Holes in my bucket! Feudalism and Child Labor?

Valmont

KyussBishop wrote: »

the topic of child labour is a lot more complex than it seems when looked at pragmatically; it is immoral...

Immoral? How so? When I was younger, my father would occasionally keep me from school and let me help him make his deliveries around Dublin in his van. Was this immoral from your point of view? What about farm kids mucking in and doing their bit around the fields? This is par for the course even nowadays from what I understand.

Granted, I wasn't sewing Nikes for forty hours a week but would you say child labour is always immoral?

benway

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Neoclassical economists are always going to view things in terms of growth, because that's all they're trained to do. An economic historian who doesn't accept that these laws were part of the process of redrawing the relationship between capital and labour doesn't deserve the name.

Obviously bargaining power and organised resistance had probably more influence than the legislation itself, which which merely formally announced that the battles had been won. I wouldn't disregard neoclassical explanations entirely, either, but you can get a more thorough, balanced overview here:

http://www.amazon.com/International-Labor-Standards-History-ebook/dp/images/B000RMS06C

Permabear wrote: »

However, many on the left are routinely unwilling to accept that the countries with the highest rates of economic freedom also have the fewest numbers of children in the workforce. Almost all countries with low economic freedom rankings have high percentages of working children. Therefore, it would seem that if one is actually serious about eliminating child labor (rather than just carping on about capitalist exploitation in this vaguely Marxist manner), maximizing economic freedom is a good place to begin.

It's also clear that countries with low inequality, per UNDP figures, tend to have very few children in the workplace figures, while those with high inequality do. And the correlation between market freedom and equality is a weak one.

Which would suggest that redistribution, free education, healthcare, specifically targeted welfare measures, a substantial minimum wage, strong employee's rights, etc., are in fact what's needed.

If we're going to take such blunt statistical measures at face value.

Valmont wrote: »

occasionally keep me from school

This. If you'd been out of school entirely, what would it have done for your prospects?

And the fact that children are more easily exploited by unscrupulous parents and/or employers, although many child workers are orphans in the first place.

KyussBishop

Valmont wrote: »

Immoral? How so? When I was younger, my father would occasionally keep me from school and let me help him make his deliveries around Dublin in his van. Was this immoral from your point of view? What about farm kids mucking in and doing their bit around the fields? This is par for the course even nowadays from what I understand.

Granted, I wasn't sewing Nikes for forty hours a week but would you say child labour is always immoral?

The definition of child labour commonly excludes minor work with family business; there are probably cases where it (child labour) isn't immoral, but generally speaking it is.

Suryavarman

KyussBishop wrote: »

Expanding more on my previous posts, relating to empiricism of 'Libertarian economics' (which I've defined before, as free market with no regulation or central bank, though that's open to change in definition):

All sweeping claims that "capitalism solves this" or "the free market solves that" all depend upon the premise that the theories backing Libertarian economics have been empirically shown to hold up in practice.

As I've said a lot before, it is the difference between "the free market does solve that" and "the free market might solve that", which is a very important distinction.

Basically, people are stating things as a certainty that they can not logically state are certain; this doesn't invalidate what they say, but if people don't qualify their statements with "might" and highlight the uncertainty (and that they are discussing theory), then it more easily leads to a black/white ideological discussion.


If a level of uncertainty is added to these statements, it opens them up to being challenged by looking at past economies which have had similar components to Libertarian economics (even if those past economies did not implement the whole of the components associated with Libertarian economics).

It also opens up the arguments to being challenged by pragmatic arguments, looking at the logical conclusion of implementing them in practice, and instead of people saying "capitalism solves that" and that being an argument, they have to provide greater documentation and proof showing that to back it up.

That would be a more empirical and interesting discussion, because people could use actual historical events and hard-research to back up their points, and ideological statements could not be arguments in themselves, because the burden of proof would be on you to back those statements up.

Firstly, there is no such thing as "libertarian economics". People from many different economic schools of thought have considered themselves libertarians despite having different views on economics. While all would agree that free markets work, they disagree on the extent to which they work. Also, I don't think any of those schools actually advocate abolishing the central bank. While nearly all Austrian economists do want to abolish the central bank, Austrian economics itself does not.

Secondly, both I and the other libertarians on this forum have often held up many western countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as examples of what a libertarian economy would resemble. Modern Singapore and Hong Kong have also been mentioned as examples. There are also various places around the world where there are examples of how a libertarian economy could work, from the private provision of education to the masses in third world countries to the abolition of farm subsidies in New Zealand to companies voluntarily having their products tested for safety by Underwriters Laboratory.

Even leaving aside successes of libertarianism it's much easier to point out the abysmal failures of government. It's not exactly utopian to argue that going back to when a failed government policy was enacted and going with more freedom instead of more government control might have been a better policy. It's clear to everyone that the status quo isn't working but yet anyone that proposes more freedom is shouted down and ridiculed as the "pragmatists" discuss about what the Government should do to fix the problem. Any time a libertarian proposes a libertarian solution to a problem they are immediately reminded by somebody of how government "fixed" a problem, while at the same time that somebody ignores that the market was already solving that problem. Then it is the libertarian that is accused of being intellectually dishonest, dogmatic, utopian, evil, greedy and/or heartless. Maybe it's time to drop the name calling and leave the talk about Charles Dickens novels to the literature forum and start discussing libertarianism without all the hyperbole.*

*Just to note, that final paragraph isn't directed straight at you or your post KyussBishop but is just a general statement

Permabear

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benway

Permabear wrote:

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What, like China?

http://www.clb.org.hk/en/files/share/File/general/Child_labour_report_1.pdf

Growth is part of the equation, but it's not the whole solution. That's, regulated, sustainable growth.

