Note the capital “L.” I mean those who support the Libertarian Party, or Randites, or “Rational Anarchists” ala Heinlein, or, as Patrick says, those who want to sell the streets and privatize meat inspection.
This isn’t an effort at argument (though no doubt one will ensue), but a request for information. I’m wondering what the canonical answer is to the charge that without state control, nothing would prevent child labor, and similar abuses. It’s an obvious enough question that I’m sure it’s come up. If someone could run it down for me I’d appreciate it. Thanks.
50 responses so far ↓
1 Chris // Apr 24, 2008 at 11:20 am
Steve,
I’m not actually a Libertarian, but I regularly read Reason and the like, so I’ll give it a shot. I think that most little-L libertarians assume the existence at least of courts, for contract enforcement and possibly punishment of obvious, violent crimes. Such a court system would probably deal at least coercive working conditions (i.e. slavery), and absent that, the workers, or their parents, would be free to leave and choose better work.
As for non-coercive abuses, like child labor, unsafe working conditions, etc., I suppose the Libertarian answer is that it would be resolved (as with all things) by the Market. For example, if the public hears that Nike is using child labor, and there is public outcry, then Nike feels the heat, and so makes the business decision to stop using child labor. Problem solved! On the other hand, if most customers don’t really care that Nike is using child labor, then it’s not actually a problem, is it? Note that this answer doesn’t really even assume a court system, other than the court of public opinion.
Of course, it’s also unpalatable to most people, which is probably why you don’t see more Libertarians out in the real world (the Internet is not the real world, of course).
2 Miramon // Apr 24, 2008 at 11:28 am
I’m not a Libertarian, so that technically excludes me from the poll, but it’s hard to resist responding anyhow, even if I can’t actually answer the question.
Right-wing libertarianism is usually linked to some kind of laissez-faire economy. So in addition to your original question, I would go on to ask, what prevents cartels and various -opolies from forming to control prices and wages as they have done historically so many times?
I think these are sort of the same question in that both these behaviors — worker abuses and -opoly market dominance — are generally prevented through government action, which is naturally anti-libertarian in principle.
So I can’t anwer the question from the point of view of right-wing Libertarianism, and it’s hard to imagine there is any good answer, except of course for “well, we let government retain its trustbusting and labor protection powers”.
As for a more leftist libertarianism, I suppose the answer would involve trade unions or “anarcho-syndicalist collectives” protecting workers’ rights through the force of their memberships.
If you really want to restrict this discussion to actual card-carrying Libertarians, please feel free to delete this….
3 Caleb // Apr 24, 2008 at 11:44 am
I’m not registered as a Libertarian, and my thoughts may differ from the “canon” of libertarianism or objectivism, but I do identify myself as such, even though my thoughts are my own.
To me, Chris (comment 1) has pretty much nailed it on the head with his second paragraph, but I want to add something to it. In a pure rational anarchy, the market *would* pressure business owners to curtail their use of child labor and improve working conditions, but there is the added factor of free will.
Parents have the option of not sending their kids to work; if they do so, it is a decision that they make (as well as the decision of the employer to use them). In the case of poor working conditions, the workers have the option to leave for a better work environment.
A common argument against this idea is that business owners would collude to all have poor working environments and set wages to force parents to send their kids to work, and it does have some validity.
However, all it would take to stop this trend would be one competitor offering fair wages, better working conditions, and refusing to hire children. Not only would this operator draw more workers to his business, increasing production, but he could use it as a positive PR opportunity to ensure that the public buy his product. These two factors would net him a tidy profit, forcing his competition to either adapt or die out.
That’s my theoretical take on it, however, I have come to accept that people are not necessarily rational, and that many of them don’t like to exercise free will, so I have accepted that a true rational anarchy cannot exist, except on a very small scale, such as in a “gulch.”
I would personally like a system of taxation where you pay for the public services you believe in. I would pay for education and fire services, and even a small police force. However, if they weren’t behaving up to my standards, I would withdraw my funding. I would also be unable to participate in programs I’m not funding (welfare is the usual example).
I’ve rambled on a bit, but that’s basically how I see it. The long shot of it is that I’m glad to sacrifice state services for the chance to be free of having my neighbors tell me what to do, especially when they’re doing it “for my own good.” If something is truly unbearable to the public, they will show what they think by spending money elsewhere.
4 skzb // Apr 24, 2008 at 11:47 am
Caleb @ 3: Thank you.
5 William H. Stoddard // Apr 24, 2008 at 11:48 am
I actually am a libertarian, both small-l and party member (though I’m dubious about a lot of the party’s current candidates; if Obama gets the nomination I’m most likely going to vote for him). Not to offer argument on the point, but simply a source, see Robert Hessen’s “The Effects of the Industrial Revolution on Women and Children,” reprinted in Ayn Rand’s Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal—pages 110-113 of my paperback copy discusses children specifically. There are probably other sources, but this is as clear a statement as any and widely available.
6 B. Dewhirst // Apr 24, 2008 at 12:49 pm
… It isn’t too hard to find support for children’s “right to work” within Libertarian Party writings… something of a controversy within the party.
Of course, I’m not a Libertarian, but I may vote for the very reasonable George Phillies, my former professor, who may get the Libertarian nomination.
I’m hoping for Zombie Debs, though…
7 Jim Keller // Apr 24, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Now, I have to start by saying that many if not most Big-L Libertarians will agree that protecting people from being exploited is one of the “necessary evils” of government, and don’t support child labor.
