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Comment by Cozumel | Hacker News Reader

> 'You can't legislate societies problems away'

Could you elaborate? It seems pretty obvious that you can. No child labour, minimum wage laws, equal rights etc.

Government doesn't have unlimited power to alter reality, there are countless examples of legislation being ineffective or having unintended consequences. The canonical example is prohibition of various drugs, but more recently the "ban the box" initiative is quite illustrative:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/consequ...

That article is somewhat confusing.

> "I told her about my conviction, and she wanted me to go deeper into what happened,” he told me, describing one interview in particular. “When I explained that I shot somebody in the back of the head, she didn’t want anything to do with me anymore."

... And then they never go into that more. Why is that not an acceptable reason to not hire someone?

All of these laws have pretty glaring problems though. Child labor combined with the emancipation system traps teenagers in abusive homes, minimum wage laws depend heavily on the elasticity of labor, equal rights laws seldom induce equality.

> Child labor combined with the emancipation system traps teenagers in abusive homes

I don't understand what you mean here (I probably miss some background in US culture).

The argument is that since a child can't work on their own and emancipation laws prevent a child from claiming independence until they can work on their own , children are stuck in abusive homes where they would otherwise work a full time job to get themselves out of the abuse.

Note I don't really agree with this sentiment as abusing children is fairly illegal and it should be up to the justice system to prosecute the abusive households and also help the children find better homes, but we know that's inadequate in implementation right now.

It's not inadequate, it just doesn't happen. I know people who were being deprived of food, beaten, subjected to chronic verbal abuse, kicked out of their house, from the age of 12-13 who had absolutely no recourse, no ability to make money, and no real way to do anything besides depend on the kindness of strangers -- who were told by the foster system that unless they felt like they were in imminent danger then they should stay far away. Do you really think that these kids are better off doing what they have to do (which many times is working under the table, or other illegal activity) to ensure their basic needs are met?

The reason legislation like this isn't helping our country at the moment is because of globalization. Labor laws may help the workers, but it's a net negative if those laws just lead to the outsourcing of jobs. We need to choose between globalization for maximal gains for the rich, or protectionism for quality of life for our workers. At the moment, a middle ground doesn't seem possible.

Globalisation is fine where regulation can ensure that standards are still met. There is nothing that prevents domestic legislation setting standards for the working conditions of those who produce goods in foreign countries.

Protectionism isn't going to help workers in the long term. We live in a global market; accepting that and using legislation to deal with negative outcomes is a totally valid approach. The fact that it hasn't been done is because of the large amount of money standing in the way of it.

Theoretically this is true, but look at how it's worked in practice. Manufacturing was shipped to places like China and Mexico where the minimum wage and quality of life is much lower. When considering these things, should we consider the theory of globalization, or the reality of what is happening?

I'd be interested in seeing proof that protectionism actually does benefit workers; I suspect the effect is mixed. Cheap goods from overseas often can help improve poorer people's standards of living, and it's not hard to see how protecting industries from more efficient competition overseas can benefit business owners.

Part of the problem is that capital is more mobile than workers.

You can send your factory bucks overseas a lot easier than a poor person can move to a country with a higher standard of living.

We need to start asking the question of whether our legal systems should be friendly to capital at every opportunity.

It's a little scary that you're advocating Americans compete by, say, doing away with child labor laws or safety standards. That's a disturbing enough view that you don't even want it linked to your primary HN account.

There can absolutely be a middle ground. We can tax rent-seeking. We can quit the austerity focused trickle-down policies that have been shown to fail, and put money into the hands of people who will actually spend it. We can actively redistribute wealth.

Why would you rather give up protections that cost our ancestors their lives to establish?

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