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Comment by lionhearted | Hacker News Reader

Under this definition, my internship at the Massachusetts Statehouse was illegal unpaid labor.

This opportunity looks like a bad deal to me, I wouldn't do it personally, but trying to criminalize voluntary exchanges is no good in my opinion. Someone proactive about learning and making connections could benefit A LOT from this sort of thing and gain a lot more than $7/hour in value. Not my cup of tea, but I can see how it'd make sense for someone and I don't like seeing two people forbidden from a voluntary exchange they both think would work well for them.

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by that logic, minimum wage and child labor laws should be illegal. If a child wants to work...who are you to stop them?

> by that logic, minimum wage

Minimum wage laws hurt people sometimes. They're not just benevolent laws that increase pay. It means that some low margin businesses won't be operated, and some low skilled people who aren't capable of doing work worth the minimum wage won't be able to find jobs.

> and child labor laws should be illegal. If a child wants to work...who are you to stop them?

What's a "child"? Is someone 14 years old and mature, disciplined, and learned a child? Should they be allowed to work if they want to? How about an extremely bright 12 year old? No dice, no matter what?

I think people with a level of maturity and understanding should be allowed to make voluntary transactions, yes. I won't stop them. In fact, I think anyone who would stop two consenting adults from making a voluntary transaction, no matter how well intentioned, is doing a bad thing.

I think part of the problem is with that word, "voluntary" - and more specifically how it relates to another word, "desperate".

minimum wage laws mean you are making enough to live.

If you are making the minimum wage, and work 40 hours a week, that's $1,160 a month/$2,320 if they work 80 hours a week.

Can someone really survive if they are being paid even less than that? Let's say you pay someone $5 an hour because someone is desperate they'll take any job...and they work 80 hours a week, that's only $1,600 a month. Can you survive on that?

Yes some law margin businesses won't be operated, but that just means people won't have to work like slaves just to pay rent.

So you would be fine with a 12 year old working in the coal mines? By law, anyone under 18 is not considered an adult.

I guess by your logic, you'd have no problem with pedophilia, after all big bad law is stopping a 30 year old from banging a 12 year old.

I find your pedophilia strawman to be completely and utterly distasteful.

The person who is willing to take the $5/hour job is willing to do so because he isn't able to get a $10/hour job. $1,160/month might be hard to live on, but it's easier than living on $0, which is the alternative forced on him by minimum wage laws.

$13,900 per year ($1,160 per month) puts you in the top 15% of earners worldwide. You can absolutely live on that anywhere, including any city in the United States, including Tokyo, including Hong Kong, and so on. You'll be able to get a bed, a shared bathroom, and enough healthy food at that money. And of course, as soon as there's an opportunity to make more, you move on and do so.

If you want to talk about high cost of living in the USA, I agree with you. Prices are artificially high in the USA for a number of reasons. If you removed just a few laws that aren't doing much good, a solid meal would probably cost around $1 to $2 - last time I was there, you could get a decent $2 meal in Taipei and a 2 euro meal in Berlin for instance. Prices in America are higher than they should be due to some corruption and stupidity, but even with the artificially high prices $14k is a heck of a lot of money by almost standard at almost any time in history.

As for the rest of your comment, I don't think the practice of running immediately to extreme edge cases is the best way to have a discussion. I started with the point that a 20 year old should be able to intern at a company if they want to, and you want to move the discussion to coal mines and pedophilia?

Edge cases are useful to discuss, but probably secondary in importance to general principles. If you agree that in general stopping mature, capable humans of doing voluntary transactions is a bad thing, then we can look at the edge cases and try to figure out some lines. But to answer your main point, absolutely $13,900 per year is a fantastically large amount of money that can be lived fairly well on. No Starbucks, no $12 movie tickets, but food, housing, and other necessities? Absolutely possible, that's a huge amount of money. I've lived on much less comfortably, and most of the world would kill to live on that $13,900 per year.

sure you can live on $13,900 a year in some third world hell hole, but in that third world hell hole, your $13,900 would actually be $2,900/yr.

Sure a solid meal would cost only $1 to $2...all we need to remove is the part that doesn't allow companies to sell you contaminated beef, or the part that states that a company needs to state nutritional information on the back of the package.

You can't compare a salary, without taking cost of living into the equation.

Ok let's take that $1,160 a month..and cut off a 1/3 for taxes, unemlpoyment insurance, social security etc. You are stuck with $765 a month.

Please tell me how you'd live on $765 a month. And remember to live, you need to pay rent, pay for utilities, pay for food, pay for gas/bus tickets.

Sure you lived on less than that...but I bet at the time, you stayed with your mommy and daddy...or you lived on campus where your loans or once again mommy and daddy paid for rent.

Yes most of the world would kill to live on $13,900 a year....but most of the world, doesn't have the same high cost of living as we do in US.

I'll answer this comment, but before I do, can I ask a question? - What's your goal behind this discussion? Are you trying to learn, debate, convince me, convince other people, just pass the time? I posted originally to share my perspective with people, and then I try to respond to comments and inquiries to get a good discussion going. Because I can answer your comment seriously if you're open-minded and think there's a chance your views will evolve. Likewise, I'm open to my views evolving if I see something good. Otherwise, if it's for third parties or just entertainment, I'll probably break from this comment thread since I've said the basics of what I think and probably not so many people are following it any more. Anyways...