However, for a good explanation of the rationale for how it wouldn’t be a problem in Libertopia, I’d suggest reading Dr. Mary Ruwart’s “Healing Our World,” the older edition of which is available as a free e-book.
http://www.ruwart.com/Healing/ruwart_all.html
Do a quick find on the phrase “child labor” and you find her arguments.
Having talked to people who have cross-examined Dr. Ruwart extensively, even she will admit that she’s speaking in ideals, and the real world generally involves accepting the non-ideal solution that comes closest to the ideal. But her book is a good window to the philosophy, which doesn’t simply ignore the places where the philosophy is generally weak.
8 Bruce Schneier // Apr 24, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Believe it or not, the answer is that the market will take care of it.
If people don’t want companies to employ children or engage in similar abuses, they won’t buy those company’s products.
Yes yes, it’s a completely idiotic answer that ignores the fundamental externalities of the situation. But Libertarians have this almost religious belief that all externalities can be encompassed in the point-of-sale purchasing decision.
9 Philip Brewer // Apr 24, 2008 at 2:07 pm
I think the history of efforts to stop child labor show that they’re only partially motivated by concern over the plight of child laborers. They’re at least as much an effort to reduce the supply of labor in order to raise wages.
Although children are vulnerable to certain kinds of abuse, children who still live with their parents are also safer from abuse in certain ways. A 13-year-old may not have to social skills to deflect an inappropriate request from a boss–but at least he or she is in a better position to just quit and leave the job market than, say, a 19-year-old supporting a new family.
Libertarians always point to the details of the rules and the boundary conditions. I remember eating at a family restaurant where a little girl (maybe 10 or 11) was working at the soda fountain. She was so short that she had to reach over her head to fill glasses, but seemed to be having a great time. If you want to ban sweatshops, but still let kids help out in their parent’s business, you have to write all sorts of detailed rules and then have some sort of court to try the boundary cases.
Plus, just like with any other law banning consensual activity, it’s hard to catch criminal without corrupting the whole process–you start relying on snitches, no-knock raids, and so on. This has the effect of producing an underclass of people who are afraid to go to the police to report actual abuse, because just working was already against the law.
10 Chris B. // Apr 24, 2008 at 2:33 pm
I’m painfully outgrowing my libertarian tendencies, because of questions like this, though it leaves me kind of homeless–I have a lot of trouble accepting the price of socialism, and if I have to try to fit back into democrat/republican I might as well shoot myself. But I can’t stay where I am; if Ron Paul wants to be in my space then I’ve got to move, ’cause I’m sure not staying there.
I’m not sure there is a correct libertarian answer to the question, but then there are few universally correct libertarian answers to most questions. The textbook one has already been given, “the market will prevent it,” though everyone who’s pointed it out acknowledges that it probably won’t.
I’m of the view that, in the modern age, the capitalist, free market that is mandated by libertarianism can only function if property ownership is restricted to personal ownership–the existence of the limited liability corporation is deeply inimical to personal prosperity. That is, anyone who’s worked for a large corporation knows “human resources” is a pure euphemism for “our biggest expenditure, which we drop at every opportunity.”
If limited liability corporations aren’t legal, and all ownership is personal, then there’s a possible answer to your question: an individual person attempting to run a child-labor factory is individually, criminally, liable.
As for courts/laws/etc., libertarians aren’t anarchists. Their view on government is: where individuals cannot efficiently or effectively provide something for themselves, government is good and necessary. Where they can, it isn’t. For the rest, the spread on libertarian viewpoints is very wide, from tree-dwelling hippies to distant-right warmongers… their only pure point of agreement is that marajuana shouldn’t be illegal, and you’ll even find some libertarians who dispute that, though it’s not clear to me why you’d want to call yourself libertarian then.
I’m rambling without a real answer, which is probably what you expected for this question…
11 Miramon // Apr 24, 2008 at 3:13 pm
As a kid I was in favor of libertarianism too, but I too grew out of it. It’s just too inequitable for the liberty values to be worthwhile.
I too am at a loss to suggest a good system. It’s clear to me that radical libertarianism is a very bad idea; and that communism assumes virtues which the human race does not yet possess — hence the frequent corruption of communist systems into mere tyrannies. But the middle-of-the-road systems like those of the US and Europe are clearly inadequate, and unsatisfactory, so what the hell….
The only plausible solution to human economic and political problems that I have seen is that of Iain Banks’ Culture, where the combination of near-infinite wealth and compassionate machine administration of society allows extreme liberty at the same time as negating problems with wealth inequities. But by “plausible” I mean “plausible with those technological assumptions”, which is to say, not going to happen in the forseeable future.
12 j h woodyatt // Apr 24, 2008 at 4:17 pm
The FAQ at capitalism.org has page on the subject. That site is related to Capitalism magazine, which [according to Wikipedia] is pretty friendly with the Ayn Rand Institute. I’d expect that page to present a fairly representative view.
13 skzb // Apr 24, 2008 at 5:35 pm
Phillip Brewer @ 9: “I think the history of efforts to stop child labor show that they’re only partially motivated by concern over the plight of child laborers. They’re at least as much an effort to reduce the supply of labor in order to raise wages.”
Those….those…*bastards!*
14 Jim H // Apr 24, 2008 at 7:25 pm
The canonical answer depends on which group you’re asking. You identified at least four different groups or subgroups and asked for a single canonical answer on a topic like this? Either the question is malicious or you’re being intellectually lazy.
“Tell me what the canonical Socialist, or Marxist, or lazy union member answer is to…”
Any question that began this way would be obviously poor, too, and for the same reasons.
