11 ms·

Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? Now I'm not in touch with all the logistics here, but if I were growing up in a country where I had the

by toolz 6y ago

Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? Now I'm not in touch with all the logistics here, but if I were growing up in a country where I had the option of starving or sending my kids off to work I know what I would be choosing. Child labor occurred in my family as little as a generation ago. My mother and her siblings all worked long hours in the field to raise crops with her family. She seems to be thriving after being in a situation the west seems to deem as terrible. Ideally children don't have to work, ideally no one has to work - I do wonder if South Korea would be as democratic and free today if it weren't for their child labor force as little as 80 years ago though and I do wonder if those children or families would've preferred the alternative to child labor. Presumably they did not, since they volunteered their children to work for low wages. I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values. There are likely clear cases of child abuse that should be abolished - there are abusive cases of employment for all ages that should be abolished. I do wonder if we're too quick to judge child labor as a category in the west, though.

enriquto 6y ago
> Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? Just like slavery was. Slaves always had the option to kill themselves, but instead the slavery system allowed them to live and have families and feed them. In that light, you comment comes out as extremely callous.
- toolz 6y ago
  Do you deem there to be a difference since presumably the children's parents love the child but still choose to have them work? Again, I don't believe child labor is ideal, but I do wonder if there's really a comparison to slavery, which was entirely compulsory.
  - enriquto 6y ago
    > presumably the children's parents love the child but still choose to have them work Please, stop. Don't you realize you are making it worse? Still, it is funny to see you defend child labor as a cultural value, just to save Apple's face. Not sure Apple would appreciate your efforts, though.
    - toolz 6y ago
      I'm sorry to see you disagree with me so strongly that you're unwilling to have a conversation. I hope you'll consider respecting your peers enough in the future to engage in conversation rather than dismissing their opinions.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I think there are some pretty significant parallels between slavery and child labour. IMO children aren't capable decision makers so a better place to begin the parallel might be comparing child labour to the abuse of those with mental disabilities or the elderly. The parents may or may not have their child's best interest at heart but they certainly have an outsized force of opinion when it comes to the child's actions. I think[1] that for slavery to exist in society there has to be a really strong psychological justification for the slavery on the part of the owners and that that rubs off on the owned - slave revolts were pretty immediately effective when they happened in the south but relatively rare and I think this is due an acceptance on slaves' parts that they were powerless to change their situation. If that view is effected then I think that children would be in a similar sort of situation as slaves - but I think abuse of the elderly or mentally disabled is a much clearer parallel to draw. That all said - I don't think that's the side of this issue that's problematic. I don't actually have a problem with children working when the economic situation requires it - I have a problem with companies that could improve that situation to remove the need to have child labour instead exploiting the situation to make more money. If a family was farming in complete isolation from the rest of the world and barely scraping by then I'd find it perfectly acceptable for the children to help with maintaining the farm as they are able - since the difference is between survival and death. 1. Heavy into opinion territory here so I wanted to clarify that none of this is intended to offend.
    - toolz 6y ago
      hmm, thanks for the reply, I'm not sure I fully grasp the parallels of parents acting in the best interest of their family and abusing elderly or the disabled, but I can appreciate a perspective that finds child labor to be a net loss for society, personally I think it all hinges on cultural norms as happiness isn't determined by having the most freedom or money or choices, but rather seems to be tied to some sense of being pro-social and being capable of achieving goals. I believe there are cultures which can foster a strong sense of pro-social family building through child labor and thus it can be beneficial in that context.
paxys 6y ago
Top comment justifying Apple using child labor and spinning it as respecting different cultures is peak HN.
stefantalpalaru 6y ago
> Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? Right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_actor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_actor
- judge2020 6y ago
  Exactly - Disney Channel in general is still filled with child actors. Perhaps the acceptance of child stars is because we idolize actors and envy them when they grow up to live their lives in multi-million dollar mansions in LA.
  - King-Aaron 6y ago
    > Perhaps the acceptance of child stars It might also be that having adults act as children in films is kind of difficult to sell
    - notriddle 6y ago
      This also makes it economical for child actors to be hired for short hours, so it doesn’t have to interfere with their education.
woofie11 6y ago
I've seen good child labor, "good" child labor, and I've seen bad child labor. They're different. Good child labor: When I was in high school, I had a (slightly illegal) job programming. It was awesome! (My employer, as a footnote, didn't want to break laws, and was not exploitative in any way; but circumstances were complex). I'm firmly convinced we'd all be better off if kids started having at least part-time jobs in middle school. "Good" child labor: Yes, families in very poor countries need kids to work to eat food. Kids work in the fields. It's necessary. In India, I saw kids making stone statues for export. It was how families were able to put food on the table. I wouldn't call it good, but it was definitely better than the alternative (which I also saw). It's a rapidly shrinking portion of the world. People often don't realize how far we've come towards eliminating abject poverty, but it still exists. And with abject poverty, everyone works. It's a solvable problem, and it's being solved, but it has not yet been solved. Work is also often better than no-school in parts of the world where access to education is limited. Bad child labor: Forced. Slavery. Sweatshops. Etc. Most anything involving a factory. So, yes, we are too quick to judge. On the other hand, I'm not sure we're too quick to judge Apple.
