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There is an alternative and you gave it in the second half of your comment! Let the kids escape the zoo: let them create value in the real world for real people facing real economic constraints. Instead of grinding menial tasks in an artificial bubble where homework, tests, papers get swept into the bin right after they get rubber stamped, have kids create things that actually have value in reality.

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When I was a kid, I worked quite a bit. Some of it manual labor, like elementary school hauling stuff around someone else’s farm. My employer was nice, my parents took care of me and I worked maybe 10-15 hours a week, tops.

I think the issue is how to systematically scale this for a nation or world. Not everyone is as lucky as I was and I’ve seen and worked against many situations where kids are exploited. Either by loved ones or by a system that is just really hard and every dollar counts.

I think rich kids would be ok, but poor kids would be worse off. Labor can be exploited when labor are all adults, imagine the power imbalance between a 12 year old and a line manager.

Of course, we could try to have checks and balances, but I don’t expect that’s possible.

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