It's 2023, people, and I can't believe we're even having this debate. Seriously? Farmers working with their kids and teenagers learning trades is a clear violation of child labor laws. Kids need to be playing Fortnite and learning about baby sharks. And teenagers need to learn to spend their entire waking life indoors studying compliance with authority and status games, so corporations can have a steady supply of standardized and malleable human resources to draw from.

This isn't up for discussion. Period. Let that sink in: our society is allowing this local exploitation to continue, when that's the international market's job.

It's about time we take a stand against this blatant disregard for the law. I mean, it's plain and simple: we need to protect our children from being forced into labor by their families and local community members so that corporations can do it several years later, no questions asked. Do better, farmers and tradesmen – it's your responsibility to ensure your kids have a safe and happy childhood, locked inside public schools during business hours, not one filled with hands-on labor and universally in-demand skills.

No contest. When you involve your kids in farm or trade work, you're robbing them of their opportunity to be exploited down the line by Fortune 500 companies, and that's just unacceptable.

Hands down, we should be ashamed of ourselves for letting this happen in our own backyards. Full stop. It's high time we demand change, and make sure our children's rights are protected, no ifs, ands, or buts. They deserve the right to have a futile white-collar unionization fight with megafirms so that they can truly be a part of our global economy. To do anything else is retrograde barbarism. Period.