- jamie_ca 6y ago
  I agree that there are distinctions. I grew up delivering newspapers 6 days a week from age 12 or so, walkable distances from my home, 30-90 minute routes depending on my age. I didn't _have_ to, and the money I got from it was available to me as spending money - it wasn't needed to contribute to the household budget or anything. But also, you've got things like family farms (dwindling in the US but still present), where there's a fine distinction between "chores" and "work to run the farm," and I don't think anyone's going to accuse farmers of exploiting their kids as they ramp up responsibilities as the kids get older.
- issamehh 6y ago
  I'd be interested in hearing why you think we'd be better off with middle school students having jobs. I'm a firm believer that absolutely having to have a job to survive completely wrecks the learning process. Not just for children but even adult students at universities. I had to work to scrape by and my schoolwork, my job, and my mental/physical health suffered because of it. Sure, my situation required it and so I'd be much worse off without doing so but I'd have been even better off if it wasn't a requirement in the first place. That is the future I wish to work towards
amelius 6y ago
> I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values. It's a single world we live in. Those iPads and M1 laptops are crossing the borders between our cultures, so why can't our values?
- toolz 6y ago
  Do you think there's the possibility that families are kept out of severe poverty because their children can be utilized to earn the family money? Do you think lowering the options for families will increase their quality of life? If you do believe those things I'm certainly not one to say you're wrong. I could imagine a scenario where removing all child labor is beneficial to the whole, but I do think it's a much more simple model to believe that the more options a family has, the better off they are long term. Of course all of this rests on child labor being a choice for the family and not compulsory, something I don't know the specifics of for every situation.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    As a counter point - do you think that Apple, a company with an immense amount of cash in their warchest, could afford to simply pay people in the area more thus removing the necessity for the child labour to occur to support the family? Economics isn't simple, but Apple is benefiting immensely from the low cost of employment through these subcontractors and we, as apple consumers, are absolutely allowed to judge companies that exploit overseas labour and refuses to pay for local labour - and that extends to employing people we'd consider children. Companies don't get a "get out of bad PR free" card just because the child exploitation is occurring in a part of the world where it may be considered ethical.
    - netizen-9748 6y ago
      But that would defeat the purpose of manufacturing in that part of the world, worse yet it would cut into their profits! /s
  - qppo 6y ago
munk-a 6y ago
I think "child labour" being unnacceptable is a pretty new concept. On one hand "childhood" is, I think, a relatively new concept - at least the idea that you are somehow incapable of doing things once you can walk. Children all across America do minor chores today, but in earlier eras those chores may have been much more physically intense. Children being able to not work is, IMO, just another luxury that specialization has brought to society. In addition to childhood being a new concept I think it's also a concept that isn't consistently understood globally with some societies seeing eighteen as the margin of adulthood, America seems to view 21 as the common margin of adulthood, and in developing countries that barrier to adulthood is going to be a lot lower - a larger proportion of children will be required to be self-sufficient at a younger age. That all said - I don't feel any hesitation in forcing companies that deal in western markets to obey western ideas around childhood. Economic hardship isn't easy to solve, but openly allowing companies with the ability to bear the cost to exploit the dissonance around when adulthood happens internationally to further their own profits is something that's very easy to come down hard on. If Apple, as an example, felt morally compelled to allow child labour to raise families out of poverty they could, alternatively, just dedicate more money to charitably funding social programs in those countries instead... but that's specifically for the case where money is entering a country from outside - domestic child labour is a more complicated issue and I feel like it is significantly more justifiable to ensure that people gain better access to health, safety and good lives.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  Labour in general is a fairly new concept to humanity, i.e. prior to industrialisation everyone would be working on farms until nighttime.
  - munk-a 6y ago
    I agree that it became more formalized in recent history - but it has existed in a general form for a long time. I would consider labour to be any work done for a wage - exchanging your work for payment from someone else... And that has been going since Sumeria at least - probably a long time prior to any written record we can consult. That said, the proportion of the population participating in the labour market has changed - right now nearly all adults participate in the labour market in some manner, but subsistence farming as the norm for life wasn't so far back in history.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
