12mo ago

A literal child taking orders in a fast food restaurant in the US

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People offended just by looking at this picture out of context should really try explaining their preferred authoritarian social policy to a teenager who wants a part-time job but for whom some people would forbid them by penalty of the law.
Spoiler: They won't understand why you should have any authority over their body and time.
I don't understand why you should have that authority either. I mean, where does it end?
What are your criteria for exceptions? Shouldn't it be between the kid and their parents, and not you?
Are you imagining there is a parental figure with a bull whip for this kid in the back office and you want to outlaw physical abuse? There are already separate laws for that!
- Children should not be working. We have piles of dead children that died in the past for the profits of capitalists, and it took millions of maimed children marching to DC led by Mother Jones for anything to be done about child labor. I highly doubt that there's anyone, let alone children, that want to be in the coercive environment we call work. If you want to say protecting children from the dangers of a capitalist workplace is authoritarian, then so be it. I don't want to see children in a workplace where they will be exploited by everyone above them.
  
  I started working at age 13 back in 1980 because I wanted money to buy GI Joes, and comic books. So I started going to construction jobs with my shithead father on Saturdays and helped him put up sheetrock. My first legitimate job was the summer I turned 15, I was big for my age so I started doing deliveries for a furniture store, worked there for two summers until I was fired after a workplace injury. The guy I worked with was a racist Italian from Whitestone New York, and I was a smart slightly autistic black kid. His delivery truck only had one seat so I stood in the open door on the right side holding on for dear life. One day we were moving a heavy office desk upstairs and I was bringing up the rear, he lost control which resulted in the desk sliding downstairs and slamming me into a wall. My ribs were badly bruised so after I got home the store panicked and fired me, they probably thought we were going to sue. Anyway I went into a deep depression and couldn't leave my room for a month. One of my therapists later told me that it was the first appearance of my bipolar disorder.
  I was legally employable, and of age but still got hurt on the job. I just had shithead employers.
  
  If the business commits a crime like killing a kid, there are laws for that - just like there are laws for when businesses kill adults.
  You are not providing a reason to bar the kid from working, you are providing a reason to outlaw murder(which is already illegal).
  You doubt there are people under 18 who want to work? Should everyone just take your doubt for evidence of the absence of those people? I think not.
  I do agree, if you stand by your beliefs on this issue, you are officially a self-proclaimed authoritarian on this issue.
  
  It's cute that you think I'm talking about murder. Triangle Shirtwaist fire. Children in mines and mills. Children in factories. Children on farms. Children in retail. These are all areas of labor that have killed, maimed, and injured children. These kids were never murdered, they were hurt and killed in accidents that occurred because they were too young to handle the conditions of labor that was demanded of them. Fuck you for advocating for children to return to that type of labor.
  
  Kids routinely get hurt (and sometimes killed) just playing. As long as they're not getting more seriously hurt more often at a job than regular activities, I don't see what the issue is, at all.
- Why tf should a kid want to work? Why would you want a society to normalize a 14-year-old hustling and working after school? It's not authoritarian to protect children from parasitic businesses. Child-labor is illegal because at that stage a person has less emotional intelligence and rationality, they can more easily be taken advantage of and overworked, and won't understand their rights as a worker as well. You can't even sign a contract at 14 without a parent or guardian and you want them to be able to act at the whim of fast food managers?
  Your argument is hardly one step away from the argument I see people trot out when defending child marriage.
  
  It's already normal and kids want to buy things as much as anyone else. This is incredibly easy to understand.
  
  I don't presume to know why anyone else wants anything for themselves, why do you?
  To make it clear that I am answering your question: I do not know.
  Can you answer my question? Why do you presume to know what the kid wants?
  Like I said, there are separate laws for child abuse. Physical abuse, mental/emotional abuse too. The bases are covered.
- You're right. How can we claim to live in a free society if our children don't even have the right to be exploited?
  
  Are all jobs bad because someone else skims part of the profit? Or is it just bad to you because it's a person under 18?
  Just trying to sort out whether you are for eliminating all work or just work for minors?
  If it's just work for minors, would you support any exceptions?
  Like, for example, for an emancipated 17 year old with a baby of their own to support?
  
  Yes, these people think all jobs are bad because they're communists. Lemmy is very detached from reality.
  
