Comment by tc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tc | Hacker News Reader

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I take a false dichotomy charge seriously. I think you misunderstand me.

I'm certainly not defending the FLSA's farm exemption, which was clearly just a bow to a powerful special interest group [1].

Of course children don't want to work on farms or in factories. Does anyone want to work in a factory?

My point is simply that if you go to some random third-world country where children are working in factories, and you do nothing else than prevent them from working in factories, you very likely have not increased their quality of life. To your horror, you will see an increase in children scrounging for food in dumpsters. You will see them selling wares on the street. And you will see fewer families escaping a brutal life of farm labor to seek a better life in cities.

Your point about free markets also misses the mark. You could repeal all the child labor laws today in the US, and you would not find (a statistically significant number of) factories hiring children for the simple reason that with modern industrial techniques children wouldn't even be productive enough to justify their space on a factory floor. This is part of the reason why teenage unemployment is so high even though teens will work for minimum wage.

[1] Not to say that I think much harm comes from this today.

This argument is a slippery slope. If you take a third-world country and allow child factory labor, children demonstrably work in factories. Clearly, if you disallow factory labor but allow truancy and neglect, children demonstrably become garbage dump scavengers. At some point you need to have the political will to decisively address child welfare and education, rather than allocating rupiah to cronies and paramilitaries.

That the complete solution to this problem involves more than simply outlawing child labor doesn't mean that outlawing child labor is itself ineffective. There are child labor problems in economies that can otherwise provide for children --- even if you have a stable economy, you still need the rule of law.

Finally, it seems hollow to argue that, after 70+ years of regulation of child labor, repealing child labor laws would not change the facts of child labor on the ground in the US. While the economy certainly has more to do with the end of child labor than the law does, the law still plays a significant part. As a society, we've eliminated child labor and adapted to that circumstance. That is, at least in part, a victory of child labor prohibition.

To say that child labor is simply an artifact of outmoded manufacturing practices misses the fact that plenty of modern companies do engage in child labor, in jurisdictions that allow it.

At any rate, you can have the last word, because this conversation is devolving. I think the idea that society can get along just fine on 10, 100, or even 1000 laws is naive; child labor is a simple example, but I could come up with many more vivid examples as well --- for instance, the fact that marital rape has only been addressed within the last century or so.

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