[fellowniusmonk]

As someone who was forced to drop out of school and started illegally working 80 hour weeks at 15 it's all just predatory leverage from exploitive adults no matter how they dress it up as oppurtunity.

My parents used to justify it by bringing up historical farm kids, but ostensibly that work effort is then inherited as capital by those kids.

Working for your dads VC firm or your parents restaurant, on the family farm or mowing lawns in the summer. It's all still child exploitation to some extent but at least it's family time and in some sense you are holistically learning end to end business skills. It's questionable but has some educational return. I could see how it might be fine or beneficial, I get that in those situations there is nuance. Kids working in meatpacking plants aren't Michael Dell building PCs to sell in a garage, in fact such labor precludes them from personal autonomy & early, compounding investment in self development.

In our modern times turning an adolecent into a wage slave is evil, the negative impact continues to compound over the life of that child.

Don't get me started on "teen stars" forced to start music careers playing whatever they are told. Many teens in those situations who start out at malleable but willing children become instant victims of abuse the moment they begin to assert their own tastes.