  This is the first time I've encountered such extreme and immovable opinions on Lemmy. It's wild to me that people who are (presumably) trying to support social justice for minors cannot even acknowledge that teenagers sometimes need and would prefer to work - that it's a separate issue from child abuse and strict authoritarian prohibition over their labor is itself abusive.
  Don't people understand that a 17 year old can have a baby and need a job?
  They won't even entertain the possibility and defend an actual policy position. It's devoid of social responsibility.
  If they are genuinely socialist or communist, then how can they defend stripping 14-18 year olds of their natural right to profit from their own labor? It's just as bad as a capitalist exploiting that labor with unlivable wages - they are essentially condemning these people to $0 in wages and total state dependence.
- Yeah, we tried to let people have the permission to do that, kids died.
  Enough kids died that even America decided we needed to make laws against it, and we love exploiting the under class people
  
  As others have pointed out, those laws have important exceptions to account for kids who want to work, and that is the question I am asking all of the knee-jerk authoritarians:
  What is the actual policy position they support? What are the exceptions they support or are they completely authoritarian about this issue? (I think a strict rule prohibiting all people under 18 from ever earning a living is a pretty embarrassing position to defend.)
  What are emancipated teenagers supposed to do? Should they live 100% at the mercy of state programs and not improve their living standards beyond the meager social welfare they are afforded until they turn exactly 18 years old? Really? Not even a day sooner, even if they are ready and qualified to work?
  That would be completely inhumane. Certainly it's depriving them of their bodily freedom and natural ability to extract capital value from their own labor.
  So where is the line? 13? 14? I think somewhere in there is reasonable. Perhaps a test could determine their capacity to participate in their own economic fate? Or an evaluation by a social worker? I could go for something like that.
  What if they are NOT emancipated and their parent is supervising them? Should the age minimum be higher then? 17? 18? I do not think so.
  I think it's only logical that the age minimum should actually be lower if a parent is directly supervising - their physical and economic risk is lower if the parent is looking out for their best interests. This of course presumes that the parent is not physically or mentally/emotionally abusing the kid(again, separate laws exist for the abuse component and most parents don't abuse their kids).
  
  The wall is usually 14-ish with limitations on what you can do and how many hours you can work.
  We have to limit it otherwise adults will take advantage of the fact that children don’t know what they’re doing.
  Yes, some of them might be smart enough, but a lot of them aren’t, and it’s better to protect the majority and work on irregular cases on their own merits.
  Part of becoming an emancipated minor is showing that you have the means to care for yourself to a judge, otherwise you’re not allowed to become emancipated
  
  Perfectly reasonable!
- This is like...yuck.
  What if a teen really really wanted to date an adult. They're a child, no one cares what they "understand" because their capacity to understand is literally crippled. Their brains aren't developed yet.
  
  It sounds like you are equating any job to getting sexually abused or raped.
  That is "like... Yuck".
  It's an irrelevant comparison because the work itself is not abuse. There are other laws that protect kids from being abused, if they are being abused to force them to work(or for any other purpose).
  If you don't care what people under 18 think, you should reflect on how selfish and closed-minded that sounds to me and especially to the real human people you are proposing to lose their ability to work.
  Do you really think there is a major difference between the brain of a 17 year old the day before their 18th birthday and the day after? There is no significant difference at all.
  So, my question is, where do you draw the line for a person under 18 whose quality of life might depend on working? Should they just have that freedom stripped because you don't care what they think?
  Even if they are on their own? Or supporting a dependent, like their own baby? Really? If you are that authoritarian about this, I hope you forget to vote on it.
  
  The yuck part is that children under 18 are legally defined as not having full reasoning and consent capabilities.
  So, I wasn't saying all work is rape, that's silly and foolish to think.
  I'm saying your assertion that teens should have adult independence to make adult choices without laws and support is yuck.
  "They don't understand" is literally my point. They CANT
  If you're saying teens can consent in the same way adults can, that is yuck. And that is wrong. (For clarity, you need to consent to a working relationship for it to be healthy.)
  
  Never said anything about healthy. I have consented to a lot of “relationships” that weren’t healthy for a healthy relationship.
  I agree with most of what you said though
  
  It sounds like you are using a legal framework from medical treatment of minors. If I have that right, then you should know that there is an exception for emancipated people under 18 years of age.
  Would you support the same exception for work, now that you know this or perhaps you would also eliminate this exception for them to control their own bodies in a medical context?
  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4008301/#:~:text=A%20child%20under%20the%20age,(and%20refuse)%20medical%20treatment.
  Court-ordered emancipation. A child under the age of 18 who lives independently without the support of parents and makes his or her own day-to-day decisions may petition the court for emancipation. If granted, the minor will have the same legal rights as an adult, including the right to consent to (and refuse) medical treatment.

328 comments