15 skzb // Apr 24, 2008 at 7:28 pm
Jim @ 14: Oh.
16 Chris B. // Apr 24, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Miramon @ 11: the enemy of all socio-economic theories is scarcity. If you theorize an economy with near-zero scarcity (a.k.a. near-infinite wealth) then nearly any reasonable society/economy will thrive. Including hyper-corporate capitalism, pure socialism… heck, a feudal monarchy would do fine, if wanting=having.
It certainly requires technology we don’t (quite) have yet, and the ever-so-minor problem of 2/3 of the world’s population being both grossly undereducated and unready, and most of the other 1/3 being at least one or the other.
The challenge of all socio-economic systems that aren’t maliciously evil (and capitalism isn’t, whatever its sypmtoms; it is inherently indifferent) is to reach that state of near-infinite wealth, not to thrive once it’s there. Capitalism proposes to compete its way there, through the innovation inherent in market drive, hoping not to step on too many people on the way. Socialism proposes to cooperate its way there, on whatever remains after mankind’s needs are met, hoping that rational people can stop behaving like animal tribes.
Part of my problem with socialism (at least in the form I keep reading about, through Steve’s wsws.org links) is that I think capitalism’s method has a much better chance than socialism’s method–I’m much more ready to believe in nanotech/biomed reducing scarcity to near nothing (which would essentially eliminate class distinction–what is left to separate them?), than in human society becoming rational and abolishing class distinction before we eliminate the personal benefits inherent in wealth and power.
17 Rebecca // Apr 24, 2008 at 8:31 pm
I’m a registered Libertarian, but I can’t stand Ayn Rand (or, at least, her fans), I’m not an anarchist of any stripe (rational or otherwise), and I fully approve of community-owned streets and other public properties and joint efforts by the citizenry. Jim H. is quite right that the groups are not synonymous, and I don’t much care to be equated with them.
I’m also with Chris B on LLCs — they are totally inimical to a Libertarian society.
My personal answer to the question is a) preventing harm to citizens (meaning: people who live here and take part in this society) is one of the things which I approve of government doing; and b) an underaged child is not able to enter into a contract (which one does when one works for pay), and neither the child nor hir labor is the property of the parents, so the parents cannot legally bind a child into a work contract, as that would be a form of slavery, again one of the things I support having something resembling a government to prevent.
I should also note that while I’m a registered Lib, I consider Libertarianism to be a kind of Utopianism. In the real world, barring a Charles Stross-esque Singularity which nearly eliminates scarcity (nod to Chris B. again) and probably some major changes to human psychology, Libertarianism is not practicable; instead, it is what I would personally choose as my ideal society to live in in a perfect world. As such, I will vote in such a way as to support my philosophies, and attempt to bring my government closer to my ideal, knowing that it will never actually become that ideal. I’m a registered Libertarian not because I necessarily agree with most Libs I’ve met, or because I always support the candidates, but because the Republicans and Democrats have both so far offended me that I cannot in good conscience support them with my membership.
18 skzb // Apr 24, 2008 at 10:52 pm
Chris B @ 16: Good, thoughtful remarks, deserving of some attention. My trouble is with your method. To wit, you are discussing “capitalism” and “socialism” as abstract forms, divorced from the historical conditions that gave them rise.
More specifically, you bring up the idea of a post-scarcity society, which is, in my view, exactly the right thing to discuss. You say, “Capitalism proposes to compete its way there…Socialism proposes to cooperate its way there…” This formulation gives one the image of these two personified systems, operating in a vacum, going, “Okay, which one of us works better?”
But capitalism arose at exactly the point that technology had outstripped feudal monarchy. By the early 17th century, the political system of the kingship, and the economic structure of peasants tied to land (which they were, economically, even after serfdom was abolished) that determined it, was holding back and strangling the emerging capitalist class.
They didn’t compete independent of technology–the more advanced form overthrew the earlier form (which, in its day, had been an advance over previous forms). Capitalism was absolutely necessary in order for technology and the productive forces to develop. It is now strangling the development of those forces.
Technology drives economy; economy drives politics. It is in this context that we understand todays wars over oil resources, the massive collapse of finance capital, &c.
Secondarily, and here is where I have a real problem with your method, you quite artificially set up the problem as if it is: A) either we achieve post-scarcity, then make a good society, or B) we make a good society, then achieve post-scarcity. This is a sort formal, drawing room analysis that has nothing to do with living reality.
Remember Orwell’s *1984*? There is a point where he uses the same method. “Until the proles become conscious, they cannot revolt. Until the proles revolt, they cannot becomes conscious.” The trouble is, every revolution in history has refuted that, because in a revolution(1), the “proles” have become conscious as part of the process of making the revolution.
In the same way, it is exactly in the fight to create a post-scarcity society–and to do so before the economic forms so strangle technology that we fall backward into barbarism–that a new, saner society can (I hope) come into existence. And it will do so according to its own laws, not according to anyone’s prearranged schema of how a society “ought” to be.
— -
(1) I’m taking as a given here that what distinguishes a revolution from a coup d’etat or a palace revolution is the conscious role of the masses. I think I’m right to do so, but it is certainly debatable.
19 Charlie (Colorado) // Apr 24, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Those….those…*bastards!*
Steve, remember that when those guys are reducing labor and raising wages, they’re (a) taking money away from the children’s families directly, and (2) necessarily increasing the prices of the goods those families are buying. So the net effect is to transfer wealth from the families whose children might be working to the people who are working.
