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You are provably wrong!
Go and read the history books my friend, since it is a matter of fact that not just government regulations ended capitalist exploitation of children, but more specific socialist government intervention did that. It were not the capitalist bosses or there allies in parliament which made sich laws or even voted for it, they were definately against it!
If there would not have been any government interventions, child labour would STILL EXIST even today.
If I’m so provably wrong, why don’t you prove it? [I suppose we can agree that your mere assertions don’t constitute proof]. Quote me something, or provide a link.
Here’s a quote: Capitalistic competition is also why “child labor” has all but disappeared, despite unionist claims to the contrary. Young people originally left the farms to work in harsh factory conditions because it was a matter of survival for them and their families. But as workers became better paid—thanks to capital investment and subsequent productivity improvements—more and more people could afford to keep their children at home and in school. Union-backed legislation prohibiting child labor came after the decline in child labor had already begun. Moreover, child labor laws have always been protectionist and aimed at depriving young people of the opportunity to work. Since child labor sometimes competes with unionized labor, unions have long sought to use the power of the state to deprive young people of the right to work. In the Third World today, the alternative to “child labor” is all too often begging, prostitution, crime, or starvation. Unions absurdly proclaim to be taking the moral high road by advocating protectionist policies that inevitably lead to these consequences.
“Most economic historians conclude that this legislation was not the primary reason for the reduction and virtual elimination of child labor between 1880 and 1940. Instead they point out that industrialization and economic growth brought rising incomes, which allowed parents the luxury of keeping their children out of the work force. In addition, child labor rates have been linked to the expansion of schooling, high rates of return from education, and a decrease in the demand for child labor due to technological changes which increased the skills required in some jobs and allowed machines to take jobs previously filled by children. Moehling (1999) finds that the employment rate of 13-year olds around the beginning of the twentieth century did decline in states that enacted age minimums of 14, but so did the rates for 13-year olds not covered by the restrictions. Overall she finds that state laws are linked to only a small fraction – if any – of the decline in child labor. It may be that states experiencing declines were therefore more likely to pass legislation, which was largely symbolic.”
The comments here reveal that “In New Zealand there is no minimum age at present but almost everyone objects to children under the age of 13 working in paid employment.” So your claim that without socialist govt intervention to save the day there would still be child labor, though interesting in that it shows your ability to see what is happening in parallel universes, somehow doesn’t jibe with the events of our current universe.
OK, my friend, or should I say comrade, your turn.
i’d also like to point out that the federal government’s ban on child labor didn’t even apply to the farms, where most of the child labor was conducted.
furthermore, a reduction in child labor isn’t necessarily a good thing to the children. is a paper route exploitation? what about instruction on how to use a computer? is forcing people to starve for their own good, if it means they are not subject to “exploitation”?
and what about compulsory schooling? is this not forced labor?
The rise in the Standard of Living made child labor obsolete anyway, there was no reason for a law. The issue was that they couldn’t Unionize the kids and it was taking away from the Union workers. So those people made an argument that the kids were being exploitive.
The above links and articles were great! Ive been able, to give specific, simple examples in my political conversations lately as to why the ingrained notion that govt is our savior/ protector is the exact opposite of reality..
In that regard, are there any articles about civil rights and govt? At this point, I pretty much take on faith that most govt actions screw us over and drastically diminish our freedoms-- but I would love a simple answer to “well the govt protects our civil rights”.
All the child labor stuff was great, also. Its funny, when i asked the question originally i was thinking back to history textbooks through the years, of the run-down, forlorn looking 6+ year old kids looking out from the coal mines or the factories. That too, was (at least in me) second nature to think that the govt came in and saved “the CHILDREN” (you know- the hysterical “do it for the children”)..but when I look at the issue now, as a parent myself I resent the notion that my kids cannot find an age appropriate job (i hated it when i was a teenager too!) All of this is a ruse to take control from parents- along with compulsory education… thanks for illustrating another example of our saviors riding in on their white horses to rescue us from an outdated or alltogether non-issue and how much more of our freedoms are lost in the whole farcical process
I’ve seen many a ridiculous notion since joining the forums here, but that one really takes the cake. It’s so totally the opposite of reality in so many ways.
