They are not and if they are its still illegal.

I mean they are allowed in some pubs, some no one under 18 can even come in, but they are not supposed to drink and say 90% of pubs enforce this.

I actually do not have a blanket objection to Child labour devoid of context despite knowing many on the left will use such statements 'devoid of context to try and shame and silence people'.


I wrote this post before about how forms of what we refer to as 'exploitive labour' may in fact be better than what exists in that society at the time that employer goes in.

In areas where there tends to be few or no options for schooling or jobs, and where cheap labour may be sought, what is ignored by the activist type, is that the 'job', lowing paying or not, is better than anything else in the region, and such jobs often lead to improvements such as roads, electricity and schools.

So when the activist type screams 'EXPLOITATION' and gets is shut it down and feels so smug as they cost a corporation some profits, what you never see is them looking over their shoulder at the destruction in their wake and the cost to the society left behind. All they care about typically is reducing the corporate profits.

Anyway were we not talking about kids working in movies and tv and you being against that? Seems like cushy high paying work mostly if one can get it.

I had been meaning to come back to this thread and respond to your last reply to me, but this has saved me one step in that I was going to get you to clarify on this point. I was going to use the example of my delivering newspapers and selling door-to-door at the age of 12 and ask if I should have been allowed to drink, assuming your answer would have been no. Seeing this...wow!

Yes, it is somewhat arbitrary. Doesn't that make you wonder if you should be so steadfast about using that same arbitrary age for so many other things?

And that's where you go wrong. I don't know how to convince you of it, but it's silly to think that deciding whether to spend a few hours a week delivering newspapers is a decision that requires the same level of maturity as driving a car, drinking, joining the military, or many other things.

Great. I didn't know you at 14, so while I have my doubts, I'll have to take your word for it. But as you said, many people wouldn't be mature enough until a later age - is it also possible that for some people, they would have differing times at which they would be ready for different decisions? IE they might have been mature enough to work, but not to drive?

You're understanding an important point - that people mature differently. So the legal ages for things aren't based on being the age that everyone has just become mature enough to handle those decisions/responsibilities. I'd suggest to you that they're based on when government/society thinks a large majority people will be mature enough for them, and those age limits are only in place for decisions/responsibilities which could have the most negative impacts if they are not mature enough. So things like drinking, driving, joining the military are regulated in a way that delivering the newspaper or being allowed to walk to school or stay home alone are not. You seem to think that delivering the newspaper belongs in the former category rather than the latter; why is that?

"May be"? LOL. I'm pretty sure when people say they are against child labour in factories, they aren't worried that children are being given the choice to work there. The concern is that they're being forced to work, the kind of work they are doing, and the conditions in which they're working. The issues in some countries have been documented countless times; the fact that people say they object to "child labor" rather than something like "kids being made to do back-breaking work in factories with little to no health or safety standards" is simply using shorthand for something that is pretty widely understood. And that of course is not to say that we get it right every time when it comes to what other countries are doing.

I should add that unlike you, it seems, a lot of people make divisions with regard to the kind of labour being done. Here in BC, for example, there are age limits for certain kinds of work, with allowable jobs being fairly limited before the age of 18, and especially younger than 16. This allows kids to make some money and learn about work and responsibility, while being protected from exploitation.

All of this is not to say that there aren't issues with different age requirements - inconsistencies, arbitrariness, etc. But while it would be nice to just have one agreed upon age where we decide all kids are mature enough to do everything, I don't think that's realistic, nor wise.

OK then, I thought you said something like your son could get served at the pub right across the street. You didn't mention that was an anamoly.

Is 18 supposed to be the legal drinking age everywhere in the UK?

Yeah, you have some good points here; I certainly understand why there are different legal ages for these different things, I just don't fully agree with many of them.
And there is some basis for making some of them correspond, such as when the legal voting age was lowered to 18 mostly because people were getting drafted at 18.
Admittedly I do not have a lot of experience dealing with teenagers to know at what age they are mature enough to make their own decisions; all I have to base it on is myself, and by 14 I was definitely a better decision maker than were either of my parents.

Regarding child labor in China, I assumed that the children's parents had agreed to their children working in the factories, not that they were actually being kept in slavery.
Children in most countries are really given very little choice about anything. I did agree to deliver newspapers myself at 14, but I wouldn't have been allowed to if my parents hadn't given it their ok. And they likely could have forced me to do that work if they had decided to, or at least just as much as the children in China may be forced to work (given me a serious beating and locked me in the closet, for example, if I wouldn't work).

All of this is informed by the fact that I believe the law in the US (and likely most other countries) treats children as slaves, giving them no more autonomy than slaves used to have, and taking all the payments for work for themselves if they so desire. There have been plenty of children who have worked in entertainment at the demand of their parents, who then took the money and pissed it away before the children reached legal age. Sometimes they are even forced to do things by their parents long after reaching legal age, i.e. Britney Spears was placed in receivership to her father, the person she would least have wanted to be in charge of her affairs. The law seems to always assume that children will act in the best interests of their child, which I think is almost never the case. They mostly act in their own self-interests, which sometimes happens to be in the best interest of the child by coincidence. So I disagree with your point I bolded above; children are almost never protected from exploitation if the person doing the exploiting is their parent.