I've shared some of your thoughts in the past and still today. Indeed, there can be situations where generating a source of income (e.g. for sustenance) in the short-medium term is more valuable than generating knowledge that pays off in the medium-long term. I think the assessment should always be focused on whether it is a net benefit to the child. Yet I do believe these where child labour is a net benefit are increasingly rare and in some countries simply not present anymore at scale, leaving no justification child labour. The situation in 2021 is in that sense very different from say 1940s Korea. For one, primary and secondary education has been seen to be an enormous net-positive to society and has very large returns on dollars spent, which would apply to the opportunity cost (not being able to work) as well. As such, while I agree that child labour can be useful as a source of income (which is a primary source of wellbeing) in isolation, it's not necessarily a net gain (particularly in the long-run) for the child or for society if child labour takes the place of education, which it often does. Even many poor countries today have high levels of universal primary and largely secondary school education available, and while issues like poverty and hunger obviously are very real, the directly life-threatening issues like famine at scale (e.g. in a country like India or China) are quite rare nowadays. As such, I think it makes more sense in a country like India or China (the country in question where the supplier was located) that children primarily go to school and enjoy being kids, despite poverty. Note that child labour is not 'labour by a child'. e.g. in a country like the Netherlands, kids aged 13 are allowed to work. But it cannot be their primary occupancy, then it would be defined as child labour. That'd imply that work takes priority over school and children being children, and that's not necessary (e.g. for sustenance) or acceptable in most countries (such as India or China). I see only a few exceptions, e.g. kids doing farmwork in rural Mali to provide much needed income for sustenance in an environment where school isn't available or affordable, may make sense. That's not to say child labour shouldn't be eradicated in Mali, but rather that banning child labour is perhaps a solution that should come only after problems of sustenance are resolved, and may not be a useful policy measure today. Of course it goes without saying many other forms of child labour (war recruits, sex, dangerous labour, hard labour) etc make no sense under any circumstance. Also situations in which there is child labour without pay (quite common too), it is clearly exploiting of a child without any net benefit to the child).
random5634 6y ago
Definitely a pretty new concept. I worked a paper route growing up, did lawns and opened a store in the morning before school. My first paycheck (was printed on a dot matrix printer and paid in cash) I framed and put on the wall. Making great money now - and I loved those jobs. The news here is that apple cut off a subcontractor. It does take time to shift supply chains. I wish these folks trashing apple spent even 10% of their effort on the cheapo android phone companies. Environment, device longevity, privacy, supply chain issues etc - I'm convinced some of these activists are getting funding from these crap companies because they turn such a blind eye to what is rampant and truly terrible behavior in other supply chains.
- fakedang 6y ago
  > I wish these folks trashing apple spent even 10% of their effort on the cheapo android phone companies. And here we're back to that magic word, whataboutism. The Android Market is largely dominated by Samsung and a bunch of Chinese players (Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, One Plus, etc.). I haven't seen people use a Google phone since forever. Samsung has already left China, and is only involving the Chinese supply chain at an arms' length. The other firms will continue their abhorrent practices anyways. The point of the article is that Apple, being an American company, constantly extolling about virtuous they are, took a bit too long to shift. Sure, it's justifiable and even inevitable to take that long. But people tend to hold trillion dollar American companies to a much higher standard than they do a bunch of Chinese copycats. Yes, they should hold Google to the same standards too if it happened, but it would be impossible to do anything against the Chinese firms but fart in the wind since they practically don't care enough to change.
  - random5634 6y ago
    The number one way to reduce child labor is to empower (economically) poor, rural families. A lot of child labor is coming from families without resources / reduced education coming from rural to more urban areas. You are pretty clueless about supply chains. A ton of companies pay lip service to supply chain ethics, but do nothing in reality. To actually drop a significant supply chain supplier is pretty major in this space, even if it takes 3 years to spin up a new supplier with capital build out (necessary at Apple's scale), QC, integration etc. I'm not saying whataboutism. I am saying this story shows that if you care about ethics, Apple is probably one of the few firms out there willing to make these kind of major decisions. Apparel - it's all a lie in terms of the ethics pledges. Kimberly process for diamonds - badly manipulated - so again a lie in large measure. The list goes on. I could go on. There's a reason I bought a mad made diamond for my wife. I am saying that you and these other western whiners seem to have no clue about the rest of the world. And if this is the reason you are going to dump apple - I feel bad for you, and everyone who will be abused to give you the cheap crap you end up buying. Because this story is not a bad story for apple in the global supply chain game. And it's super frustrating to see these endless stories that have become almost a joke.
monadic3 6y ago
> Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? I hear people talk about "family business" all the time.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
nitwit005 6y ago
> I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values. Sure, but it's not as if China is in favor of it either. They periodically crack down on the factories doing this. I suspect you can go almost anywhere in the world today and find most people will prefer their kids to be in school than working.
jariel 6y ago
This is thinks is not the way to look at it. The reason people are hard-up is not because of the lack of labour, but because of the distribution of surpluses. There was never a need for child labour anywhere. It might have been 'needed' in a family because the greater context was screwed up - and so we don't necessarily judge the family, but we will judge the system. Also - kids cleaning up at the family resto or helping out at the family farm is fine, so long as it's not hardship etc. that's obviously not a big deal. But in Apple Factories, no. Also, the amount of questionable ethics by anyone doing this stuff overseas, and then to take the high road on Parler, seriously? I've always felt they were very hypocritical about this, they should stay mostly out of the 'justice' campaigning other than in their own direct sphere.
snicker7 6y ago
> I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values. The ones being judged here are Apple and other corporations exploiting children for profit. Not at all comparable to children helping out on a family farm / small business.
banach 6y ago
What this argument misses is that the supplier should be paying its adult employees living wages that are sufficient to pay for the upbringing of the employees’ families. This is especially true when the customer is the richest company in the world that likes to engage in virtue signaling on various other topics.