> Ok let's take that $1,160 a month..and cut off a 1/3 for taxes, unemlpoyment insurance, social security etc. You are stuck with $765 a month.

Well, three points. First, you pay a bit less than that in taxes at the low end. Second, I already said I'm not in favor of this kind of forced law and I'm not in favor of an income tax, uninsurance, or social security at all. Third, if you are paying taxes that high, you're probably funding benefits that you can get. So you're either living on $765 after taxes but then you get government benefits, or most of $1160 with lower taxes. But let's say that's roughly a wash and your real pay in cash and/or benefits is $1000 per month.

I did a quick search in the Chicago Craigslist just to pick a random big city. There's quite a few roommates/shared bedrooms in the $400 to $500 per month range. If you look, I'm sure you can find cheaper. I was in Hong Kong two months ago. You can pay $15/night for very small private room/shared bathroom in a cheap place on Kowloon. An all you can ride train pass is between $70 and $120 in most large cities. So we're at $500 now for rent and transport in a city. You can eat oatmeal and rice and beans as your staples, then mix in a little tuna fish, chicken, and fruit and vegetables. Oatmeal and rice beans are so cheap they're basically free, you're looking at $20 to $30 the entire month total for 60 meals. Go crazy and say $5 worth of protein, fruits, and vegetables per day and your food budget is $170. You drink tap water which is almost free, instant coffee will run you $10 to $20 for the month. So that's under $200. If you cook with people, you can eat better food for the same prices. Buy whatever's on sale for meal, fruit, and vegetables, in Los Angeles last year I was sometimes able to get a medium sized pack of Strawberries for $2 at Ralph's when they'd shipped too many.

Really, anyone who doesn't think $1000/month is livable in the USA has been incredibly blessed. Plenty of immigrants and people working their way up live on much less. You share space with multiple people, maybe you only get 1/4th of a large bedroom with three other roommates and share one bathroom and a small kitchen. You cook most of your meals and don't eat out much. You take public transit, walk, or a bicycle. It's not glamorous, it's not awesome, it's not fun, but it's doable. And again, the goal isn't to stay in a low wage job forever, we're doing all this math with a 40 hour work week, which is plenty of time to look for other opportunities, train yourself, etc.

As for me when I lived poor - I dropped out of high school and left home at 16, and never took a dime in cash from my parents since leaving home. Not a single dime. So the mommy and daddy comment isn't quite accurate. Ah, I was about to share a story about what life was like back then, but it'd take a while to type. It's not awesome, but you survive, grow, do what you can to improve, and you make it.

But I'll ask if you don't mind answering: what's your objective here? Are you open to changing your mind on this if I give reasonable, well thought answers to your questions? I don't mind spending the time on this if something positive could come of it.

just having a discussion.

Technically you pay less in taxes on the low end, but those taxes get taken out every two weeks, you just get a refund at the end of the year.

It doesn't really matter what you are in favor of, the taxes will still be taken out of your paycheck. Of course you get things in exchange for your taxes. It's nice to say "well in the perfect world you could live on X", but we don't live in a perfect world. That's why I'm no longer a liberterian.

Fine let's say you have $1,000 per month in cash.

And fine, let's say you find a roommate deal at $450 a month.(btw once again, don't bring up hong kong or other countries, we are talking about you wanting to eliminate American minimum wage). Oh and let's not forget the $450 deals are fairly rare, so if millions of people start getting paid below minimum wage, those few good deals will be snagged up quickly.

Anyways that leaves $550.

Minus your $70 for the train pass, $480.

The food issue is a good one. The $200 you spend, gets you just enough not to starve to death. Do you think 40 hours of labor shouldn't be enough to avoid not starving?

So we are down to $280 a month.

But have you forgotten something? The water bill? The gas bill? The electricity bill? The phone bill? What about all those other expenses? Like health insurance, replacement clothing, etc?

And of course the goal is to get a better paying job. But by not having a minimum wage, you have wage depression. When you can pay entry level slaves $3 an hour, you can pay the guy with 6 years experience $5 an hour. And what kind of mobility do you think someone working at MickeyDs have?

The goal here, is for you to realize, that there needs to be a living wage. Where working 40 hours a week, should be enough to make ends meet.

How about the ideal of the 50s? Where you could work 40 hours a week in an entry level job, and could afford a house with white picket fence, a car, and basic luxuries and could support your family?

Your whole argument is based around a young, single, healthy guy, going through a rough patch. Not the situation, that the minimum wage laws were created for.

What's with this idea that the people should be ground down into the dirt? We already have 39.1 million people in poverty in United States, why do you think we need to increase that number?

The difference between $7 an hour and $3 an hour for Mickey Ds, is measured in them selling 1 extra big mac.

For every person who crawls out of poverty like you did, there are thousands who stay there indefinitely. We live in America, not a 3rd world hellhole, and our cost of living reflects that.

I doubt there is anything you can say, that'll make me agree that someone living in New York City, should be allowed to be paid $3 an hour

How about this logic: Consenting adults should be free to offer and enter into any contract that does violate anyone's freedom's, rights etc.

I thought it was pretty obvious he was referring to 2 sound-minded adults making a voluntary exchange.

The Massachusetts Statehouse would be under different laws since it's either owned by the government or a non-profit.

trying to criminalize voluntary exchanges is no good in my opinion

not to be pedantic but these aren't proposed labor laws, they are already definitions used by the Department of Labor.

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