4 ms·

It's a little flippant but I kind of see your point. Everything I did as a kid was more dangerous because I was an uncoordinated idiot with no sense of danger.

It's a little flippant but I kind of see your point. Everything I did as a kid was more dangerous because I was an uncoordinated idiot with no sense of danger. I'm still mostly better off for having done the stupid things I did. Why does attaching pay make it special? The only aside is that I don't want to end up in a world where substantial fractions of children must work in order to be fed and housed. But if a kid wants to work and someone wants to pay them to, it seems good to me.

35997279 3y ago
> Why does attaching pay make it special? Incentives. A bouldering gym is incentivized, due to the cost of liability and the impact on their reputation, for every visitor to have a safe experience. If your kid falls and breaks his neck after you paid a gym to help him learn, you’re going to sue. Employers are incentivized to extract as much labor for the least amount of expense. New laws disincentivize safety by reducing liability.
lazyasciiart 3y ago
Attaching pay attached a large amount of coercion: are you willing to give up the future income of this job in order to refuse a bad or dangerous or illegal request? That’s the core argument behind many worker protections. And the idea that children are going to be better at making that decision than they are at deciding whether a cigarette or a special onetime investment opportunity is a good idea is … low evidence.
throwaway049 3y ago
Your nephew's ability to eat or keep a roof over his head is not conditional upon completing the boulder course at a pace set by a foreman, or completing it at all. That's what makes attaching pay to it special.
- joebob42 3y ago
  I'm attempting to carve that out, but I get that it's extremely difficult to do / might not be possible to do well. I benefitted tremendously from work I did as a teenager (but did not have to do to survive). Obviously there's some bathwater and some baby here and it's a difficult balance, but I think completely banning the practice is unlikely to be the best possible outcome.

35997279 3y ago

> Why does attaching pay make it special? Incentives. A bouldering gym is incentivized, due to the cost of liability and the impact on their reputation, for every visitor to have a safe experience. If your kid falls and breaks his neck after you paid a gym to help him learn, you’re going to sue. Employers are incentivized to extract as much labor for the least amount of expense. New laws disincentivize safety by reducing liability.

lazyasciiart 3y ago

Attaching pay attached a large amount of coercion: are you willing to give up the future income of this job in order to refuse a bad or dangerous or illegal request? That’s the core argument behind many worker protections. And the idea that children are going to be better at making that decision than they are at deciding whether a cigarette or a special onetime investment opportunity is a good idea is … low evidence.

throwaway049 3y ago

Your nephew's ability to eat or keep a roof over his head is not conditional upon completing the boulder course at a pace set by a foreman, or completing it at all. That's what makes attaching pay to it special.

joebob42 3y ago
I'm attempting to carve that out, but I get that it's extremely difficult to do / might not be possible to do well. I benefitted tremendously from work I did as a teenager (but did not have to do to survive). Obviously there's some bathwater and some baby here and it's a difficult balance, but I think completely banning the practice is unlikely to be the best possible outcome.