Maybe it’s worthwhile. It’s very much like the argument against free trade agreements, that we shouldn’t allow lower-cost foreign manufactured good to come in and thereby put pressure on US wages. What people seem to never carry on with this is that if you’re doing something coercive to keep wages — and therefore costs — high, what you’re doing is taking money away from everyone who buys those goods in order to give it to the people you’re protecting.
Since the “rich” can’t actually use all that much more of many of these things than poor people can — even Imelda Marcos only had a few thousand times more shoes than the average woman, even though the Marcoses had thousands or millions more in assets than the usual Filipino — this ends up necessarily being, in effect, a regressive tax that transfers wealth from the less well off to the more well off.
This isn’t “Libertarian” or not, it’s arithmetic.
So, before you worry about the Libertarian explanation, why don’t you tell us how much more a welfare mom ought to pay for shoes for her kids to ensure jobs are saved in the US?
20 skzb // Apr 25, 2008 at 2:18 am
Charlie @ 19: Tell me you still don’t believe in the “wage-price spiral.” Even the bourgeois economists have abandoned that. Adam Smith answered that one in the 18th Century, and no one has yet shown him to be wrong. In brief, as Mr. Smith pointed out, commodities sell at their value, as determined by the amount of labor necessary to produce them. Raising wages transfers surplus value from the owner to the wage-laborer, and has no effect on prices; this is insured by competition.
And as for “a” you appear to be saying that children ought to be permitted to be brutally exploited because otherwise their families will starve. I’ve said some nasty things about capitalism in my time, but you have me beat.
21 schmwarf // Apr 25, 2008 at 3:35 am
Steve:
“Raising wages transfers surplus value from the owner to the wage-laborer, and has no effect on prices; this is insured by competition.”
That’s not always true in all industries. This might be the case in Perfect Competition (ie, farm laborers) or Monopolistic Competition (eg restaurant staff). But in where there is a Monopoly or colluding Oligopolies I would argue that yes indeed the owner has the power to maintain his/her surplus value but upping the price of their goods and services.
I guess it all comes down to what you define as “competition”.
Now to look up this Adam Smith and see what he says.
22 schmwarf // Apr 25, 2008 at 3:45 am
Ok I just found out who Adam Smith was and I feel like a twit.
My POV still stands.
23 sirana // Apr 25, 2008 at 6:00 am
Steve@20:
I don’t think Charlie@19 is talking about the “wage-price-spiral” at all.
From what I gather he simply says that goods that are produced in companies that use child labour are cheaper than ones that are produced in companies that don’t.
I don’t agree with his conclusions, but I don’t think his math is wrong here.
24 Howard Brazee // Apr 25, 2008 at 7:09 am
Anybody who believes that if the Libertarian party gained power, it wouldn’t be corrupted by that power is fooling himself.
That doesn’t mean that people with libertarian principles shouldn’t support those politicians that support their values. Sometimes the realistic goal should be a direction - more freedom as opposed to full anarchy.
Few True Believers like this idea. Politics can be a religion instead of a tool, with Righteous people willing to do what it takes to show that they are right.
25 Miramon // Apr 25, 2008 at 8:20 am
Charley @ 19:
The consequences of a fairly subtle regressive tax can be readily countered so long as income and other taxes are more significant.
You may say that wages are the principal cost component for many businesses, but minimum wage floors don’t affect most businesses anyway, so their effect is relatively minor.
Acording to wikipedia around 1.7 million US workers make the minimum wage or below, $5.85 / hour. Say they work 40 hours a week. So that’s $20.6 billion a year total minimum wage income. Even if you consider 100% of that to be “regressive taxes”, spread out over the total US economy that sum is quite negligible compared to a GDP of $13.8 trillion.
In the case of the US at present, I don’t think the negative effects of the regressive tax you describe have any impact at all on prices or on inflation — I’m guessing minimum wages would have to be much higher for this effect to be noticeable at all.
A much more significant impact of raising minimum wages is on marginally profitable businesses that can’t afford to pay higher salaries. It’s tempting to say “screw ‘em” to those small business owners on behalf of the workers, but if they cease operations, the jobs may not be replaced by more successful businesses if the entire sector is marginally profitable.
26 William H. Stoddard // Apr 25, 2008 at 9:57 am
In brief, as Mr. Smith pointed out, commodities sell at their value, as determined by the amount of labor necessary to produce them.
The labor theory of value? In the early 21st century? No serious economist has subscribed to that in generations; the marginal utility theory has long since replaced it. Citing Adam Smith on that point is about like citing Laplace in an argument about determinism, without paying attention to the rise of statistical mechanics in the 19th century and quantum mechanics in the 20th. Really, marginalist economics is not some eccentric libertarian speculation; it’s the mainstream theory.
Out of historical curiosity, I took a look at David Ricardo’s book on “Political Economy” a while ago. That’s the classic rigorous exposition of the labor theory of value, worked out in much more detail than Smith’s exposition. And Ricardo said, in one of the early chapters, that the labor theory worked for many commodities, but did not work at all for commodities such as gold and silver, whose value was governed by other factors. (The marginalists explicitly identified those factors as scarcity, and showed a theoretical path to generalizing the “scarcity” explanation to all prices.) In other words, Ricardo was not putting forth the labor theory as a comprehensive theory, but as a workable approximation—which, speaking as a roleplaying game master, I find it to be, for producing a plausible looking imaginary world.
In terms of intellectual history, you could look at the labor theory as an analog of the energy-focused science of the 19th century: It says that price depends on the energy that goes into a commodity, in the form of human labor. Whereas the marginalist theory is an analog of information-focused science: price is based on scarcity, scarcity is effectively low probability of finding a commodity, and information is the inverse of probability, so price reflects information content.
