Being under 18 shouldn't make you a slave

You will learn overtime though. You will have to confront these when you leave home anyway, isn't it better to learn these things earlier than later?

 

hmmm .. yes ... and no.

unfortunately, many young people are not developmentally ready for some of the decisionmaking needed to live truly independent lives, and are more vulnerable to exploitation, abuse, and being seriously ripped off by unscrupulous adults.

being part of a family, and being able to count on their parents, can protect them.

sometimes however - it is their parents who exploit and abuse them.

and theoretically at least, the law should be able to protect them.

 

mental development is much harder to see than physical development, surely you agree that your body is not as filled out as it will be when you are 25? Just like it is not the same body you had at 10? Your brain is the same way, it develops and changes over time...you don't have the same reasoning ability that you had when you were four...no do you have the same ability you will have at 40.

It isn't a 'hit job', it's just simple fact. A quick Google search will provide you with plenty of links if you want to study up on this

http://www.aacap.org/cs/root/facts_..._behavior_problem_solving_and_decision_making

 

But why is that form of child labor regulated, while most other forms of child labor, including many forms of work that are likely less strenuous, banned altogether???

 

But many are, whereas many fifty year olds are not. So it's not just to draw an arbitrary line in the sand.

 

The line is drawn at birth and it is not arbitrary. A full 100% of all new born children are not sufficiently developed to be held responsible for their actions and thus allowed to act in society without assistance. Society therefore provides these children, with guardians (usually the birth parents). Those guardians provide individualized training, evaluation, and guidance to children as they grow and allow them to accept increasing levels of responsibility commensurate with their individual rate of development. We allow them this free pass from most of the burdens of society not just for one year, or five or ten but up to 18 years to allow as many as possible to fully mature prior to shifting the full weight of adult hood onto their shoulders.

 

Is the number I would be surprised by "all of them"?

If minimum wage is what is preventing that from happening don't you think doctors would be paid minimum wage?

Minimum wage is the lowest possible and not everyone is paid it.

Do people actually do the same work for peanuts?

How can my responses determine whether or not you are reasonable?

So I can cite whomever I want and they will most certainly defend your position?

But are you NASA?

You say that like it's a bad thing.

Other than the people you're hiring.

There are those of us who don't think there should be any government at all.

 

because no one but a baby can play a baby in an art form...

and anyone can bag groceries, so rather than take work from adults and exploit children in the process we say no to child labor.

look, just take a look at why we have child labor laws...I don't want to go back to those days nor make the US like some third world country where children are forced to work instead of going to school

 

don't know what your background is, but many years ago I worked with young people who were extremely vulnerable - because of their youth.

teenagers who in good faith they would take "jobs" - only to find they were on trial and were not getting paid.

young girls who did not have the confidence to fend off sexual assault by predatory bosses.

young people who - because of their age - did not have the knowledge, or capacity to read situations which resulted in severe rip offs.

not to mention rather more serious cases.

its not surprisng that the character fagin in Dicken's Oliver Twist exploits street children.

its not surprising that in countries where there are poor child protection laws child prostitution is rife.

its not surprising that in countries where there are poor child protection laws children are more likely to be engaged in virtual slavery, or forced into military roles.

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.

I don't think children need to be protected from everything - but they DO need boundaries, they do need guidance, and they sometimes need protection from themselves,

the teenage brain is far more vulnerable to the impact of chemical (drug) abuse than is the adult brain - and that is one reason why it is important that there are laws to protect children from this kind of abuse.

 

Well said, but no foolish, immature and ignorant child will understand it. I might even add that 98 percent of all those that manage to reach the age of 18 are not competent enough to be held responsible for their own actions, but the law says different.

 

But, again, not everyone matures at the same rate. You know that not everyone magically obtains mental competence on the stroke of midnight on their 18th birthdays. It's a near-meaningless standard.

 

Why do I get the impression you feel possessed of the ability to distinguish exactly you is and is not competent, starting, of course, with the indisputable certainty that you yourself are on the competent side of the equation.