Permabear wrote:

Otherwise, we get situations such as described in the OP, where 50,000 children were forced out of factories and back onto the streets to become prostitutes, scavengers, and hustlers.

Bit Dickensian there, no? I like that you've cherry picked one sentence from a 400 page report and ignored the rest, also.

Valmont

benway wrote: »

Bit Dickensian there, no? I like that you've cherry picked one sentence from a 400 page report and ignored the rest, also.

Dickensian? The UNICEF report itself said that the children were now breaking rocks, rolling cigarettes, and engaging in prostitution!

benway

The UNICEF report also said:

In this report, UNICEF urges that priority be given to efforts for the immediate end of hazardous and exploitative child labour and to urgent support for education, so that children may acquire the knowledge and skills that can enable them to improve their lives. It also stresses the need for basic services, social development strategies, income-generation measures and legal protection for children, their families and communities.

But some of you don't seem overly concerned about that bit, or any of the rest of it.

KyussBishop

Suryavarman wrote:

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Alright, "Libertarian economics" is more a catch-all term than having an absolute definition, but my principal arguments behind it still stand:
Libertarian supporters themselves contend that a truly free market has not been tried (i.e. not been empirically tested), and that this is an essential component of Libertarianism.

It would help more if individual posters outlined their specific economic views though, instead of having to rely on that catch-all term.

Suryavarman wrote:

Secondly, both I and the other libertarians on this forum have often held up many western countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as examples of what a libertarian economy would resemble. Modern Singapore and Hong Kong have also been mentioned as examples. There are also various places around the world where there are examples of how a libertarian economy could work, from the private provision of education to the masses in third world countries to the abolition of farm subsidies in New Zealand to companies voluntarily having their products tested for safety by Underwriters Laboratory.

Many of those are partial examples of the implementation of components of Libertarian economics (lets say that means "Libertarian-compatible economics"); are any of those (e.g. Singapore or Hong Kong) a complete example of a desired Libertarian economic system, or are they all incomplete in some way?

If any of them are an ideal implementation of economics for a Libertarian government, they will be very useful in the discussion, for sake of research and examination.

Suryavarman wrote:

Even leaving aside successes of libertarianism it's much easier to point out the abysmal failures of government. It's not exactly utopian to argue that going back to when a failed government policy was enacted and going with more freedom instead of more government control might have been a better policy. It's clear to everyone that the status quo isn't working but yet anyone that proposes more freedom is shouted down and ridiculed as the "pragmatists" discuss about what the Government should do to fix the problem. Any time a libertarian proposes a libertarian solution to a problem they are immediately reminded by somebody of how government "fixed" a problem, while at the same time that somebody ignores that the market was already solving that problem. Then it is the libertarian that is accused of being intellectually dishonest, dogmatic, utopian, evil, greedy and/or heartless. Maybe it's time to drop the name calling and leave the talk about Charles Dickens novels to the literature forum and start discussing libertarianism without all the hyperbole.

Okey, I agree with this generally and yes, I'd like the discussion to take a much more dispassionate/rational look at Libertarianism, while avoiding the ideological arguments it's gotten trapped in a lot lately.

One thing I do disagree with a bit though, is that I don't think many people are against more economic Libertarianism, people just are against absolute economic Libertarianism.

Permabear wrote:

Most economists today accept that economic liberalization is a necessary precursor to economic growth. The case of India is just one example. Until the mid-1970s, India had one of the most heavily regulated economies in the world. Over the past three and a half decades, the economy has been opened up to private sector entrepreneurship and foreign investment to an unprecedented degree, and has seen robust sustained growth rates of between 6 and 9 percent annually as a consequence. A recent report by Edelweiss Capital anticipates that India's GDP will quadruple by 2020.

Okey, I agree with that generally and free markets are a very good economic setup for economic growth; too much regulation can be harmful, though taking it to the other extreme and having little to no regulation is also harmful.
A balance, with minimal regulation where absolutely necessary is (in my opinion) the best way; the details of such regulation are a big topic in themselves.

Permabear wrote:

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Interesting, though I don't think both sides are mutually exclusive; in a cold-rational sense, child labour does provide countries with an unfair advantage competitively, when it comes to cheap labour.

It's an interesting situation, where consumers in developed nations have the advantage of these cheap goods, at the expense of a well-maintained manufacturing industry and associated jobs; it's seems in the interest of the general population of a developed country, not only to oppose child labour on moral grounds, but also exploitative cheap labour in general where it makes them uncompetitive and costs them jobs.

I don't think there's a way to completely resolve that short term; customers demanding that producers, e.g. Apple, ensure these workers get a fair wage and have decent rights (despite the increase in price), is a start though (and may alleviate child labour, with increased wages of parents).