Dip into lewrockwell.com and find out how the govt takes away our civil rights, day in day out. Just about any article or ipod [or those little posts on the right margin] provides example after example.
In that regard, are there any articles about civil rights and govt? At this point, I pretty much take on faith that most govt actions screw us over and drastically diminish our freedoms-- but I would love a simple answer to “well the govt protects our civil rights”.
I have always found this laughable. Some like to point to Southern segregatation as an example of where government stepped in and freed people. What they fail to notice is that segregatation is only possible with government intervention in the first place.
The Feds didnt give back our freedom of association. Where the states used threats of violence to keep us apart, the feds used threats of violence to force people together.
The right answer was to abolish all laws concerning who we can or should associate.
I think it is wrong of libertarians to take a blanket approach to anything. There are likely minority cases where the government laws DID HELP some children. Just think about how many child abusers we have today - between beating them or sexually molesting them. Some parents are awful. Of course, libertarian theory addresses this without the need for Child Protective Services; however, there are likely some cases where the aggressive coercion of the government did work to the advantage of some poor child whose parents were trying to exploit him.
But the point is that libertarianism doesn’t have to help everyone while hurting no one, or at least hurting no one who is relatively innocent (I don’t think anyone really cares about hurting a rich man’s subsidized income). But even further, libertarianism is not morally at fault. The lack of laws that rely on aggressive coercion does not imply greater aggressive coercion or even that people will tend towards erroneous decisions.
So while I am a radical libertarian anarchist, I don’t think claiming that it is this utopian Pareto-improvement helps our cause but really just makes us look like we’re taking too much on faith.
thats just what i was thinking of.. when im talking to liberal friends about this issue and they talk about the feds protecting blacks from the lynch mobs, or more currently, protecting the gays from the anti-gay marriage people. I like the piont that the feds simply force integration..well said. Besides that, why is marriage a federal institution anyway?
“however, there are likely some cases where the aggressive coercion of the government did work to the advantage of some poor child whose parents were trying to exploit him.”
I don’t see the point behind that statement at all.
It is likely that the aggressive coercion of the government works to the advantage of some minority in every act of government. Not just some cases.
But the point is always the same, the benefits (or at least some of them) are visible while the costs are mostly unseen. Especially the opportunity costs.
There are also families being harassed in the name of “protecting the children” and children who are and have been kidnapped from their families by the government, again, in the name of protecting them. There are also children who have been taken away from bad homes and put in even worse homes.
Then there are families who would like to seek help but don’t because the only agency to seek help from has the legal power to kidnap the children from their parents. That’s like seeking advice about taxes from the IRS.
The costs are endless even from the point of view of child services itself.
DD5, I’m not saying that government intervention is by nature beneficial on net. Most likely it is not. But to suggest that every individual is always harmed by more government is a silly statement. While it is difficult to see both the seen and unseen, it doesn’t seem like a stretch to imagine a situation where a person was benefited by government where he wouldn’t have benefited more if there was no government. Of course that is not true on net, just on an individual basis.
Go and read the history books my friend, since it is a matter of fact that not just government regulations ended capitalist exploitation of children, but more specific socialist government intervention did that. It were not the capitalist bosses or there allies in parliament which made sich laws or even voted for it, they were definately against it!
If there would not have been any government interventions, child labour would STILL EXIST even today.
No way this is real. This is just too perfect. I smell a troll.
That’s exactly my point. We, as libertarians, should not present straw man arguments. Sometimes the way we present libertarianism sounds as if we are indeed saying the above straw man.