27 skzb // Apr 25, 2008 at 11:14 am
“The labor theory of value? In the early 21st century? No serious economist has subscribed to that in generations; the marginal utility theory has long since replaced it”
I cannot take seriously any economist who will pretend the marginal utility theory actually explains anything significant.
Yes, it is, indeed, the mainstream theory. Shall we discuss other mainstream theories? It goes along with many other mainstream theories that find a question uncomfortable, and so decide they want to answer a different question instead and call their work finished. Sociologists are famous for this. Mainstream economists today set out to explain how capitalism is inherently stable, with a few minor bumps here and there, that tend to correct themselves. So–how’s that working out for them these days?
Like Ricardo, Smith’s work was unfinished and incomplete, mostly because the data weren’t available at the time. But they both get credit for framing the question in the right terms.
Ricardo’s work was brilliant for its time. His failure to understand the relationship between scarcity and labor intensity (taken statistically over the long run) is perfectly forgivable given when he was writing.
28 Seth // Apr 25, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Steve (#20): I haven’t noticed the amount of labor required to grow corn or pump oil to have increased in the past couple of years.
Prices being held down by competition is a capitalist idea. (Socialist societies that try to hold down prices by fiat often end up lacking supply.)
29 skzb // Apr 25, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Seth @ 28: “Prices being held down by competition is a capitalist idea.” Um, I’d have called it a capitalist reality, not a capitalist idea, but okay.
30 bigmike // Apr 25, 2008 at 3:03 pm
To get back to the original question, I suspect that a libertarian would reply that it is better that a child work than starve. To which skzb would doubtless reply something like, “Surely there is a better way to assure that the child not starve.” Of course there is but not in the flagrant free-market economy that the US taxpayer seems to prefer! Not with a president who will casually veto a proposal that some states wanted to provide medical insurance to children than said president wanted them to provide. Not in a country that seems poised to elect as president someone who intends to prosecute a trillion dollar war indefinitely. But I’d better stop before I get apoplectic.
31 JP // Apr 25, 2008 at 7:14 pm
I find interesting the common presumption of perfect information that runs throughout this thread. People may well decide not to buy from Nike if Nike uses children whose life expectancy is under 15, but only if they know about it. There is a lot of stuff we don’t know. Same problem regardless of economic system. And I’m beginning with a presumption that people would prefer perfect knowledge — which I think is almost demonstrably false.
One classical economist who hasn’t come up yet is our friend Mr. Malthus. While his scope was overly narrow even for the time in which he was writing, his ideas have reemerged in the notion of earth’s carrying capacity. Presuming an American notion of post-scarcity, we’re quite far from even being able to seriously imagine that — a matter of resources and technology.
Scarcity and imperfect information (in both lack and precision) are here to stay for a loooong time. In such a context, there will ever be tendency to do what is most efficient by the standards of a society — and if that includes child labor, it’ gonna happen. More intrusive government gives a better chance of stopping it, while the inefficiencies that government’s structure generate pressure to use child labor anyway.
I’m an anarchist, not libertarian or Libertarian (it’s that military thing). In this context, the answer to the question in ANY society cannot be given absent knowledge of that society’s moral values and its strength of belief in them. Even in times of tremedous food scarcity, we see most folks dying of starvation rather resorting to cannibalism.
Food for though (pun intended).
Peace.
32 Saladman // Apr 25, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Child labor laws actually followed, rather than preceded, a general reduction in child labor and a change in attitudes about it. This came about due to a general rise in standard of living facilitated by free markets. The most child labor laws accomplished was some clean up duty.
And harsh as it may sound, I don’t concede that child labor is an absolute evil. It beats starving to death, which has been a very real and present danger for families on the edge of subsistence until very recently in western nations and through the present in third world nations. And charity, welfare or outright socialism do not become realistic alternatives to starving to death until you can tap the wealth provided by free markets.
I don’t think that if child labor laws were repealed in the US that parents or companies would be rushing to employ 9 year olds in factory work. You might get some more kids helping their parents, some more berry-picking during the summer, and generally more flexibility than regulation allows.
So yes, the answer really is that ‘the market will solve it,’ just as the market solved it to begin with.
33 Saladman // Apr 25, 2008 at 7:21 pm
Here we go.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/archives/fm/05-90.html
34 Doctor Science // Apr 25, 2008 at 8:21 pm
I am not a libertarian of any stripe, nor do I play one on the Internet — I *may* be as much of a socialist as our host. However, I find it … baffling … that no-one has mentioned an outstanding correlate of child labor.
Children who work — *really* work — do not go to school. In most cases, this lack is never made up. This is especially the case for girls, and there is *no* factor that can improve a society’s health and wealth like education for women.
Eliminating restrictions on child labor would result in some families temporarily having more money, while tieing them more tightly into a cycle of poverty, ignorance, early childbearing, poverty, ignorance …
But then, I have never known a libertarian who really *minded* poverty for other people.
35 libertarian conservative // Apr 26, 2008 at 2:32 am
@skzb: “So–how’s that working out for them these days?”
Actually, it’s working pretty well, when it’s allowed to work. But the US is not a pure capitalist society. Between government regulation, fiat currency, and government bailouts when things look like they might be going horribly wrong, it’s pretty darned far from pure capitalism.
That’s not to say that all regulation should be repealed: pure capitalism provides a very strong incentive to engage in deceptive and exploitative practices. Society is supposed to provide the moral foundation to prevent that and government is generally accepted as a necessary evil to curb those abuses that occur despite the twin pressures of society and the market. Doesn’t always work in practice, for the same reason that communism doesn’t work: it is based on false assumptions about human nature and human behavior.