A blanket-ban isn't the way to go, but public awareness of the issue and customers pressuring the producers/corporations to improve the workers lot, does seem better; as the situation improves, it can be gradually more strictly controlled, until a ban can then be enforced.

Permabear

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Valmont

benway wrote: »

The UNICEF report also said:

But some of you don't seem overly concerned about that bit, or any of the rest of it.

You can call for "an immediate end" all you want but it isn't going to happen, as the Child Deterrence Act proved. There is no quick "income generation measure" (deliciously vague) that can magic away these problems -- unless you have a proposal?

Valmont

KyussBishop wrote: »

Libertarian supporters themselves contend that a truly free market has not been tried (i.e. not been empirically tested)

An entire economic system imposed (who will do the imposing?) on society cannot be empirically tested. The very idea doesn't make any sense -- are you aware of the debate surrounding historicism? In short, the issue is more complex than simply "testing libertarian economics".

Permabear

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Eliot Rosewater

benway wrote: »

The UNICEF report also said:

But some of you don't seem overly concerned about that bit, or any of the rest of it.

Isn't this a strawman argument? The current discussion is centred around the morality or necessity of child labour, or otherwise. Isn't taking a swipe at people because they don't support government funded social programs irrelevent? Or at least, why haven't you made it relevent?

I ask because on this thread and the other one you were making a lot of noise about proper engagment. Strawmen arguments don't have a role in proper engagement. I think that if you're going to insist that people engage properly that you have a responsibility to do so too; also, "leading from the front" is obviously the best way to achieve the kind of intellectual culture you seemingly desire for the forum.

I know that's OT but this theory forum is in a deep enough rut at the moment and it's worth having a mini "meta-discussion" about it.

Suryavarman

KyussBishop wrote: »

Alright, "Libertarian economics" is more a catch-all term than having an absolute definition, but my principal arguments behind it still stand:
Libertarian supporters themselves contend that a truly free market has not been tried (i.e. not been empirically tested), and that this is an essential component of Libertarianism.

Whilst libertarians generally contend that a truly free market has not been tried in the past, this shouldn't be considered a cop out. In general we don't completely reject peoples attempts to engage us on the state of 19th century America's economy and we are quite open to criticisms of that system. The problem is when people try to compare our standard of living to the standard of living back then instead of comparing to other countries of the period or what the standard of living was like in say 1890 compared to 1840. That is why these threads eventually turn into mud slinging matches. It's also worth debating why libertarians don't think these were true free markets and what difference it makes.

It would help more if individual posters outlined their specific economic views though, instead of having to rely on that catch-all term.

Personally I believe that for the most part there is no need for any regulation. I think that the environment could be preserved by the market if the government were to enforce private property rights. If that fails and the market can't protect the environment adequately then I am not against government enacting environmental regulation. I think that the only services the Government should be providing are the courts, a police force and a defence force (although I'm not sure Ireland needs a defence force). The reason I support the government providing these services is that I think that the government could provide them better than the private sector. I do support allowing areas to secede from a nation and trying to provide these services privately though.

Many of those are partial examples of the implementation of components of Libertarian economics (lets say that means "Libertarian-compatible economics"); are any of those (e.g. Singapore or Hong Kong) a complete example of a desired Libertarian economic system, or are they all incomplete in some way?

If any of them are an ideal implementation of economics for a Libertarian government, they will be very useful in the discussion, for sake of research and examination.

They are all incomplete although I do think it is worth debating whether they would be an improvement over what we currently have in Ireland.

Okey, I agree with this generally and yes, I'd like the discussion to take a much more dispassionate/rational look at Libertarianism, while avoiding the ideological arguments it's gotten trapped in a lot lately.

One thing I do disagree with a bit though, is that I don't think many people are against more economic Libertarianism, people just are against absolute economic Libertarianism.

I do think that a lot of people are fundamentally opposed to more libertarianism. It wasn't long ago that I was one of them.

Okey, I agree with that generally and free markets are a very good economic setup for economic growth; too much regulation can be harmful, though taking it to the other extreme and having little to no regulation is also harmful.
A balance, with minimal regulation where absolutely necessary is (in my opinion) the best way; the details of such regulation are a big topic in themselves.

Could you give a general overview of what kind of regulation you would support?

Interesting, though I don't think both sides are mutually exclusive; in a cold-rational sense, child labour does provide countries with an unfair advantage competitively, when it comes to cheap labour.

It's an interesting situation, where consumers in developed nations have the advantage of these cheap goods, at the expense of a well-maintained manufacturing industry and associated jobs; it's seems in the interest of the general population of a developed country, not only to oppose child labour on moral grounds, but also exploitative cheap labour in general where it makes them uncompetitive and costs them jobs.

It gives these countries an unfair advantage in some industries. It doesn't give them an advantage in everything as that is impossible. The third world can't possibly produce everything. First world countries are always going to have a comparative advantage in producing something.

benway

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Isn't this a strawman argument? The current discussion is centred around the morality or necessity of child labour, or otherwise. Isn't taking a swipe at people because they don't support government funded social programs irrelevent? Or at least, why haven't you made it relevent?

