreed. However I still believe we need to be careful calling this "child labour". Something went wrong here - but it wasn't necessarily malicious. Children are definitely forced to work in other places; and throwing this in with that is a) unfair and b) gives the real exploitation less impact.

Similar things were said in the U.S. when we outlawed most forms of factory work for children. Our society became better when we did outlaw this.

How about this form of outsourcing? Rather than Apple owning and managing the factory in question they contract it out so they can assuage their guilt when children end up working there.

> Our society became better when we did outlaw this.

Cite for this, please. As far as I know, we outlawed child factory labor purely because children, with their small bodies that could fit into more-easily-constructed mineshafts, dexterous hands that could assemble small parts, and lesser demand for pay, were being preferred for most jobs, and so adult workers basically had a union action against them to make sure their own jobs were safe. This decreased efficiency, took a source of discretionary income away from children who wanted it (these weren't forced workers; they just took jobs to better their life), and artificially lowered the unemployment of adults who couldn't compete with kids.

Is this a serious request? You want me to cite the basis for me stating that our society became better by outlawing the employment of children in factories and mines? This isn't obvious to you? I am grateful that people with your point of view didn't prevail when the United States confronted this issue.

The US and the rest of the west experienced unprecedented per capita BNP growth since around the time western countries banned child labour. This is the reason for increased living standards. It would not have mattered much in the long run who prevailed because rich (by the standards of 1850 we pretty much all are) parents don't let their children work full time in factories.

But it would have mattered to the children who would have worked in the coal mines had they not been prevented from doing so by the government. In the long run you are correct but we should not let this be the reason for inaction.

I think you may be assuming that either A) the children were forced to work or B) the children (and their parents) just did not know what was good for them. Both seem unlikely to me.

When I say the U.S. became a better country by outlawing child labor this had nothing to do with economics. We became better in a moral sense. We Americans equate, too often, the concept of better in a money sense. This is a bad trait amongst us. (I'm not saying you have this bad trait.)

I am not completely sure we are better off. Being barred from meaningful work is to the moral detriment of precocious kids.

Not that we should let people in general subject themselves to danger they don't understand, and kids might lack judgement about that. And education absolutely shouldn't be blown off. But there's something appealing to me about kids being able to work real jobs if they're willing and capable.

Something like this . . . http://www.bigheadpress.com/eft?page=14

adult workers basically had a union action against them to make sure their own jobs were safe

Cite for this? Or a source on the topic in general?

I don't mean to sound incredulous, it's just that you seem to be familiar with the subject.

The US passed laws against child labor when it did because it could afford to, ultimately. You don't find too many poor societies which spontaneously decide to build schools for everyone below the age of 18 and prohibit them from working. You might find a few where some foreign imperialists decided to build schools and send all of the country's youths to it, but I assume you're against that sort of thing.

Notably, the US also decided for themselves when to pass such laws--they didn't have the matter dictated to them by the countries they exported goods to.

I'm not suggesting we change the laws of China. I'm suggesting we don't benefit from the exploitation of labor. We stopped trading with the Apartheid regime for moral reasons. This was a good thing. Even capitalists should occasionally do the moral thing.

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