by toolz 6y ago

enriquto 6y ago

> Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? Just like slavery was. Slaves always had the option to kill themselves, but instead the slavery system allowed them to live and have families and feed them. In that light, you comment comes out as extremely callous.

toolz 6y ago
Do you deem there to be a difference since presumably the children's parents love the child but still choose to have them work? Again, I don't believe child labor is ideal, but I do wonder if there's really a comparison to slavery, which was entirely compulsory.
- enriquto 6y ago
  > presumably the children's parents love the child but still choose to have them work Please, stop. Don't you realize you are making it worse? Still, it is funny to see you defend child labor as a cultural value, just to save Apple's face. Not sure Apple would appreciate your efforts, though.
  - toolz 6y ago
    I'm sorry to see you disagree with me so strongly that you're unwilling to have a conversation. I hope you'll consider respecting your peers enough in the future to engage in conversation rather than dismissing their opinions.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I think there are some pretty significant parallels between slavery and child labour. IMO children aren't capable decision makers so a better place to begin the parallel might be comparing child labour to the abuse of those with mental disabilities or the elderly. The parents may or may not have their child's best interest at heart but they certainly have an outsized force of opinion when it comes to the child's actions. I think[1] that for slavery to exist in society there has to be a really strong psychological justification for the slavery on the part of the owners and that that rubs off on the owned - slave revolts were pretty immediately effective when they happened in the south but relatively rare and I think this is due an acceptance on slaves' parts that they were powerless to change their situation. If that view is effected then I think that children would be in a similar sort of situation as slaves - but I think abuse of the elderly or mentally disabled is a much clearer parallel to draw. That all said - I don't think that's the side of this issue that's problematic. I don't actually have a problem with children working when the economic situation requires it - I have a problem with companies that could improve that situation to remove the need to have child labour instead exploiting the situation to make more money. If a family was farming in complete isolation from the rest of the world and barely scraping by then I'd find it perfectly acceptable for the children to help with maintaining the farm as they are able - since the difference is between survival and death. 1. Heavy into opinion territory here so I wanted to clarify that none of this is intended to offend.
  - toolz 6y ago
    hmm, thanks for the reply, I'm not sure I fully grasp the parallels of parents acting in the best interest of their family and abusing elderly or the disabled, but I can appreciate a perspective that finds child labor to be a net loss for society, personally I think it all hinges on cultural norms as happiness isn't determined by having the most freedom or money or choices, but rather seems to be tied to some sense of being pro-social and being capable of achieving goals. I believe there are cultures which can foster a strong sense of pro-social family building through child labor and thus it can be beneficial in that context.