What? How is that a strawman argument? I'm just pointing out that one sentence out of that UNICEF Report is being bandied about as gospel, but a whole raft of proposals contained in it are being ignored completely, presumably because they don't fit the ideologically defined point that people are going to make, irrespective of what anyone else says. The report gives an expert opinion on a proposed solution to the problem of child labour, it couldn't be more relevant.

And I repeat, what UNICEF propose is to immediately ban child labour, world wide, supplemented primarily by:

"Urgent support for education, so that children may acquire the knowledge and skills that can enable them to improve their lives." Obvious, maybe, but the whole problem with sweatshop labour is that it's unsustainable. The kid who starts off sewing shoes at age 5 isn't going to be able to do much else when he/she reaches 20. The amount of money he/she earns isn't going to lift him or her into the middle class.

Far from lifting developing countries out of poverty, this kind of subsistence work is a poverty trap in its own right. This is why I object to child labour, as stated in a previous post, and I don't really feel the need to take it much further than that.

Obviously, to some of us, it would be the role of government to make educational resources available to slum kids, who wouldn't have the means to access it otherwise.

The report "also stresses the need for basic services, social development strategies, income-generation measures and legal protection for children, their families and communities." More market distorting state intervention, in other words.

Valmont wrote: »

There is no quick "income generation measure" (deliciously vague) that can magic away these problems -- unless you have a proposal?

I have one. Massive redistribution and punitive taxes on the ultra wealthy in these countries, accompanied by a blanket ban on removing funds, above a certain level from the country.

It's not that many developing countries are poor, it's more that they're so horribly unequal, especially post-colonial states ... nations of 30 billionaires and 30 million paupers.

And no, I would have not even the slightest qualm about doing this, virtually without exception of these guys accumulated their wealth through corruption, land grabbing and exploitation, although I've dealt with the philosophical basis >here< if that tickles your fancy. If even a quarter of the stolen land and resources in a country like Kenya could be recouped, it'd change millions of lives for the better.

Unrealistic? Maybe. But no more unrealistic than thinking that economic growth in itself will inevitably lead to an end to child labour, or a massive reduction in poverty, for that matter.

Valmont wrote: »

The very idea doesn't make any sense -- are you aware of the debate surrounding historicism? In short, the issue is more complex than simply "testing libertarian economics".

Which debate is this? I thought that The Poverty of Historicism very effectively refutes Marx's theory of history, but that's about all it does. It also raises serious question marks over Hayek's approach to spontaneous order and cultural evolution, if I remember correctly, been a quite while since I've read it.

KyussBishop

Permabear wrote:

This post had been deleted.

If it doesn't affect their development (educational, social or otherwise), then sure, that'd be acceptable. I don't have a hard-set definition of child labour to be honest; I'm only just reading up on the topic a little now.

Valmont wrote: »

An entire economic system imposed (who will do the imposing?) on society cannot be empirically tested. The very idea doesn't make any sense -- are you aware of the debate surrounding historicism? In short, the issue is more complex than simply "testing libertarian economics".

It gives you solid data with which to empirically examine the economic system, and the problems therein.

The claim that economics can not be empirically tested would actually bolster my wider arguments; you can not claim with certainty that "free markets will solve 'x', 'y'", or that any particular Libertarian economic system will "work as advertised".

So, this opens up wider comparisons of components of Libertarian economics to components of past economic systems; most particularly, components of the economic systems which western countries have implemented in the last 30 years (which is where I see the "oh but that was not a true free market" argument a lot, because of how much the economic crisis impacts its credibility).

Permabear wrote:

What do you mean by "unfair advantage"? Who determines which labor market advantages are fair and which are unfair? By the standards of some theocratic Middle Eastern nations, we in the West have an "unfair" advantage because we "allow" women to work. Maybe we should shuttle women back into the kitchen so as to be on a level playing field with our Muslim brethren.

If country 'A' uses child labour, and as a result is more competitive than country 'B', which does not, then that is an unfair advantage.

Most countries in the world have principally agreed child labour is wrong, so that anyway, is not an example of some countries imposing their morals on others.

Permabear wrote:

Have you asked Western consumers whether they would be willing to give up their cheap electronics and cheap clothes? A friend recently was enthusing about the cheap skirt she bought in Penney's for €10, along with €2 T-shirts for her daughter. Naturally, all had been manufactured in Asia. How much would the same skirt and T-shirts have cost if manufactured by Western unionized labor?

Western nations are not uncompetitive because some children work in the Third World. They are uncompetitive because they have priced themselves out of the market with extravagant minimum wages and organized labor. As such, we have high rates of unemployment, especially among young people, and soaring levels of debt.

How many western consumers even know the stuff they are buying is produced using child labour or other unfair working conditions?

If every product had to advertise that it was produced in these conditions, and there were competing (but more expensive) products advertising they do not, what do you think people would choose?

Remember also, that the massive majority of the profits go to the company selling the product, so mandating certain minimum working and pay conditions, actually would not affect the price that much.

Permabear wrote:

Really? I don't know anyone who has been demanding that Apple increase the price of iPhones and iPads. Do you?

