I’m the chimney sweep now!
While there were indeed child chimney sweeps, this particular image isn’t from the 1800s, nor is it an actual child chimney sweep.
But we already got rid of child chimney sweepers without getting rid of capitalism
The point is that capitalism prioritizes profit, not the welfare of people. This is only not done anymore because of regulation, not because capitalism was fixed. It can’t be fixed. The target goal of capitalism is wrong. Profit does not optimize for innovation, welfare, happiness, or anything else that could be called good. It will always exploit people as much as it can, and it just happens to not exploit children (in the western world (legally)) because we made it not allowed, and disobeying that law would be less profitable.
shouldn’t we come up with a system where the core values don’t need regulation. it becomes unthinkable to exploit children not because of regulation and enforcement but because the system in itself denies power to exploiters.
Profit motive and greed are stronger. https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1157368469/child-labor-violations-increase-states-loosen-rules
Capitalism is insanely efficient in allocating capital and setting prices – two things incredibly difficult to do otherwise. At the same time it has the problem of protecting the weakest. But that can be tackled by regulation – which has been pretty effective in the EU for example.
What kind of system would you prefer?
Capitalism is moderately efficient in allocating Capital and setting prices for the purpose of generating profits. Capitalism is pretty terrible when it comes to actually improving society, and the EU still sees massive problems.
Worker Ownership of the Means of Production is a better alternative, whether that be along the lines of Anarcho-Syndicalism, Market Socialism, Democratic Socialism, Marxism, Council Communism, or so forth.
Capital and price are imaginary. Why are you evaluating a system by random concepts that don’t correspond to anything real?
Maybe use a metric with actual real meaning like fraction of people with basic necessities covered.
What if we incentivized the kids to work using tokens on their iPad games? They would do the work basically for free and we could use it as a labor cost saving measure. Like the gig economy but now with a whole new section of laborers to choose from.
What if we could store the children in a kind of acid to leech their life force more efficiently with the added benefit of being able to store their potential energy for longer durations 🧐
Don’t worry give some states a couple of years and I’m sure we’ll see child chimney sweepers come back 😉
Businesses in the Midwest US have already been hiring 10-12 year old undocumented kids to work overnight cleaning machine parts at meatpacking plants. I mean… so many different things wrong with that. The psycho fuckers who run these businesses need some real penalties, like jail time and dissolving their company.
We just got rid of chimney sweeps in general.
Despite us regulating child labor it seems like profit motives and greed overpower regulatory measures.
https://www.npr.org/2023/02/26/1157368469/child-labor-violations-increase-states-loosen-rules
What about all the places where it has been made illegal and will remain so?
Through labor organization. It wasn’t out of the goodness of the hearts of benevolent Capitalists, but through struggles of Workers. The point of this picture isn’t that Capitalism used to be worse, and fixed itself, but that Capitalists will absolutely take advantage of children and subject them to sacrificing their bodies for clean chimneys if it makes a profit.
The takeaway from this is that Capitalists cannot be seen as individual humans with values, but as cogs in the Capitalist machine that will exploit everything and everyone for profit. An individual Capitalist may not be willing to go that far, but inevitably as long as there is profit to be made, someone will fill that gap.
That’s why economic systems need to be looked at at aggregates and not as individual transactions. You miss the forest for the trees.
we just moved child labour to less developed countries. we didn’t get rid of anything. you just don’t see it, but child labour is still going strong in the world. child slavery as well.
No WE did not. The people in those countries where it still happens allowed it to still happen.
None of us have any decisionmaking power to control what those countries do, so the burden to fix those problems is on those countries who allow it.
It’s 100% a consequence of Capitalism, though. You’re blaming developing nations for the willful exploitation international Corporations commit and you personally benefit from.
Yeah those countries just need to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and start being productive members of the world.
I know we could help them out so they don’t have to go through all the hard times alone and without the knowledge we have, but fuck em hahahahahaha
yes we do. we demand money and offer that the only way they can make it is by exploitation.
Ah yes and there is no other child labour anywhere in the world at all anymore
I think they’re saying that things can improve even within capitalism. And they have. But child labour still exists.
But we haven’t gotten rid of child labor even in the US
Alright, let’s not pretend that today is somehow just as bad or worse than this when it comes to developed countries, but we still need to make changes.
What’s bad is that even with the preponderance of historical evidence, there are still people who would absolutely return to these practices if the government let them. In many cases they do it anyway.
We’re already doing it in the US. Republicans are pushing to repeal child labor laws. At the same time, multiple meat suppliers have been found using migrant children (as young as 11 IIRC) in dangerous jobs in their factories. This is at the same time that the greedy fucks are hiking prices on your groceries.
This brings up one of the questions I have in regards to capitalism criticism. I understand that child labor is bad I would prefer labor be done safely and with respect. In a capitalist society undereducated and vulnerable people get the short end and often do these jobs. In a communist system dangerous and dirty work still needs to be done. How would labor be allotted that would cause a more egalitarian outcome. Personal example of my family were migrant farm workers. Uncle fucking hated doing field work he saved capital, went to community college, got a good paying job, is now paying my cousins way through cal poly. If the system is set up so that work is done by those who can then realistically he could still be a field hand and my cousin would probably follow him. How does a non capitalist system deter formation and unintentional enforcement of caste systems.
The left is primarily not concerned with the wealth disparity caused by different wages between jobs. What drives inequality, which makes our society less democratic and just, is the private ownership of capital (meaning means of production in this context). It would be totally fair in a socialist society to add bonuses for harder or more dangerous work. What is not compatible is private ownership, not personal ownership of stuff.
You’re on Lemmy. Every ill of the world is caused by capitalism, cars, and any operating system other than Linux. Occasionally they leak out of their echo chambers like this post here. You’re best bet is to block the creator and move on.
Things get a lot more enjoyable here when you block the problematic posters, communities, and instances.
Linux is too unstable to use outside of a virtual machine. Windows 11 is preferable to Linux in many cases.
There are many valid criticisms and potential criticisms of Linux, both as a desktop OS and in general.
Stability is absolutely not one of them.
Some might be wondering what the issue is since he probably grew this one from a little thing.