Our highly-respected libertarian theorists are indeed above this. Unfortunately, I see too many individuals in these forums advance such claims, or at least claims that could easily be interpreted as such.
Well the whole point of a govt is to benefit some people at the expense of others.
I mean the President gets to fly around for up to 8 years in Air Force One, and his wife lives the high life as well. I’m sure they are both very pleased with this arrangement.
96% of medicaire recipients are very happy with the program. Obviously they are getting something for nothing. All the govt employees make double what a normal person gets, if we count benefits.
California govt workers are also very happy with their arrangement with the govt. I mean it’s not easy getting so much money you bankrupt a place as big as a major European country.
And of course all the weapons manufacturers, and everyone else who gets a govt contract gets paid very very well.
So of course SOME people benefit a great deal from govt programs. No one ever denied this.
Was it George Carlin who said “It’s a very exclusive club, and you’re not in it.”
I think that it’s not too unreasonable to say that everyone suffers under statism.
I mean, the statist suffers because he can’t really attain his ends of wealth and power (since his policies produce black markets and they also decrease the productive capacity of the economy), and everyone else suffers because their wealth is extracted.
Obviously some people benefit by means of the state, but there is a difference between legitimate and illegitimate benefits; and even a die-hard leftist will admit this to you. No one cares if illegitimate beneficiaries are worse off. In fact, leftists have a vested interests in seeing such happen. But to find any agreement between people that hold different political philosophies about who the illegitimate beneficiaries are, one must relax or limit their number. Leftists will agree about corporate executives whose corporations survive on corporate welfare. But they would not agree about welfare recipients. And to some degree, libertarians shouldn’t include them either - as a lot of people are taxed more for Medicare and Social Security or unemployment insurance than they actually receive in benefits.
To convince any non-libertarian that libertarianism is good shouldn’t rely on some argument that libertarianism will clearly benefit every person except the illegitimate beneficiaries of government. That’s a utopian position. Just as some people “slip through the cracks” in our statist system, a libertarian system will also see some undeserved “casualties” and that these individuals will be different depending upon the system. This is simply the outcome of living in an incredibly complex world. It is not the fault of libertarianism. It’s likely no one’s fault. I’d say that libertarianism will produce less bad things happening to innocent people. Saying they will experience no bad things is ridiculous.
Libertarianism’s primary critique is its suspected utopianism - that the market is infallible and that everyone will benefit. Which makes it a poor place to start an argument. If you give a little, people are more inclined to listen. Rather than being utopian you merely have to demonstrate why most honest people will be better off under libertarianism, while saying that those who are not are only harmed to a negligible degree, if at all. The others, who are obviously hurt, have no ground to complain, as their lifestyle was the product of dishonest theft.
For those who rely on government aid, this means you have to admit that they’d be worse off if they received no aid whatsoever. Then you can say that private charity would help them, but you shouldn’t argue that private donations will be larger than what the state can raise through taxes - you have no means to prove such and it seems likely that it isn’t true. You can then argue that such private charity will be administered much more efficiently due to market competition - charities that are corrupt or funnel most of their income to their executives will quickly lose support and possibly face criminal charges of fraud. And you can argue that to the extent a free market betters the economy, that less charity will be required, as most goods and services will be cheaper, as well as many of those requiring government aid could find productive jobs capable of supporting themselves. You could also argue that the requirements for gov’t aid are perverse, promoting single-parent families, not working when one could, etc.
We can’t know in advance if those on gov’t aid will be worse off or better. It likely depends upon individual conditions. You have to show that libertarianism doesn’t write these people off as thieves or come to some incredibly-difficult-to-swallow conclusion that they’d without a doubt be better off. I find the best means of argument is to first admit that it would still be a problem then explain how our society would attempt to take care of it. The point isn’t to define the problem out of existence or even prove that it would be less of a problem, only that the difference between the statist solution and the libertarian solution is negligible.
I hope this clarifies what I was originally intending to say.