Being under 18 shouldn't make you a slave

and look, if they are not smart enough to watch out, well they have no one but themselves to blame, right Absolute?



this is six year old Elsie Shaw...worked as a cartoner..

looks fulfilled and happy, doesnt' she?

http://www.awesomestories.com/history/child-labor/in-the-canneries

 

but I am thinking maybe THIS is the kind of 'work' that some here may have in mind for America's youth:

http://abcnews.go.com/US/domestic-sex-trafficking-increasing-united-states/story?id=10557194

 

Alert the presses! If kids are allowed property rights, they'll become armless sweatshop laborers!

 

there are a lot of concerns about this kind of thing - elder abuse is a major issue - including both within the family and in institutional care. but it doesn't mean that children don't need protection.

most likely - but there are legal requirements around minors working on movie sets/TV shows. they are required to have proper supervision, schooling and a range of measures are put in place that re not applied to adults working in the industry.

that is not the same thing. a child (including a teenager) is still developing, we know they are more vulnerable.

I am not sure if you are yourself a kid, or an adult who lacks education in this field.

this is aimed at the lay person and has some useful information:

http://raisingchildren.net.au/articles/brain_development_teenagers.html

my own perspective, both with my own children and when working with young people, has always been to support their development, and provide opportunities for them to experience age appropriate challenges, and to succeed - encouraging them to develop confidence as they grow older.


"Child protection laws" banning child labor are worthless. In rich countries, most children don't work because they don't have to. In poor countries, they only "liberate" the children to starve on the street instead.

I'm sure your definition of "virtual slavery" is appropriately broad and vague to justify banning whatever employment relationships you personally have a negative emotional response to.

yes there are adults who are vulnerable. in the more extreme cases, these people may have others appointed to be their guardians, however we DO KNOW that children are vulnerable, and the more we learn about developmental psychology, the more we understand how this comes about.



Which one? Or are you making the claim that there is one universal collective teenage brain? Because such an illogical contention would be clear evidence of insanity and therefore a lack of competence to enter an employment contract.[/QUOTE]

 

"there's a sucker born every minute and two to take him"

if you put vulnerable people in a position to be abused, someone will abuse them. These are not imaginary principles, these are historical facts. Humans have not changed that much in a hundred years, put children to work and they will be uneducated, low paid, and exploited.

How many people do you know of that have the discipline to go to school and work full time? when are these kids supposed to be kids? or do you feel they don't deserve to be allowed to be children?

there are, as has been explained repeatedly, avenues for kids to be emancipated if they need/want to be. There is no need to put adults out of work, to put kids at risk, to allow MORE exploitation just because a few pervs want to have sex with kids, and a few teenagers are chaffing against prohibitions to their 'self determination'.

 

here is another example of how teenagers can be abused and exploited...do you think a thirty year old woman would have stood for this? of course not.



http://www.boxingscene.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-99553.html

 

expansion on previous post:

my own perspective, .... is to provide opportunities for them to experience age appropriate challenges, and to succeed - encouraging them to develop confidence as they grow older. this can mean allowing them to push boundaries - specially as they get older, but it can also mean having to be firm where it is clear that adverse circumstances can arise.

this can be done in a way that is respectful of the young person,

you raise an important point, but the fact that children in poor countries are often the employee of choice (often supporting their families because employers prefer compliant children to more assertive adults) only highlights why child protection laws are a good idea in countries such as ours.

I'm sure you are over reacting.

I am quite happy for young teenagers to work and earn income - it can help them gain important skills (interpersonal usually rather than job specific) self confidence and responsibility, but there are employers who will take on younger employees because of lower wages, higher levels of compliance, lack of knowledge about their rights as a worker, and basically - the ease of being pushed around.

the "virtual slavery" I was thinking about was children working in cocoa plnatations in Cote Ivoire - I challenge you to disagree with me that this is often virtual slavery.

http://www.theworldly.org/ArticlesPages/Articles2006/May06Articles/CocoaFarmSlevery.html

sigh .....

http://teenagebrain.blogspot.com/

 

this report was from 2001, a time when unemployment was at 4%...and even then, failing school grades and high accident rates made working a high risk occupation.

as tough as times are now, putting kids to work would encourage even more abuse. Note the one manager gloating that he preferred to hire teens because they dont' expect benefits.

without an education, these kids will be trapped in those min wage jobs for their lifetimes.

http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~awinson/teens-working.htm

 

I agree, I think that teenagers have the right to work up to a point but the main 'job' of a teenager is to learn how to be a self sufficient adult...and that means staying in school and getting an education. there will be plenty of time for him/her to be a working stiff, there will never be another time they can have the freedom and the resources available to them like they do as kids.

To put kids to work to help support the family, in particular, is a travesty. It continues and encourages a cycle of poverty.

 

I think it depends on the situation. Unlike you, I don't think in terms of collectives and abstractions, but in terms of individuals and individual situations. Certain individuals may lack the mental competence to enter certain binding contracts, but you need to look at it on a case by case basis.