My personal view is that the worst abuses are carried out by corporations. Corporations serve a very important role: they spread risk and allow the pooling of resources; that way people who might not be willing to risk their life savings on opening a family business might still be encouraged to assist in building wealth. The flaw in the system is that corporations are treated as legal persons; modifying the legal system to codify that the rights of corporations are always secondary to the rights of individuals would go a long way toward preventing the most egregious abuses of capitalism.
—
In answer to the original question, one factor that I don’t think has been mentioned yet is the influence of non-governmental organizations, such as charities. In a libertarian society, individuals who oppose child labor would be welcome to form charities that work to abolish the practice, ideally through informing consumers and persuading employers. Only if those efforts fail should government even be considered as a potential solution.
36 JP // Apr 26, 2008 at 10:16 am
Doctor Science @34
Well put, particularly with regard to gender. In the development field, it’s become common knowledge (backed by numerous multi-variate regression analyses). Another corollary of (women’s) education is reduction in family size — a very important thing for any nation, as population growth rates compound more quickly than do economic growth rates.
This is so well documented, in fact, that in the Islamic Republic of Iran, women’s literacy rates are nearly on par with those of men, and approaching four times greater than the rate of women’s literacy under the Shah’s regime. (Can’t make a good example of a revolution to emulate with a population growth rate at 3.6% per year.)
Reaching possible post-scarcity levels is easier in a stable population (by size); and the better-educated the population, the more able it will be for all sorts of endeavors. (Not to mention the million monkeys at a million keyboards effect.)
37 SpeakerToManagers // Apr 26, 2008 at 10:30 am
Seriously, could someone please explain to me how the any aspect of the market had to do with stopping the immoral acts being committed by Enron? In whose economic interest was it to do so? Did any of those who were damaged by Enron and would want to stop it have the power to do so?
While it’s true that economic and political systems are not in and of themselves moral agents, the people who work within them surely are. And the damage (to society as well as individual people) was done by such as Enron, immoral people, and by amoral people who simply decided to profit off the immoral acts, because there was so much opportunity to profit.
The Enron executives were motivated at least as much by a desire to cause pain to their victims (listen to the tapes of them bragging about the small investors and employees whose financial security they’d destroyed) as to gain economic advantage themselves. How does a completely free capitalist economy deal with such people? How can pure capitalist theory explain why they were so successful even though their motives weren’t for pure profit?
The question I always ask is this: is morality and some notion of equity important to the workings of a society, or is all that’s important in the long run that the economy run as efficiently as possible, because that will result in minimum inequity? My answer is that morality and equity are vital, they stem in large part from what humans and are how they evolved, and that there isn’t much evidence that the very highest economic efficiency is best for society in general, let alone the general run of individuals. There are a lot of claims that it’s true, but not much proof.
If technology enables economics, why should we assume that we’ve discovered the perfect economic system already, when we know very well that technology has a long way to go in terms of developing new techiques to create, distribute, and use, the things we trade?
38 SpeakerToManagers // Apr 26, 2008 at 10:44 am
Dr. Science, well put. We should all take a cue from your point, and talk more about what has happened and what effects we can discern from which causes in the real world (a hard thing to do, I know), and talk less about what some authoritative economist or political theorist has said.
I think the key to this whole discussion is what Chris B. said above: “the enemy of all socio-economic theories is scarcity”. But scarcity is what we have, and will have for some time to come (2 generations minimum, probably more. even assuming we ever do achieve a post-scarcity economy). What we do in the meantime is important.
39 William H. Stoddard // Apr 26, 2008 at 10:59 am
If you’ll forgive my saying so, I think you’ve made a conceptual mis-step, one that’s not uncommon in people on the left dealing with libertarian ideas—though it took me a day or so of reflecting to pin down what I think it is.
I imagine that you recognize, in the abstract, that libertarian is a radical point of view, one that calls for drastic social, economic, legal, and political changes in American institutions, to say nothing of those in the rest of the world. But when I point to marginalist economic theory as a foundation for libertarian ideas, you say, in effect, “Marginalist economic theory is an ideological justification for capitalism, capitalism is what we have now, and what we have now isn’t working, so both mainstream economics and libertarianism are wrong.” That is, you jump to interpreting libertarianism as a fundamentally conservative belief system, assuming that the changes that libertarians advocate would not make more than a trivial difference to the workings of American society, or perhaps even of Japanese or European society.
Well, let’s turn that around. Assume that I am talking with a socialist—not wanting to assign political labels to you, I will not assume that this is you, but rather some hypothetical socialist fictional character, since I’m telling a story.
Now, I might say to him, “Socialism is founded on the labor theory of value, which was the basis of Marxism, and Marxism was tried in the Soviet Union and elsewhere and led to mass murders and brutal repression.” He might protest, “The Soviet Union wasn’t a true socialist regime; it was a totalitarian regime justifying itself by a bastardized misrepresentation of socialist beliefs. Judge my by what I advocate, which is real socialism, not a flawed imitation of it.”
Or, more subtly, suppose I said to him, as many libertarians would, “You advocate socialism. But we have socialism here in the United States, and it’s working really badly [insert examples of harmful effects of government programs or economic regulatory policies].” Undoubtedly he would protest that the American system is hardly socialism, but rather a mixed system with some elements of socialism interspersed with elements of capitalism. He would not be likely to accept a libertarian argument that socialists are defenders of the status quo (welfare, public education, progressive income tax, Social Security, government regulation of industry) and libertarians are radicals who want to change all that; he would want to claim that socialists are in favor of radical change based on consistent application of theoretical principles.