Now, can you please define this extremely slippery notion of a "fair wage"? By local standards, Foxconn, which manufactures components for many technology companies, including Apple, pays significantly in excess of the average wage. How much should it pay in order to be "fair"?

Err, a lot of people are demanding that Apple examine the peoples working conditions, yes; it's rather a big (and growing) PR issue for them at the moment.

A fair wage would take into account the cost of gaining and maintaining an acceptable standard of living in a country, and various other factors; average wage is meaningless if the majority of people in a country get shít pay.

Suryavarman wrote:

Whilst libertarians generally contend that a truly free market has not been tried in the past, this shouldn't be considered a cop out. In general we don't completely reject peoples attempts to engage us on the state of 19th century America's economy and we are quite open to criticisms of that system. The problem is when people try to compare our standard of living to the standard of living back then instead of comparing to other countries of the period or what the standard of living was like in say 1890 compared to 1840. That is why these threads eventually turn into mud slinging matches. It's also worth debating why libertarians don't think these were true free markets and what difference it makes.

Oh no, not a cop out in any way; a lot of the time that problems exposed by the current economic crisis are put forward though, there is often that selective argument "but it wasn't a true free market".

Suryavarman wrote:

Personally I believe that for the most part there is no need for any regulation. I think that the environment could be preserved by the market if the government were to enforce private property rights. If that fails and the market can't protect the environment adequately then I am not against government enacting environmental regulation. I think that the only services the Government should be providing are the courts, a police force and a defence force (although I'm not sure Ireland needs a defence force). The reason I support the government providing these services is that I think that the government could provide them better than the private sector. I do support allowing areas to secede from a nation and trying to provide these services privately though.

Do you think any economic regulation is required to mitigate harmful market bubbles? Or to prevent (rather than to deter or punish after the fact) fraud or mismanagement by banks or people in other areas of the financial market?

In general, what's your view on economic regulation? (as that seems to be the big sticking point for a lot of problems in Libertarianism)

Suryavarman wrote:

Could you give a general overview of what kind of regulation you would support?

Well I'm still learning a lot about economics at the moment, and gaining a better understanding of stuff, but I think regulation to enforce near-complete transparency in the markets would be a good idea.
A public record of every transaction made, and much of the internal workings of banks, would give an extremely useful data set for detecting and preventing fraud.

Mandatory credit risk checks before giving out loans, and making it illegal to reclassify risk on loans, perhaps splitting the banking market into full-reserve banks and more risky investment banks (or at least, some way of giving customers control on how much risk their money is placed in).

I'm still learning a lot of basic stuff when it comes to economics (primarily surrounding economic crisis), but these are some things that re-occur to me, off the top of my head. Benway I think could provide a lot of better examples, through his knowledge of problems from the economic crisis.

Suryavarman wrote:

It gives these countries an unfair advantage in some industries. It doesn't give them an advantage in everything as that is impossible. The third world can't possibly produce everything. First world countries are always going to have a comparative advantage in producing something.

Ya I agree; there's nothing wrong with them having some advantage, so long as it's ethical (and before the definition of ethical gets called into question, I'm primarily talking about child labour, which almost all countries agree is wrong).

KyussBishop

Where is a good link to that UNICEF report btw? Don't immediately see it on first page.

benway

KyussBishop wrote: »

Where is a good link to that UNICEF report btw? Don't immediately see it on first page.

No link was provided.

http://www.unicef.org/sowc97/download.htm

KyussBishop

Cheers; yes to be honest, I think economic equality, more than growth, is the important factor here.
Growth alone won't do much if people are kept in crippling poverty, so much of the initial views in my posts relating to solving child labour, are a bit simplistic.

Eliot Rosewater

benway wrote: »

What? How is that a strawman argument? I'm just pointing out that one sentence out of that UNICEF Report is being bandied about as gospel, but a whole raft of proposals contained in it are being ignored completely, presumably because they don't fit the ideologically defined point that people are going to make, irrespective of what anyone else says.

Which is actually an admission it was a strawman. You admit that you quoted it to tackle an idealogy, when the topic of the discussion wasn't that idealogy but rather the best way to deal with child labour.

Eliot Rosewater

KyussBishop wrote: »

Cheers; yes to be honest, I think economic equality, more than growth, is the important factor here.

I am reminded of this speech of Margeret Thatcher:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okHGCz6xxiw

KyussBishop

^^ You'll need to explain what you mean there; no audio here at the moment, and the transcript isn't very useful.

Copy-paste; helping define 'Child Labour':

What is child labour?
It is time to define terms. The phrase ‘child labour’ conjures up a particular image: we see children chained to looms in dark mills and sweatshops, as if in a long and nightmarish line running from Lancashire in the 1830s right through to the South Asia of the 1990s.
In reality, children do a variety of work in widely divergent conditions. This work takes place along a contin-uum. At one end of the continuum, the work is beneficial, promoting or en-hancing a child’s physical, mental, spiritual, moral or social development without interfering with schooling, recreation and rest.