Fair enough.

Sure. In my mind, drinking, voting, military seem like things that could be the same age, and I'm not sure why they aren't. It could be there's a good reason, or it also could be that it's just as a result of laws being passed at different times, changing over time, or some other "just because" bureaucratic reason.

I'm certainly not expert on this stuff, but I'm not intending a real big distinction between outright slave labour, or parents making them do it. And when I say "parents making them do it", I try to do so absent any judgement, as it could be an issue of the only way for a family to get by, they themselves might be forced to make their kids work, etc. Regardless, I think the bigger issue is usually the kind of work and the working conditions.

This happens for sure, but we're talking about a small number of examples that get a lot of publicity, and in a very specific area of employment where kids can make an absurd amount of money. And to be clear, I'm sure there are many other instances that we're not aware of.

Wow. Holy **** dude, this is a pretty high level of cynicism. From other comments you've made, I get the feeling you may not have had the best childhood (I hope that isn't offensive and please correct me if I'm wrong), so I wonder if that has affected your judgement on this. I know a lot of parents, and I don't think I can name a single one who "mostly act[s] in their own self-interests" when it comes to their children, let alone enough to make me think they "almost never" act in the best interests of their child. I do know some parents who can be pretty selfish, but even they would act in their children's best interest most of the time. That's not to say those parents don't exist, of course. My wife is a teacher who works with kids struggling with mental health, behaviour, low IQ, and other issues, and are on their way to getting kicked out of high school. She could share a number of stories of really terrible parents who do treat their kids terribly, and sometimes even exploitatively. But they are a very small minority, and it's questionable if a law that said kids couldn't work would have much of a positive impact on them, especially when weighed against the detriment to those who have been forced to live on their own or into other circumstances where they need to work, let alone the vast majority of kids who live in good homes who don't "need" to work but are getting good life lessons and experience by choosing to do so.]

Edit to add: Thought about this some more, and if your view really is coloured because of your own experiences, or by those of others around you, I'm truly sorry to hear that. Some people just suck, unfortunately. And to be fair while not excusing it, some parents never experienced a proper upbringing themselves, or find themselves in circumstances they're not capable of responding to appropriately for a myriad of reasons. It all sucks and certainly isn't fair to the kids.

I had pretty much an average childhood, with pretty much average parents, with the caveat that I think the average childhood is pretty bad, and that average parents are terrible parents who should never have had children.

Most people I know still have some kind of reverence for their parents, despite telling me stories about how they were terribly abusive. I have no such reverence. I believe that my parents should never have had children, and I told them that many times. They brought me into this terrible world without my consent and then offered me nothing that wasn't legally required.

Of course, as they correctly say, being a parent is a tough job, so tough that hardly anyone is qualified for it. I doubt that I would be much better than average myself, so I got myself sterilized before I could penalize anyone else with a miserable existence. If only everyone else would do the same.

https://www.vhemt.org/

That's not how it works.

I'm pretty sure that's not average at all, and explains your cynicism IMO. But even if I'm wrong and that is average, I'm sorry that was your experience.

I would say try either psychotherapy or ayahuasca.

It's definitely a terrible world but not all of it.

Parents have to be a fair level below average to make childhood not a great time imo.

My parents were so flaky that I over dosed on amphetamines when I was four.

Childhood was still great tho.

It's very sad that this is/was your life.

I don't get the impression that Chill is very happy but sometimes a tough childhood makes people stronger.

Child hood has two phases, there is no clear demark but would say the second phase starts to merge in about age 10 and fully takes over once teenage years starts, often the second phase can be tough and I think most people will have tough periods within it.

You went from a sober analisis of your childhood to full Schopenhauer in the blink of an eye.

You're fully merged with Latin American culture now, Luck. Different names for coca leaves, Peruvian friends and ayahuasca. Welcome to the club.

This is probably applicable to me. When I was a young child nothing was terrible, but I don't remember a whole lot of that. From 10-college is where my father really got controlling and scary.

I have tried plenty of therapy and currently doing TMS. If that doesn't help, Spravato (ketamine) will probably be next. Though even if I get happier in my current life, I can't imagine that changing my views about my childhood or having children in general.

Maybe I should look in the psych thread to see if anyone wants info about TMS, I didn't really know what it would be like before starting.

I say this with the caveat that I have ZERO expertise in this area, but I don't think there's any need for you to change those views, just hopefully come to terms with your past and minimize the detrimental effect it has on your life today (if it has one). I hope you get there one day.

There is a very clear Denmark I dont know what you are talking about



SMH the state of education in this country no wonder Rishi's pushing maths till your in the grave

Your opportunity for life long learning:

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/demark

Im thinking the Google speaker have woke program in it ….
I got angry couple time and wasn’t politically critic in my « complaint’s » when do the thing I command and now it often have difficulty accepting my command …..

[Actually going to withdraw my comment but leave the tweet, sorry for those who like comments]

I think his analysis of the average parent is spot on fwiw.