But that’s exactly parallel to what any serious libertarian would say. Your approach fails to come to terms with libertarian thought in exactly the way that many libertarians fail to come to terms with socialist thought: it equates it to a defense of the status quo, and thus to mainstream ideas.
My own view is that libertarianism and socialism are sibling movements; both reflect the same drive to apply a broad conceptual model to society and to change all institutions in accord with its principles—in other words, both are radicalisms. In fact, both grow out of the same original Enlightenment values, whereas fascism, for example, rejected them, and the American religious right seems increasingly bent on overturning them and undoing the Enlightenment (which is why I very often vote for Democrats as the “lesser evil”).
40 Anon // Apr 26, 2008 at 11:00 am
The answer is… why is it a problem? If children choose to engage in labor in the coal mines, it’s not our place to restrict their freedom to do so. They’re getting fair value for their labor, or they wouldn’t engage in that work. And if you don’t like it, don’t buy the company’s products and that will instantly be communicated to company management who will instantly change their ways.
41 skzb // Apr 26, 2008 at 11:38 am
William @ 39: Good, thoughtful post, for which I thank you.
Disclaimer: Caleb @ 3 answered the question I’d asked. Of course, I knew an argument would start; a Red can’t mention the “L” word without an argument starting. But the point of the post was settled way back.
Now, William, here is my disagreement with you: You say, in summary of my position, “Marginalist economic theory is an ideological justification for capitalism, capitalism is what we have now, and what we have now isn’t working, so both mainstream economics and libertarianism are wrong.”
Not quite. That is a fair summary of my response to a specific point, to wit, Chris @ 16 (and props to both you and Chris, by the way, for the generally high level of discussion).
In fact, insofar as I consider Libertarianism worth answering, my position is the same as my position toward liberal reformism: it fails to address the fundamental contradictions of capitalsim, which involves the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the need to constantly expand in a world of limited resources and markets, and the domination of finance capital over production capital which brings with it artificially inflated profits, the fact that goods are produced socially but owned (before the market) individually, and that it is based on the nation-state yet depends on a global economy. Indeed, for the most part, Libertarian politices exacerbate these problems. While liberal reformers are busy (to use the hackneyed cliche) rearranging the deck chairs on the Titantic, Libertarian theorists favor knocking more holes in the bottom.
Secondarily, where traditional anarchists favor destroying the State so that private property will whither away, a dubious strategy at best; Libertarian theorists imagine private property without a State to protect it–yet the State arose with private property, exists to defend private property, and will continue to exist as long as there is private property.
Anon @ 40: Nice! But pull carefully; some of the wooden ones are only held on by straps.
42 Charlie (Colorado) // Apr 27, 2008 at 12:22 am
Charlie @ 19: Tell me you still don’t believe in the “wage-price spiral.” Even the bourgeois economists have abandoned that. Adam Smith answered that one in the 18th Century, and no one has yet shown him to be wrong. In brief, as Mr. Smith pointed out, commodities sell at their value, as determined by the amount of labor necessary to produce them. Raising wages transfers surplus value from the owner to the wage-laborer, and has no effect on prices; this is insured by competition.
Nice dance, wrong song, Steve. Look, you claimed you wanted an explanation: I didn’t offer any political comment at all, just pointed out that kids who don’t work don’t bring in money. Thus the families that might have gotten that money, don’t. This is not deep. If there is a reason to not do “child labor”, it has to have some value that overwhelms this, or some side effect that counteracts it. I didn’t say there might not be good just reasons, just that, yes, if you don’t get money, you don’t have it.
The notion, though, that raising wages has no effect on prices is so silly as to make me think you must have made a typo there. Raising wages (and other costs) drive prices upward; competition drives prices downward. Like pretty much everything else in the universe, the counteracting forces find an equilibrium. In “free trade” issues, the availability of goods from Somewhere Else that can have lower prices for whatever reason drive prices down; there’s your competition. If the costs can’t be driven down Over Here to match, people just stop making the goods over here. Ask around Detroit; this has happened before.
If you, by some sort of compulsion, prevent the cheap stuff from Somewhere Else from getting here, then prices don’t drop as much because there is no competition from the cheap SomewhereElseican goods. If the prices don’t drop as much, they’re higher.
Work it out, it doesn’t take higher math: if prices don’t go down, they stay high.
People who would have bought the SomewhereElseican goods otherwise, can’t, and so they spend more for their mathoms than they would have. The extra money they spent goes to the sellers. The sellers give it to the employees getting the higher wages. Ergo, wealth is being transferred to the workers whose jobs would have been threatened from the people who would otherwise have not spent as much.
This is not political. It’s basically thermodynamics: if you can’t get the prices and costs in equilibrium, there’s one other equilibration possible: you don’t make them at all. It’s not libertarian, it’s not socialist, it’s not Democrat, it’s not Republican. It’s just arithmetic.
And as for “a” you appear to be saying that children ought to be permitted to be brutally exploited because otherwise their families will starve. I’ve said some nasty things about capitalism in my time, but you have me beat.
Oh nagashegn, Steve. My Hungarian spelling is atrocious, but I’m sure you’ll get the drift. You’re making an unbelievable straw man here. Again, all I said was “if you don’t get the money you don’t have it.” The solution set isn’t “brutal exploitation of children or families starve” or thinking magically that somehow you can make addition and subtraction work differently because you want it to.