None of you have satisfactorily addressed any of the following issues:


1) What is "children"? Does it begin and end with an arbitrary magic number and why does the magic number change? Why can you hunt at 6, marry at 12, work at 14, drive at 16, smoke at 18, and drink at 21? Does everyone magically become mentally competent to do these things at these ages.

I mean, you throw around this word "children" like it has some objective meaning we've all agreed to, when even the government can't even seem to agree with itself what it means.


2) Your visions of "6 year olds" laboring in coal mines derive from times and places when the economy was much poorer than it is in the 21st century Western world, so they had to labor in those coal mines because they would have starved on the street otherwise. That's all a law banning it would have done and that's all a law banning it does in third world countries today. What are you saying, that children should be forced to starve on the street? That's justice to you?


3) Certain forms of child labor are still legal, including working as a child performer or working on a farm. These forms as work are more strenuous than many forms of work that are totally illegal for people under 14, such as retail clerk and office boy.

I have yet to here anything approaching logic to defend a legal system in which a 4 year old can work as a lead actor in a Broadway play but a 13 year old can't work as an office boy.


4) For that matter, why isn't it considered child labor to force children to go to school? I spent 13 years in school and sure seemed as much like labor as secretarial work is, and it's unpaid, and it's completely involuntary.

And yet you schizophrenically fret about "child labor" while defending to death the government's schools. Perhaps you will say that they need the schooling to find good jobs later, but most of the curriculum doesn't teach any important job skills nor is sitting at a desk listening to a drone a very good way to learn anything anyway. Job skills are best obtained through, you know, working in a job and employers care more about job experience than school.

So what you're really saying is not that children should be working, but that they should be forced to work at whatever the government wants them to be working at. Which, it just so happens, is unpaid and unproductive busywork.

You'll say that if they had a choice in the matter, they'd stupidly make the wrong choice and be exploited and abused. But they're all being exploited and abused now! If they did have a choice, they'd at least have a chance to escape the authority figures currently exploiting and abusing them. You don't notice this, of course, because you trust the organization doing the exploiting. And why shouldn't you? You were raised in its schools.

Remember that the whole 19th century "movement to get the children out of the workplace and into the schools was precisely in order to "educate" them to be obedient factory drones and serfs of the state later on. Maybe they'd be better off apprenticed and learning a unique creative skill, as it was for centuries, than learning the skills of mindless obedience to authority and regimentation in the schools.

 

But, again, what defines "children"? And what defines protection? It's all well and good to say mentally incompetent people can't enter valid legal contracts, but are the current laws clearly and sensibly based around that fact?

So, again, why are other forms of work, some that are less strenuous that acting in the movie industry, prohibited rather than merely regulated?

It is the same thing because everyone is different. There really are some 45-year-old that are mentally less capable than some 17-year-olds and even some 12-year-olds.

You're talking about a developmental spectrum that varies from person to person rather than a "one-or-the-other" deal. Given that, everyone needs to be judged as an individual according to the same rules to determine mental competence, rather than having two separate arbitrary groups (everyone over 18 and everyone under 1 with different rules applying to each.

Why would you think that wealthy and middle-class parents in rich countries would send their children to work in a coal mine at all? They might send them to do some kind of work that they considered appropriate and useful for gaining a skill, but not likely a coal mine.

Only the teenager or the teenager's family can protect him from being "pushed around." That's the case regardless of what the state says or does and regardless of what kind of work he was allowed to do.

You'll say "Well, what about desperate parents who will send children out to work because they need money? What about abusive, greedy parents?"

Well, the desperate ones need the money; banning the child from working hurts them all. The abusive ones will be abusive regardless of what the labor laws are and, indeed, allowing teenagers more freedom to work and greatly ability to exercise their other rights might make them more able to escape abusive parents.

That doesn't sound like virtual slavery. It sounds like actual, real-life, gun-to-the-head slavery, which would be the case regardless of the person's age. It's all a matter of whether something's voluntary or not voluntary.

Regardless of what someone says, it should be obvious that every brain is unique. You can talk about general differences along a spectrum, but don't use generalities to paper over the fact that we are all unique individuals.

That's like saying that the "female brain" is different from the "male brain," so they should only be allowed to work in certain professions more fitting to female mindset. But that's considered sexism. It is true that the are general psychological differences between the female sex and the male sex, but there is also a huge amount of overlap and variation between individuals. The generality doesn't supersede the individuality.

 

Ever met a 7 year old? Try and get through a single day without one deciding they're quite well equipped to do something that they're not.

No, I don't think it is practical. I imagine most 90 year citizens would contest that reclassification and we would expend more effort than we would save with such a process.

Every new born, without exception, is unable to meet the standard we set for living independently in our society. Not every 90 year old ever will be senile. It's more reasonable (and just) to delay entry into legal adulthood on the basis of practical caution to those we know lacked an ability than it is to strip it from others on the basis of suspicion that they may no longer have that ability.

 

I still say we should lock up any human under the age of 21 (and then only allow them out if they can PROVE competence), and not let them associate with normal people. Remove the feral, immature, foolish, baby humans from society until they are capable of making sense.

