Excellent point. When you think about it, it’s actually pretty amazing how many things that are considered abhorrent and against “basic human rights” when they happen to adults, aren’t even given a second thought (and are considered completely acceptable) when they are forced on children.
More great points.
I don’t think “you do it too” is a good line of argumentation for libertarians to take. Just because the state mistreats children in school, it doesn’t mean that we should accept this as standard practice.
Was that at me? I don’t know what you mean.
I think it was a misreading of your implied message. I took your point to be that there’s a major discrepancy in the area of what’s considered basic decency, revealed by swapping the adult/child in a situation with the other of the two.
Yeah pretty much.
Bingo. I think about the same thing with spanking and other forms of physical violence initiated on children. When a kid “acts up” in a public place, say, he won’t stop crying in Walmart because he wasn’t allowed to get the Spider-Man lunchbox, and his dad hits him and tells him to shut up…it’s perfectly fine. But if an adult committed the exact same act against another adult (even if it were the same two people…and the offspring just happened to be 18 years or older), you’ve got cops being called, and assault charges.
From this article:
Some questions really don’t have two sides. “Is it okay to do something to your child that would land you in jail if you did it to a stranger on the street?” is one of those. You can phrase it other ways too – like “Is it okay to hurt a child because it serves your immediate goal when science shows it can lead to long-term harm?” But there is still just one answer.
And yet, we keep seeing it presented as a disagreement.
In my opinion this is actually one of the most aggregious offenses committed that is still not only legal, but considered perfectly acceptible. The aggression is bad enough on its own…but then you have to throw in the size, authority, and emotional differential…it’s downright evil. This is one area Molyneux is actually useful, as there aren’t many aggregating and publicizing this information and viewpoint:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONNRfflggBg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjxXuDYdBzY
Just like the government could “improve” the market outcome of children working by enforcing laws against child labor, eh?
What I meant was that just because government enforces bathroom break schedules in school it doesn’t mean that they’re desirable. Plus, did this enforcement exist in the 1910s?
JJ - I know the arguments about child labor. This, however, appears to be quite different.
Who the hell said anything about either one of those things being desirable? I’m not quite sure where you’re getting that.
The way both me and Blargg read it was that it’s interesting the discrepancy between what is considered acceptable practice, based solely on the person’s age…particularly when one would think children deserve (and would get) more “protection” against violence…especially violence perpetrated on them by adults (who by the way tend to be at least twice their size and three times their age.)
This observation came as a result of Blargg simply proposing an explanation as to why such a practice as bathroom restrictions on employees would be accepted…“because [the same practice] was forced on them in school”.
As for the child labor example, I was merely calling attention to the flaw in your argument that having a law against something necessarily means the potential for “improvement” of a (alleged) “market failure”.
How is that, exactly?
Working conditions don’t get better because of moral indignation either from employers, employees or third parties.
Working conditions do get better because labor resources become relatively scarcer with respect to other forms of capital.
When the availability of peoples that could be captured and enslaved was high and the work they were able to perform was valuable enough to pay for the costs of their capture and bondage, there were slaves.
When technological advance changed these circumstances, slaves were gone. For the former enslavers, the benefits of slave work didn’t pay for it’s costs anymore.
And the same goes for indentured labor and sweatshop jobs and so on.
Political crusades for “rights” and general moral indignation are generally ex post facto realizations that come from the fact that certain peoples got rid of certain forms of labor before other peoples and they decided to consider that repugnant.
In a post-apocalyptical scenario where modern survivors saw themselves in a ruined world with low capital structure, slavery would probably reemerge, regardless of how repugnant it may sound now.
Also, this shows that people would prefer restricted bathroom breaks over lower pay/no job. Everything has a price. In a way, any government ban on these restrictions is like minimum wage, in that those people who find them acceptable are prevented from making more money with the restrictions. And if these restrictions were plain unacceptable to the workers, nobody would work under those conditions and employers would be unable to impose them.