At the other end, it is palpably de-structive or exploitative. There are vast areas of activity between these two poles, including work that need not impact negatively on the child’s development.
At the most destructive end, no one would publicly argue that exploiting children as prostitutes is acceptable in any circumstances. The same can be said about ‘bonded child labour’, the term widely used for the virtual en- slavement of children to repay debts incurred by their parents or grandpar-ents. This also applies to industries notorious for the dire health and safety hazards they present: for exam-ple, the charcoal furnaces in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso do Sul, or the glass-bangle factories of Firozabad in India.

Hazardous work is simply intolerable for all children. But to treat all work by children as equally unacceptable is to confuse and trivialize the issue and to make it more difficult to end the abuses. This is why it is important to distinguish between beneficial and intolerable work and to recognize that much child labour falls into a grey area between these two extremes.

A decade ago, UNICEF deter-mined that child labour is exploitative if it involves:
  full-time work at too early an age;
  too many hours spent working;
  work that exerts undue physical, social or psychological stress;
  work and life on the streets in bad conditions;
  inadequate pay;
  too much responsibility;
  work that hampers access to education;
  work that undermines children’s dignity and self-esteem, such as slav-ery or bonded labour and sexual exploitation;
  work that is detrimental to full so-cial and psychological development.

The impact of work on a child’s development is the key to determining when such work becomes a problem.
Work that is harmless to adults can be extremely harmful to children.
Among the aspects of a child’s devel-opment that can be endangered by work are:
  physical development — including overall health, coordination, strength, vision and hearing;
  cognitive development — includ-ing literacy, numeracy and the acqui-sition of knowledge necessary to normal life;
  emotional development — includ-ing adequate self-esteem, family attachment, feelings of love and ac-ceptance;
  social and moral development —including a sense of group identity, the ability to cooperate with others and the capacity to distinguish right from wrong.

The physical harm is, of course, the easiest to see. Carrying heavy loads or sitting for long periods in un-natural positions can permanently dis-able growing bodies. Hard physical labour over a period of years can stunt children’s physical stature by up to 30 per cent of their biological potential, as they expend stores of stamina that should last into adulthood.

Children are also vulnerable psy-chologically: they can suffer devastat-ing psychological damage from being in an environment in which they are demeaned or oppressed. Self-esteem is as important for children as it is for adults.
Education is one of the keys that will unlock the prison cell of haz-ardous labour in which so many chil- dren are confined. It is almost impos-sible to overemphasize this point.
Education helps a child develop cognitively, emotionally and socially, and it is an area often gravely jeopar- dized by child labour. Work can inter- fere with education in the following ways:
  it frequently absorbs so much time that school attendance is impossible;
  it often leaves children so ex-hausted that they lack the energy to attend school or cannot study effec- tively when in class;
  some occupations, especially sea-sonal agricultural work, cause chil-dren to miss too many days of class even though they are enrolled in school;
  the social environment of work sometimes undermines the value chil-dren place on education, something to which street children are particularly vulnerable;
  children mistreated in the work-place may be so traumatized that they cannot concentrate on school work or are rejected by teachers as disruptive.

I'll shortly be afk the rest of the day.

benway

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

Which is actually an admission it was a strawman. You admit that you quoted it to tackle an idealogy, when the topic of the discussion wasn't that idealogy but rather the best way to deal with child labour.

Nae way, pal.

I quoted it because it's what UNICEF proposed, in 1997, to do about child labour.

I felt the need to highlight it because a colourful, selective quote from that same report, contained in the the OP, cogged from wikipedia, it would appear.

And, while I'm at it, it's worth adding the "what happened next" to that quote:

Out of this unhappy situation and after two years of difficult negotiations, a formal Memorandum of Understanding was signed in July 1995 by the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association (BGMEA), and the UNICEF and ILO offices in Bangladesh. The resulting programme was to be funded by these three organizations. BGMEA alone has committed about $1 million towards the implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding.

Under the terms of the agreement, four key provisions were formulated:
• the removal of all under-age workers — those below 14 — within a period of four months;
• no further hiring of under-age children;
• the placement of those children removed from the garment factories in appropriate educational programmes with a monthly stipend;
• the offer of the children’s jobs to qualified adult family members.

The Memorandum of Understanding explicitly directed factory owners, in the best interests of these children, not to dismiss any child workers until a factory survey was completed and alternative arrangements could be made for the freed children.

In order to determine the extent of the educational and other rehabilitation
facilities needed, a survey of all BGMEA members’ factories was undertaken
jointly by the three signatories in cooperation with the Government of Bangladesh. The survey of 1,821 factories found that half employed child labour, a total of 10,500 children. Forty per cent of the children were between
the ages of 10 and 12, and half had no education.

With financial support from UNICEF, two NGOs — Gono Shahjjo Shangstha and the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) — have been attempting to find places in schools for these children. As of October 1996, 135 new schoolrooms were operational and more than 4,000 children were enrolled. The children are receiving primary health care, skills development training and a monthly cash stipend to compensate for their lost wages. In addition, personal bank accounts and credit facilities for their families are being set up.

The jury is still out on the long-term effectiveness of the Memorandum of Understanding. One key issue, for example, is whether setting up special schools for erstwhile child workers and providing a package of incentives such
as monthly stipends, health care and skills development is a sustainable model that could be applied elsewhere and on a larger scale. Nevertheless, the events and insights that led up to the Memorandum must inform the approach of all those seeking to eliminate hazardous child labour.