 

I hope I never have to meet your parents.

"Vile deeds like poison weeds bloom well in prison air, it is only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there."-Oscar Wilde.

 

unlike you I don't look to the court system and the government to make every decision for me. And that's what you are advocating. Instead of equality: a law for everyone alike. Your system would allow too much abuse, too much cronyism, too much payola.

again, you say 'even the government' as if the government is the be all and end all of our existence, as if there is a monolithic entity that decided for us. We are governed by a representative republic, WE decide state by state when childhood ends. And we decide for ourselve what is allowed in each state. No child is hunting on his own at 6 but a state may allow parent's to have the right to take one hunting with them. No state that I am aware of allows anyone to marry at 12.

so your question really isn't very clear, or you are confused about the difference between state and federal laws and between legal definitions and physical definitions.

the point is that poor and uneducated workers are more likely to be exploited to the detriment of us all. the whole "they had to work or starve on the street" is a silly bit of rhetoric, as if that is the ONLY options that could have happened. We have evidence of children working in coal mines, show me children starved to death on US soil?

there doesn't HAVE to be logic you agree with, all that is required is the will of the people to allow or forbid it.

oh good grief...how old ARE you? what's next? forcing kids to eat their peas is a violation of the Geneva convention!!??

as much as it appalled you to actually have to become a functioning member of our society, it just has to be put down to "Life itself isn't fair"

cry me a river, poor waif..

LOL!! such hystrionics over the poor downtrodden children being forced to attend schools...*sniff* poor darlings...

MUCH better they should be working the streets or slaving away under some OTHER abusive master...

your whole view that going to school is somehow abusive is beyond bizarre, I can't follow your logic...

you don't want kids to be indoctrinated in schools to be working drones and serfs sooo your answer is to just throw them naked into the world to be...turned into working drones and serfs...

that's some twisted logic you got there....you are saying an illiterate street child is going to be more free than an educated college student with the full backing of a family and support system...

okkkkkaaaayyy...

 

Might makes right, huh?

 

not 'might' but will. How would you have things decided?

mob rule? anarchy? or dictator?

 

What "things" specifically?

 

laws? regulations? codes of social behaviour?

 

Why should we have them?

 

That's rich, since I'm an anti-statist. What do you think the child labor laws are if not the government making the decision?

Collectivists just love to throw that word "we" around. Why should a state, governed by "we" whoever make the decision? Why not the city? Why not the neighborhood? Why not the individuals involves? Which is why I'm saying judge it on a case by case basis.

So ban the poor and uneducated from working? That sounds very "compassionate."

Famines were and are the case in areas in very poor economies. It was precisely the Industrial Revolution that ended famines and caused such forms of child labor to die out, not any law passed by any government.

So you admit that there's no logic here. Logic doesn't matter, you say, just "the will of the people" Well, if illogical laws represent the will of the people, then the people are morons and should be thrown from power before they hurt anyone else.

You advocate force-feeding teenagers? That hardly seems less insane that my wanting to allow a 13 year old to stock shelves part-time if he freely chooses.

Such histrionics over them being allowed to choose to work. You can't explain why voluntarily bagging groceries pay is abusive and being ordered to run laps and write essays for no pay is not abusive. It's purely your ingrained social prejudice, which you will pigheadedly refuse to examine.

As you later say, you can't follow the logic. For the logic leads out of the iron sarcophagus of social prejudice that is your mind.

And as you yourself admit, there is no logic within your mental sarcophagus. There is only will. The will of inmates managing the asylum.

Having actual work experience is more valuable to employers than a piece of paper that proves you sat at a desk while someone else told you about how the ancient Egyptians pulled peoples' brains out of their noses to embalm them. But don't let that prevent your recitation of media- and school-acquired doctrines.

 

so we can trust our interactions with each other? so we can know what to expect from each other?

 

Perhaps I don't expect people to pass laws, nor do I trust those who do.

 

and who makes these judgements?

when did I say that? we are talking about children working, not the 'poor and uneducated'..that's YOUR argument

not according to the websites I quoted earlier, you are saying YOU know more than the historians? where are your sources?

yep, I get that you want to set yourself up as dictator

and the weirdness continues, I never said anything about 'forcefeeding' anyone. are you even reading my posts or are the voices in your head making reading difficult?

ah the cry of the 'oh so enlightened'...the leftist ego knows no end...

yes, YOU know better...why? oh because you are 'enlightened'...*roll eyes*

you admit to having no knowledge of history (maybe you should have listened a bit more instead of sitting there pouting that you weren't out stocking shelves like you dreamed of) but those that DID pay attention know that child labor laws are a good thing, that children need school (as you prove, you can't MAKE them learn but hey, we have to at least TRY)

and any employer, if given the choice, will pick the employee that is educated over some drop out shelve stocker.

you claim to such higher consciousness but your aspirations extend no farther than the local supermarket as the lowest paid employee.

but hey, good luck with that...I bet Kmart will even hire an older dropout to put widgets on their shelves.

 

got it...total anarchy, survival of the fittest...well good luck with that.