 

So child labor is okay when it's convenient? Well, the reason they had so many children labor in the mines in the old days was because their small size made them particularly capable of mining in the small tunnels and crevices. So under your argument, that means we should let children be miners.

You won't, because the US economy is not that of a third world economy. Apparently, you too think that if Uganda passed a law abolishing child labor, it would just disappear into the clear blue. No. What would happen would be that the working children of Uganda would starve to death on the street again. It wasn't any politician's edict that ended children in mines; it was economic growth due to the market.

By the way, why isn't forcing children to perform unpaid busywork in the government's schools considered illegal child labor? In fact, isn't mandatory, unpaid labor, as in the schools, worse than voluntary, paid labor, as in a factory?

Furthermore, employers value experience more than formal schooling. So wouldn't an hour of experience in world of employment benefit a child more than an hour squatting at a desk pretending to listen to some government employee recite irrelevant trivia?

But I'm sure you'll have a ridiculous, hair-splitting excuse to maintain this bit of doublethink.

 

That's not when we expect them to mature, it's when we stop giving them a chance to claim they're not ready for it.

 

My mother used to work in a nursing home with adults who were extremely vulnerable - because of their age.

Does this also apply to the movie industry?

Why doesn't this apply to middle-aged women with low confidence?

What about 45 year olds that don't have the capacity just because they are not smart?

"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.

 

Who? All of them? How about we start judging people as individuals rather than as vague collective abstractions that exist only in our heads?

 

We judge people as individuals and that's done in court. Laws are not judgements. Laws are the limits of what we as a society will accept, before we judge a person. We consider the limit of the protection afforded to children to be 18 years. Depending on an individuals actions, we may extend protective guardianship to them beyond that limit or we may judge them as an adult prior to 18 years.

 

You say we judge people as individuals, yet you continually speak not in terms of individuals but in terms of abstract collectives: "we," "we as a society," "children."

While in some cases minors may be emancipated to some degree, it is very limited and not pegged solely to the question of mental competence. For the most part, it's still a magic number. There doesn't need to be a magic number at all. The question doesn't even need to come up unless there's a dispute that goes to court.

 

It would be prohibitively expensive and somewhat silly to require a court case every time someone disputed a seven year old's right to drive, smoke or engage in sexual intercourse. It's more practical to set a reasonable age of consent and let those whose individual situation is different visit the court. That very few minors seek emancipation suggests that 18 works out quite well as the age of a maturity. If you think that number is poorly chosen, feel free to propose new legislation. "We" can vote on it.

 

How often do you think that would happen?

It's more practical to pass legislation declaring every over the age of 90 to be legally senile and assume that none of them can take care of themselves. Nevertheless, it is unjust.

 

whereas YOU think it is 'just' to put children to work.

of course, this isn't about letting some six year old sweep floors for a couple of dollars and a corner to sleep in...is it?

 

spoken like someone that hasn't a clue what 'work' is.

and no sense of history, how old ARE you? fourteen?

we have explained in excruciating detail how children's brains are not developed enough to evaluate risks or to protect themselves from people like youself that view them as mini adults instead of children deserving of our protection. You refuse to acknowledge scientific and historical facts...and you call ME ridiculous?

an example of why we don't put children to work:

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/...309_1_grain-bin-grain-handling-illinois-grain

telling that the only one to survive was the adult..

 

a few pics and a little history of child labor in this country..

http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/

remember, while these kids are working twelve hours a day, they aren't getting an education.

(particularly sad to me is the photo of the five year old jumping on and off the tram and the one of the little boy with pneumonia out in the rain working)

you're a real humanitarian, Absolute.

 

putting children into the workforce would make the already high unemployment even worse

they would be competing with illegals their entire lives, since they won't have any education and won't be upwardly mobile..

but the shorter life span that children would have is a plus, right? think of the savings in health care!

 

Absolute's dream of American children's future