[racketeer]

Your logic fails when taken to the extreme. Child labor is used to manufacture clothes in some depoliticized districts around the world. Should we sit back and say, "Hey those guys need money and should be able to get a job and work for it just like us!" Or should we change our manufacturing/distribution methods to encourage more american produced goods?

[civilian]

I think child labor is better than the family starving.

For a lot of human history, we've had kids doing work. It's not great, and parents usually agree! One of the first things that families do, when they escape poverty, is to pull their kids out of jobs and put them in schools. And the money that the child earned can help a family feed themselves and be raised out of poverty. It's a negative feedback loop.

[jfoutz]

yes? http://nominetwork.org/

There is a large spectrum of scaryness out there. child labor making bags is better than ... the alternative.

[racketeer]

I'm confused.. the alternative to child labor is human trafficking?

[jfoutz]

you've got it the other way around.

Sometimes, child labor is the alternative to human trafficking.

[btilly]

That's like praising child porn because the alternative is sometimes raping children.

[jfoutz]

Two things. First, I think both of your options are horrible, and specifically selected to be offensive. I'm not aware of any aid organization that makes kids do porn instead of be raped. You can keep that link to yourself.

Second, a kid having to work in a factory is way way better than having to be a slave. Keep in mind, these kids would be working back on the farm with their family, but their family can't afford to feed them, so they send them off. Their families are usually lied to about what their kids are going to do. My western sensibilities find this awful.

So i'm a bit curious at this point. It seems you're advocating, since the kids can't have a perfect life, they might as well be raped?

[btilly]

I think both of your options are horrible,

I can say much the same about your options. Granted, child slavery is worse than child labor. However child labor is still not acceptable. And if a company like, say, Nike was to use that as an excuse for having their shoes made by child labor, I'd find that unacceptable.

...and specifically selected to be offensive.

Of course. That was the point. Your argument is of the form, "We should accept A because if we don't then some people will suffer B, which is much worse." I just substituted a different pair of A and B with a relationship that is just as clear as the relationship between the things that you were describing.

The logical form of the argument is unchanged. Yet your immediate response is that both are unacceptable.

[lancewiggs]

See how our emotions get in the way when parsing the above?

That's one of the fundamental issues with the entire topic - emotions ranked are above evidence based policy.

Strangely enough poor uneducated immigrants are easily net positive for society, and so are educated ones.

I recommend reading "The Economic Consequences of Immigration" for a good picture of the benefits and costs.