paxys 6y ago

Top comment justifying Apple using child labor and spinning it as respecting different cultures is peak HN.

stefantalpalaru 6y ago

> Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? Right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_actor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_actor

judge2020 6y ago
Exactly - Disney Channel in general is still filled with child actors. Perhaps the acceptance of child stars is because we idolize actors and envy them when they grow up to live their lives in multi-million dollar mansions in LA.
- King-Aaron 6y ago
  > Perhaps the acceptance of child stars It might also be that having adults act as children in films is kind of difficult to sell
  - notriddle 6y ago
    This also makes it economical for child actors to be hired for short hours, so it doesn’t have to interfere with their education.

woofie11 6y ago

I've seen good child labor, "good" child labor, and I've seen bad child labor. They're different. Good child labor: When I was in high school, I had a (slightly illegal) job programming. It was awesome! (My employer, as a footnote, didn't want to break laws, and was not exploitative in any way; but circumstances were complex). I'm firmly convinced we'd all be better off if kids started having at least part-time jobs in middle school. "Good" child labor: Yes, families in very poor countries need kids to work to eat food. Kids work in the fields. It's necessary. In India, I saw kids making stone statues for export. It was how families were able to put food on the table. I wouldn't call it good, but it was definitely better than the alternative (which I also saw). It's a rapidly shrinking portion of the world. People often don't realize how far we've come towards eliminating abject poverty, but it still exists. And with abject poverty, everyone works. It's a solvable problem, and it's being solved, but it has not yet been solved. Work is also often better than no-school in parts of the world where access to education is limited. Bad child labor: Forced. Slavery. Sweatshops. Etc. Most anything involving a factory. So, yes, we are too quick to judge. On the other hand, I'm not sure we're too quick to judge Apple.

jamie_ca 6y ago
I agree that there are distinctions. I grew up delivering newspapers 6 days a week from age 12 or so, walkable distances from my home, 30-90 minute routes depending on my age. I didn't _have_ to, and the money I got from it was available to me as spending money - it wasn't needed to contribute to the household budget or anything. But also, you've got things like family farms (dwindling in the US but still present), where there's a fine distinction between "chores" and "work to run the farm," and I don't think anyone's going to accuse farmers of exploiting their kids as they ramp up responsibilities as the kids get older.
issamehh 6y ago
I'd be interested in hearing why you think we'd be better off with middle school students having jobs. I'm a firm believer that absolutely having to have a job to survive completely wrecks the learning process. Not just for children but even adult students at universities. I had to work to scrape by and my schoolwork, my job, and my mental/physical health suffered because of it. Sure, my situation required it and so I'd be much worse off without doing so but I'd have been even better off if it wasn't a requirement in the first place. That is the future I wish to work towards

amelius 6y ago

> I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values. It's a single world we live in. Those iPads and M1 laptops are crossing the borders between our cultures, so why can't our values?