The world owes child workers a meaningful alternative if they are not to suffer from some of the very measures designed to help them.

Don't think there's a basis in this story for saying that the introduction of Child Labor Deterrence Act was a counterproductive move.

Suryavarman

KyussBishop wrote: »

Oh no, not a cop out in any way; a lot of the time that problems exposed by the current economic crisis are put forward though, there is often that selective argument "but it wasn't a true free market".

But the current economic crisis didn't occur in a free market. The current system is far more comparable to a socialist banking system than a free market one. The government has a monopoly on the provision of money and centrally plans interest rates, savers have no incentive to seek out safe banks as their savings are guaranteed by the government, the only way the financial system could be considered a free market is the fact that banks are privately owned but even then they are the most heavily regulated sector of the economy and, in America a third of their profits go to the Government (although in Ireland it is only 12.5%) and of the gains investors make and dividends they receive they must pony up more cash to the Government. Then to top it all off, the banks know that if they f*ck up they get bailed out, so there is no incentive to play it safe. To claim that that is a free market displays a serious detachment from reality and quite frankly I don't see how it is possible to have a rational debate with somebody who believes we have a free market in banking.

Do you think any economic regulation is required to mitigate harmful market bubbles? Or to prevent (rather than to deter or punish after the fact) fraud or mismanagement by banks or people in other areas of the financial market?

I believe that market bubbles are the result of an artificial increase in the money supply, which is almost always a result of government interference in the supply of money. So therefore I don't see a need for government regulation in that regard.

I've said it before that fraud is the equivalent of theft and as a result, doesn't need any special rules regarding it.

The market punishes mismanagement by forcing badly run companies out of business.

In general, what's your view on economic regulation? (as that seems to be the big sticking point for a lot of problems in Libertarianism)

In general I believe that economic regulation does more harm than good. I think that in most cases where one might deem regulation necessary, the market will tend to work pretty well without it.

Well I'm still learning a lot about economics at the moment, and gaining a better understanding of stuff, but I think regulation to enforce near-complete transparency in the markets would be a good idea.
A public record of every transaction made, and much of the internal workings of banks, would give an extremely useful data set for detecting and preventing fraud.

Mandatory credit risk checks before giving out loans, and making it illegal to reclassify risk on loans, perhaps splitting the banking market into full-reserve banks and more risky investment banks (or at least, some way of giving customers control on how much risk their money is placed in).

I'm still learning a lot of basic stuff when it comes to economics (primarily surrounding economic crisis), but these are some things that re-occur to me, off the top of my head. Benway I think could provide a lot of better examples, through his knowledge of problems from the economic crisis.

Indeed these would all be valuable pieces of information to have and services to provide. It costs money to provide these pieces of information and services though, so we then must ask whether the costs justify the benefits? We also need to ask will the markets provide these services and pieces of information without being forced to? There is also no need to provide these services and pieces of information if there aren't any real problems in the marketplace without them.

Ya I agree; there's nothing wrong with them having some advantage, so long as it's ethical (and before the definition of ethical gets called into question, I'm primarily talking about child labour, which almost all countries agree is wrong).

I totally agree that child labour is wrong and most libertarians do also. The problem here is what are the alternatives? At the moment the alternatives to working in a sweatshop are generally working on a farm, a life of crime, child prostitution or death. I think we can both agree that working in a sweatshop is better than the other four options.

What many in the first world then propose is for government funded education for these children. That is a great idea but it has many problems. There is an opportunity cost to attaining that education. The time spent in school is time not spent working. This means less income resulting in starvation for the family which means that the child must leave school and go working anyway. The solution then is for a mandatory global minimum wage so that the adults can earn enough money to provide food for the family as the children get an education. The problem with this is that it will lead to these countries losing their comparative advantage in textile manufacturing and companies start replacing third world workers with machines and first world engineers. The solution then is for welfare instead of minimum wages but this results in dependency and slower economic growth due to increased economic inefficiencies due to government involvement in the economy, so in the long run they are much worse off than if they had just been left alone. The solution then is for first world countries to provide the welfare but that just results in the same thing happening again.

After all that I'm going to make what is probably my most controversial point. Providing an education to these children just is not worth it. Exactly what benefit is a child going to reap from receiving this education? Economic growth is a long arduous process. By the time these economies have developed to the point were reading and writing skills are of use, these people will probably be unable to take these jobs as they will be too old. Lets be fair, agriculture and textile manufacturing do not require an education and these will be just about the only jobs available for the foreseeable future. Then as these children enter their 40's they get jobs making toys or assembling other consumer goods which, yet again, don't require much of an education. So in the end we've wasted a huge amount of money and everyone is much worse off as a result.

Channel Zero

SupaNova wrote: »

It is increased production that increases wages and phases out child labor, not government legislation. All it takes is the most basic of critical thinking to understand this.

You have it arse backwards. It is government legislation that increases wages and phases out child labor.

Government legislation phased out child labour in many countries about a hundred years ago, and we had the same outcry from some quarters then as now, who saw this level of government action to mitigate social evils as interfering with "market forces" and thus being antithetical to the operations of a free market.
Government legislation established minimum wages and conditions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_welfare_reforms

OP is historically faulty.