And a slave usually prefers to obey commands to the likely alternative results of confronting his master or slave-driver.
So why do you have “improved” in quotes if you do not understand the solution to your problem?
Why is government stepping in and banning locked bathroom doors any different then banning wages below say 25 cents an hour or whatever a low “inhumane” wage was considered to be back then?
Let’s change the problem: allowing everybody to go to the bathroom whenever they want would cost the employer say 2 cents an hour per worker in productivity. Such a factory worker would now earn 23 cents an hour instead of 25. What difference does it make to the greedy employer what the total remuneration is comprised off - 23 cents with bathroom anytime, or 25 cents with no bathroom (wet your pants). In the free market, employers competing for workers will provide the optimal “package” according to the preferences of the employees. So peeing in their pants for 2 extra cents could be a real bargain for some people.
I took the point that the government could have stepped in as pointing out that anyone calling for legal protection was calling for something that already existed, except that the government didn’t care to do anything about it. And the scare quotes around improved seemed to be communicating that while others beleive that government intervention would have improved the market, Wheylous didn’t concur on that.
I used the quotes because interpersonal utility comparisons are impossible. However, I don’t think that this should be the argument with which libertarians charge forward.
This argument is economics. You don’t think that libertarinas should use economics to “charge forward”?
So if he (and probably you also) know that the government does not imporve by banning “no bathroom breaks” then why not simply reveal this truth in explaining such [hypothetical] outcome markets? It’s like if you believed that alcahol consumption was immoral or something, and so you refused to acknowledge that others may demand it on the free market.
It’s too powerful yet appears picky rather than substantive.
For example, imagine if Bill Gates were to go to Africa and hire people to make something for him. He pays them low wages, though he could easily pay them more without having to fire them on the margin (by assumption). The working conditions are such that they can only go to the bathroom once every two days (because he thought this would be funny to do, although it is in no way required to satisfy his main goal). If they choose the work, it obviously must benefit them relative to their current conditions.
However, if government were to regulate this and say “no, they should be able to go every 6 hours”, the conditions of the workers improve (because by assumption they will not be fired on the margin). The loss to Bill Gates is small - a mere amusement. However, the benefit to the workers is quite substantial. We know that interpersonal utility comparison is useless, but to the common reader it seems like we’re being uselessly pedantic. And the claims of “well, I believe in a society where…” begin.
Amusement is consumption. If your Bill Gates stops his “wasteful” capital consumption, then the workers would benefit. That is basically your argument.
I assure you that if Bill gates decided to consume less in other ways also, maybe less luxury trips or whatever, and hand those “savings” over as gifts to his employees, then they would also benefit. So what?
The fact is that capital consumption puts Mr. Gates at a competive disadvantage on the free market. Such business "policies’ could never become norm on the free market. The more efficient competitor that do not conduct business according to mere self amusements, but only according to monetary profits would outcompete him.
So again, you are left with acknowledging the possible market outcome that some people may indeed prefer to hold it in for exchange of money.
The FAQ says, however, that such conditions were both widespread and long-term.
If this is true (I partly doubt it),they were likely so due to a flux of immigrants who depressed the wage level.
This means that factories could allow their workers to use the restroom to little cost to them but didn’t due to immigration.
I think I’ve found a good economic argument:
The author argues that if the government were to step in, then it would have improved the lives of the workers to very tiny cost to the employer. However, if this is so (and we assume that the employer was profit-maximizing), then the employees could bribe him into giving them bathroom breaks.
That is, if the cost that the employer bears upon forceful government mandate is very low, then the workers could easily pay him that cost to go to the bathroom.
The fact that they (supposedly) didn’t shows that either the costs were high or that they did not care as much for the bathroom break.
The argument is slightly Coasian and in the neo-classic welfare tradition, but I think it’s legitimate.
say any worker can do any deal with any boss excluding inalianable rights, that would not include being locked in a factory, but it could include being locked out of a bathroom. bathroom breaks would just be part of contract negotiation, as long as the company does not breech the contract, they are ok.