toolz 6y ago
Do you think there's the possibility that families are kept out of severe poverty because their children can be utilized to earn the family money? Do you think lowering the options for families will increase their quality of life? If you do believe those things I'm certainly not one to say you're wrong. I could imagine a scenario where removing all child labor is beneficial to the whole, but I do think it's a much more simple model to believe that the more options a family has, the better off they are long term. Of course all of this rests on child labor being a choice for the family and not compulsory, something I don't know the specifics of for every situation.
- munk-a 6y ago
  As a counter point - do you think that Apple, a company with an immense amount of cash in their warchest, could afford to simply pay people in the area more thus removing the necessity for the child labour to occur to support the family? Economics isn't simple, but Apple is benefiting immensely from the low cost of employment through these subcontractors and we, as apple consumers, are absolutely allowed to judge companies that exploit overseas labour and refuses to pay for local labour - and that extends to employing people we'd consider children. Companies don't get a "get out of bad PR free" card just because the child exploitation is occurring in a part of the world where it may be considered ethical.
  - netizen-9748 6y ago
    But that would defeat the purpose of manufacturing in that part of the world, worse yet it would cut into their profits! /s
- qppo 6y ago

munk-a 6y ago

I think "child labour" being unnacceptable is a pretty new concept. On one hand "childhood" is, I think, a relatively new concept - at least the idea that you are somehow incapable of doing things once you can walk. Children all across America do minor chores today, but in earlier eras those chores may have been much more physically intense. Children being able to not work is, IMO, just another luxury that specialization has brought to society. In addition to childhood being a new concept I think it's also a concept that isn't consistently understood globally with some societies seeing eighteen as the margin of adulthood, America seems to view 21 as the common margin of adulthood, and in developing countries that barrier to adulthood is going to be a lot lower - a larger proportion of children will be required to be self-sufficient at a younger age. That all said - I don't feel any hesitation in forcing companies that deal in western markets to obey western ideas around childhood. Economic hardship isn't easy to solve, but openly allowing companies with the ability to bear the cost to exploit the dissonance around when adulthood happens internationally to further their own profits is something that's very easy to come down hard on. If Apple, as an example, felt morally compelled to allow child labour to raise families out of poverty they could, alternatively, just dedicate more money to charitably funding social programs in those countries instead... but that's specifically for the case where money is entering a country from outside - domestic child labour is a more complicated issue and I feel like it is significantly more justifiable to ensure that people gain better access to health, safety and good lives.

mhh__ 6y ago
Labour in general is a fairly new concept to humanity, i.e. prior to industrialisation everyone would be working on farms until nighttime.
- munk-a 6y ago
  I agree that it became more formalized in recent history - but it has existed in a general form for a long time. I would consider labour to be any work done for a wage - exchanging your work for payment from someone else... And that has been going since Sumeria at least - probably a long time prior to any written record we can consult. That said, the proportion of the population participating in the labour market has changed - right now nearly all adults participate in the labour market in some manner, but subsistence farming as the norm for life wasn't so far back in history.

IkmoIkmo 6y ago

I've shared some of your thoughts in the past and still today. Indeed, there can be situations where generating a source of income (e.g. for sustenance) in the short-medium term is more valuable than generating knowledge that pays off in the medium-long term. I think the assessment should always be focused on whether it is a net benefit to the child. Yet I do believe these where child labour is a net benefit are increasingly rare and in some countries simply not present anymore at scale, leaving no justification child labour. The situation in 2021 is in that sense very different from say 1940s Korea. For one, primary and secondary education has been seen to be an enormous net-positive to society and has very large returns on dollars spent, which would apply to the opportunity cost (not being able to work) as well. As such, while I agree that child labour can be useful as a source of income (which is a primary source of wellbeing) in isolation, it's not necessarily a net gain (particularly in the long-run) for the child or for society if child labour takes the place of education, which it often does. Even many poor countries today have high levels of universal primary and largely secondary school education available, and while issues like poverty and hunger obviously are very real, the directly life-threatening issues like famine at scale (e.g. in a country like India or China) are quite rare nowadays. As such, I think it makes more sense in a country like India or China (the country in question where the supplier was located) that children primarily go to school and enjoy being kids, despite poverty. Note that child labour is not 'labour by a child'. e.g. in a country like the Netherlands, kids aged 13 are allowed to work. But it cannot be their primary occupancy, then it would be defined as child labour. That'd imply that work takes priority over school and children being children, and that's not necessary (e.g. for sustenance) or acceptable in most countries (such as India or China). I see only a few exceptions, e.g. kids doing farmwork in rural Mali to provide much needed income for sustenance in an environment where school isn't available or affordable, may make sense. That's not to say child labour shouldn't be eradicated in Mali, but rather that banning child labour is perhaps a solution that should come only after problems of sustenance are resolved, and may not be a useful policy measure today. Of course it goes without saying many other forms of child labour (war recruits, sex, dangerous labour, hard labour) etc make no sense under any circumstance. Also situations in which there is child labour without pay (quite common too), it is clearly exploiting of a child without any net benefit to the child).