Permabear

This post has been deleted.

Suryavarman

Channel Zero wrote: »

You have it arse backwards. It is government legislation that increases wages and phases out child labor.

Government legislation phased out child labour in many countries about a hundred years ago, and we had the same outcry from some quarters then as now, who saw this level of government action to mitigate social evils as interfering with "market forces" and thus being antithetical to the operations of a free market.
Government legislation established minimum wages and conditions.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_welfare_reforms

OP is historically faulty.

Tbh, given the choice between your theory of what increases wages and the theory that every single economist on the planet propounds I'm going to side with the economists on this one.

benway

Eliot Rosewater wrote: »

This post had been deleted.

What, still pushing revanchist trickle down economics in 2012? That ship has long sailed, I'm afraid.

The issue of equity, in particular, often got short shrift. Is a society in which the vast majority of its citizens are becoming worse off –but in which a few at the top are doing so well that average incomes are rising—better off than one in which the vast majority are doing better? While there may be disagreements—and those at the very top may well stress that average income is the appropriate measure—the possibility that increases in GDP may not benefit most individuals means that we cannot simply ignore issues of distribution. Some economists argued that distribution concerns could be ignored because they believed in trickle down economics— somehow everybody would benefit; a rising tide would lift all boats. But the evidence against trickle down economics is now overwhelming, at least in the sense that an increase in average incomes is not sufficient to raise the incomes of the poor for quite prolonged periods. Some economists argued that distribution concerns could and should be ignored, because such concerns
were outside the province of economics; economists should focus on efficiency and growth alone.

Distribution was a matter for politics. The fundamental theorems of welfare economics gave economists some comfort, for those results suggested that one could separate out equity and efficiency concerns; any desired distribution of income could be achieved simply by a redistribution of initial endowments. But advances in economic theory (especially related to the economics of information) showed that that was simply not true; lump sum redistributions were not in general feasible, and efficiency and equity were inextricably interlinked. Interestingly, several sources of these interlinkages (e.g. associated with agency problems) had been analyzed in the context of developing countries fifteen years before the formulation of the Washington consensus.

There are other connections. Capital constraints may limit access to education, implying that many individuals’ full potential is never realized. See, e.g. Birdsall, N. [1999] “Education: The People’s Asset” CSED Working Paper No. 5, September. Large inequalities may give rise to social tensions, and are even systematically associated with civil strife. See, e.g. Deininger, K. [2003] “Causes and Consequences of Civil Strife: Micro-Level Evidence from Uganda.” World Bank Working Paper No. 3045, May. Also, civil strife has a very negative effect on growth.

Joe Stiglitz, former chair of the Council of Economic Advisors - The Post Washington Consensus Consensus.

Permabear wrote: »

Maybe you missed this post earlier in the thread ... but it's clear that many economic historians disagree with the view that government regulations phased out child labor.

And you clearly missed this post earlier? Grossly simplistic view that you're pushing - undoubtedly the laws are the result of social conflict, and the gains had already been made, but the law formalises the arrangement. Following the Hayekian model of legislation, as it happens. Don't dream that you can write the rise of organised labour and the rebalancing of relations between labour and capital out of the history books.

Permabear wrote: »

Ah, the minimum wage ... another controversial concept that many economists see as damaging. When Robert Whaples surveyed Ph.D.-holding members of the American Economic Association, he found (as Harvard professor Greg Mankiw notes on his blog) that 46.8 percent of them believed that the minimum wage should be abolished.

And 53.2% think it should be retained? Killer post, brah.

Many economists recognise the pareto inefficiency of child labour, also Baland and Robinson at Harvard show that increased lifetime earnings through education will more than compensate "greedy parents" sending their children off to work, and even if this does not occur, the labour market effects of removing children from the workforce will be to their benefit. There are many positions, premised on multiple equlibria where parents send their children to work, poverty, failures of the capital markets, social norms, etc - good summary here
Child Labor: Theory, Evidence, and Policy

The findings all favour intervention of some kind, summarised by Brown et al:

The central policy lesson of the Ranjan and Basu models is that government intervention is required for only one generation of children. For, once an educated child’s future income is raised above a threshold level, the newly created parent will be able to choose education rather than child labor for the next generation.

SupaNova

benway wrote: »

Let me get this straight, your argument is:

(a) Third world children should be glad of their sweatshops; and
(b) The failure of third world governments to intervene so as to vindicate the rights of exploited children is evidence that a minimal state is "optimal"?

Some odd logic here.

No, what is odd is how you got this from my post.

Seems like you're also trying to push a revisionist version of the history of organised labour recast as a triumph of the unregulated market? Can't fault you for ambition, at least. This is going to be fun.

The point of my post was to show that organised labor or government legislation is not what raises wages and living standards.

In the OP my quetion was genuine, not rhetorical. I'm not sure how you can hold your position that minimum wage laws are what drive wages without being able to answer the question:
If minimum wage laws are what raises wages and living standards, why not double, triple, quadruple or multiply by a factor of 100 the minimum wage tomorrow?