And by the way, next time you want to start an argument, just say “I want to start an argument.” Truth is good for the soul.
43 deathbird // Apr 27, 2008 at 7:56 am
Anon @ 40 - This kind of argument seems to come from someone who lives on a totally different planet than I do. Or, at least, another country. The whole Libertarian movement always seems a uniquely American phenomenon to me.
I’m not an economist, but from personal observation over a lot of years it seems to me that people generally don’t ‘choose’ to work in crappy jobs. They do it out of economic necessity. The same economic necessity that prevents the exploited from quitting their place of employment for something better. Where do they go when there is nothing better available? And as for the public putting pressure on companies to change their practices, how often has that actually happened. Most people simply don’t care enough to take action, unless it impacts them personally.
I’d love to live in a world where all people cared about the welfare of their fellow human beings to be willing sacrifice their comforts for the oppressed and downtrodden, even in the short term, but I don’t.
I think their needs to be strong incentives for wealth creation, while maintaining a safety net for those unable to support themselves. Too far in the direction of either pure laissez-faire capitalism or socialism seems to point to an inevitable slide into a third world standard of living for the majority of the population. YMMV.
44 Anon // Apr 28, 2008 at 7:03 am
You’ve taken my post for a joke, and I admit that to many people it will seem that way.
I swear to you however that I am accurately attempting to convey the Libertarian mindset and thought process. I have spoken extensively with many Libertarians and libertarians, and they have all given variations of that exact argument that I listed above. Libertarians fundamentally disagree with your premise that there are “child labor, and similar abuses”. If you don’t want your 8-year-old working in coal mines, don’t let him. If an 8-year-old is working in the coal mines, obviously he and his parents find it a good trade economically, labor for money, and the State should never interfere in free exchange of labor for money. Why should the State get involved?
Child labor is simply not a problem that Libertarians agree exists. That IS the canonical answer.
There are plenty of other problems that people disagree about the fundamental existence of. Some people think that other humans reading fantasy novels is a problem that needs to be dealt with by government action, and other people do not think any problem whatsoever exists. This is one of those cases. Libertarians do not see any problem whatsoever with people selling their labor for money, period, end of sentence.
45 Seth // Apr 28, 2008 at 8:28 am
Anon, 8-year-olds are not people. They’re a special case. (For instance, they shouldn’t be able to sign long-term binding contracts.)
46 skzb // Apr 28, 2008 at 8:48 am
Anon @ 44: My bad. I didn’t take your post as summarizing their position, but as stating your own–hence I assumed you were kidding. I’m following you now.
47 Anon // Apr 28, 2008 at 12:30 pm
“We support repeal of laws that impede the ability of any person to find employment, such as minimum wage laws, so-called “protective” labor legislation for women and children, & governmental restrictions on the establishment of private day-care centers. We deplore government-fostered forced retirement, which robs the elderly of the right to work. We oppose all government welfare, relief projects, and “aid to the poor” programs.”
Source: National Platform of the Libertarian Party Jul 2, 2000
Interestingly, this plank doesn’t appear in the 2006 platform. Will it appear in the 2008 platform? Their convention is in a couple of weeks so we’ll find out then.
48 Ethan // May 18, 2008 at 10:40 am
Hi Steve,
Long time fan. Just wanted to chime in on the comment you made about capitalism being what we have now a few posts ago. In the U.S. at least we have a mixed economy, that is, part capitalism, part socialism. Government control and intervention in the econmoy is rife. Whether you think that’s good or bad, it’s not capitalism. It’s liek the myth of free-trade agreements, if you read one you’d realize they are anything but.
PS I wish I were in Vegas to help you move!
Best wishes,
Ethan
49 skzb // May 18, 2008 at 1:34 pm
Hey, Ethan. Welcome aboard.
Socialism isn’t measured by the amount of “government control and intervention” (which is also rather tricky to measure). The significant points are: Are individuals permitted to exploit (in the scientific, not the moral sense of the term) others for profit, and the degree of public ownership of production. In the US, in general, publicly owned production is confined to your local water works, and in some communities the power companies).
50 Ethan // May 18, 2008 at 4:54 pm
Hi Steve,
Sure! I’ll bow to your better understanding of exatly what socialism entails. For one thing, I think it’s very important to define terms before debating them, so that was my bad. So let me correct my statement to say what we have isn’t capitalism in that we have government controls on the economy through various means.
I define capitalism in the laissez-faire sense. I do so because anything else to my mind isn’t capitalism and to brand it such let’s it be judged as capitaism when in it fact isn’t. Governemnt controls go far beyond public institutions such as water works. The governments policy of allowing certain monopolies and also of messing around in with the market by creating artificially high or low proces is another. I don’t think the current U.S. “capitalism” is sustainable.
None of this answers your question on child labor. You asked libertarians what they think, and I wouldn’t quite fit that bill. I generally call myself an Objectivist, however I find most of the public stances taken by prominent Objectivists to be rather idiotic and not in line with the basics of the philosophy, no matter how well they should know it or claim to know it. Besides, most self-identified Objectivists are assholes, and I’m not. Alas!
So, let me give you my opinion (TM) on child labor :-) Governemtn exiss to protect the right of the citizens. Chidren are citizens and for them to be employed in dangerous conditions would be illegal. Could they work “volutarily” in certain “safe” jobs? Sure, at some point. There is a slippery slope under there, but that discussion is a long and deep one. Bottom line: forced child labor and sweat shops are rotten and there are ways of preventing them and punishing them without violating free market and limited government principles.
Blagh politics! I think we’ve all had enough of it after the last few years. :-)
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