random5634 6y ago

Definitely a pretty new concept. I worked a paper route growing up, did lawns and opened a store in the morning before school. My first paycheck (was printed on a dot matrix printer and paid in cash) I framed and put on the wall. Making great money now - and I loved those jobs. The news here is that apple cut off a subcontractor. It does take time to shift supply chains. I wish these folks trashing apple spent even 10% of their effort on the cheapo android phone companies. Environment, device longevity, privacy, supply chain issues etc - I'm convinced some of these activists are getting funding from these crap companies because they turn such a blind eye to what is rampant and truly terrible behavior in other supply chains.

fakedang 6y ago
> I wish these folks trashing apple spent even 10% of their effort on the cheapo android phone companies. And here we're back to that magic word, whataboutism. The Android Market is largely dominated by Samsung and a bunch of Chinese players (Huawei, OPPO, Xiaomi, One Plus, etc.). I haven't seen people use a Google phone since forever. Samsung has already left China, and is only involving the Chinese supply chain at an arms' length. The other firms will continue their abhorrent practices anyways. The point of the article is that Apple, being an American company, constantly extolling about virtuous they are, took a bit too long to shift. Sure, it's justifiable and even inevitable to take that long. But people tend to hold trillion dollar American companies to a much higher standard than they do a bunch of Chinese copycats. Yes, they should hold Google to the same standards too if it happened, but it would be impossible to do anything against the Chinese firms but fart in the wind since they practically don't care enough to change.
- random5634 6y ago
  The number one way to reduce child labor is to empower (economically) poor, rural families. A lot of child labor is coming from families without resources / reduced education coming from rural to more urban areas. You are pretty clueless about supply chains. A ton of companies pay lip service to supply chain ethics, but do nothing in reality. To actually drop a significant supply chain supplier is pretty major in this space, even if it takes 3 years to spin up a new supplier with capital build out (necessary at Apple's scale), QC, integration etc. I'm not saying whataboutism. I am saying this story shows that if you care about ethics, Apple is probably one of the few firms out there willing to make these kind of major decisions. Apparel - it's all a lie in terms of the ethics pledges. Kimberly process for diamonds - badly manipulated - so again a lie in large measure. The list goes on. I could go on. There's a reason I bought a mad made diamond for my wife. I am saying that you and these other western whiners seem to have no clue about the rest of the world. And if this is the reason you are going to dump apple - I feel bad for you, and everyone who will be abused to give you the cheap crap you end up buying. Because this story is not a bad story for apple in the global supply chain game. And it's super frustrating to see these endless stories that have become almost a joke.

monadic3 6y ago

> Was there ever a time where child labor was acceptable? I hear people talk about "family business" all the time.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

nitwit005 6y ago

> I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values. Sure, but it's not as if China is in favor of it either. They periodically crack down on the factories doing this. I suspect you can go almost anywhere in the world today and find most people will prefer their kids to be in school than working.

jariel 6y ago

This is thinks is not the way to look at it. The reason people are hard-up is not because of the lack of labour, but because of the distribution of surpluses. There was never a need for child labour anywhere. It might have been 'needed' in a family because the greater context was screwed up - and so we don't necessarily judge the family, but we will judge the system. Also - kids cleaning up at the family resto or helping out at the family farm is fine, so long as it's not hardship etc. that's obviously not a big deal. But in Apple Factories, no. Also, the amount of questionable ethics by anyone doing this stuff overseas, and then to take the high road on Parler, seriously? I've always felt they were very hypocritical about this, they should stay mostly out of the 'justice' campaigning other than in their own direct sphere.

snicker7 6y ago

> I really do think we have to be mindful of judging other cultures against our rich western values. The ones being judged here are Apple and other corporations exploiting children for profit. Not at all comparable to children helping out on a family farm / small business.

banach 6y ago

What this argument misses is that the supplier should be paying its adult employees living wages that are sufficient to pay for the upbringing of the employees’ families. This is especially true when the customer is the richest company in the world that likes to engage in virtue signaling on various other topics.