Actually there was an interesting article in the paper the other day about child labour in India. A lot of children were working labouring in brick kilns and other industrial sites. The government passed laws banning it, whcih no doubt Cherly agrees with, so then there was a big increase in child prostitution and malnutrition caused. Did it ever occur to you that the parents and children aren't doing that kind of work for fun? Making it illegal doesn't magically make them richer, it just means they have to do worse work or go without food. Unless Cheryl's going to send them the money she thinks they should be getting that is. It's the same with child labour in other times or places. Making it illegal to employ them only means is that intead of appearing in the child labour statistics they appear in the child mortality statistics. And it's exactly the same with older employees. If their market rate is lower than eveyrone else's, it's no use trying to force employers to pay more. All it means is that there'll be more unemployment of older people - caused by the Cheryls and Malcolms of this world who don't understand what they're talking about.

The best argument against Peter's libertarian rant against government and the rule of law is here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExWfh6sGyso

Matt L,

I believe they did the same thing in Britain at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution....children were working then exactly as they are now in places like India - same reasons too. They are nimble and they are cheaper to employ.

But the British government intervened with the Factory Acts and the practice was banned. The object then was to provide schooling, a modicum of education while simultaneously conditioning them to toe the industrial line.

I get your point, but it doesn't make it right

(you might like to pursue some material on child labour in Britain at the time. It's an eye opener - and an indictment on emerging industrial society.)

You see Killarney, there's this thing called reality. If your beliefs don't make logical sense, it doesn't matter how much you want them to be true.

If your beliefs were logical, you would have answered my questions already. But you can't, because you know you will be caught out in self-contradiction and absurdity. That's why you and Cheryl and Malcolm are trying to squirm out of it by evading them. But you don't have the honesty to admit that or be quiet, so you just pretend it's all a matter of opinion.

But the fact you can't answer my questions without contradicting yourself means it's not all a matter of opinion. It just means you're wrong.

But it's worse than that. It means it's you who are actually making conditions worse for older people.

This is because it's you who's trying to have it both ways. On the one hand you want some people to be paid the same as other people whose services are worth more on the market. But on the other hand, you don't want to pay the difference yourself. You want to try to get the money by threatening to physically attack employers to pay for your values that you're not willing to pay for voluntarily. So what you're doing is immoral as well as illogical.

The end result is your ideology causes serious intractable social problems: there's lots of old people who can't be supported by themselves because conceited idiots have criminalised employing them at the market rate; and they can't be supported by the state because the welfare state's social security liabilities are unsustainable. It's a fraudulent scam. If its directors were private, they'd be in prison for a very long time.

At some point, we have to grow up and be adults, and that's when you have to give away your socialist dreams of creating social wealth by thieving, which is all your nasty conceited violent ideology has got to offer.

Wow, Peter!

I see you've lost none of your charm.

(Talk about "serious intractable social problems" - you'd know all about that)

[Deleted. Matthew L is a sock puppet for Peter Hume. Hume or Matthew L or whoever has been banned for participating for 6 months on the forum and will have to come back with a new profile if he/she wants to come back at all.]