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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

>1/ I'm from a 3rd world country. Street children here would give everything they can to get into the work force.

So, maybe fix that (being on the streets, hungry, etc), instead of fixing the laws against having children work?

Starving children (even as young as 10 or less) also willingly have sex with sex tourists for money, in Asia, Africa and elsewhere -- but those pesky laws also forbid them to do so. Instead of proposing we change the laws to enable them to make money this way without issues, how about we fix their situation?

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Why not allow them to sell their organs? They wont live long enough to ever require a 2nd kidney.

Not that easy I'm afraid. There's more of them every year. People living in conditions where they need to fight to survive don't have time to worry about the survival of others, which means those who can't survive on their own or provide some benefit to others generally don't get any help.

So sure - fixing their situation would be the best! Please come help! We desperately need more real help here.

But barring people jumping on planes to come and help, which from experience doesn't seem to happen terribly often, it's better for these children to be able to survive.

My point is: you're doing this the wrong way around. First you fix their situation, and then you make child labour and sex tourism illegal. If you do it the other way around, you're just hurting people. You're just condemning children who had no other choice to survive to having no means of survival. Sorry to say it, but it's reality.

EDIT: To put it in a more clear example: a village is eating disgusting looking seaweed that tastes horrible because there is no other food nearby. You think nobody should have to eat this seaweed, so you make eating this seaweed illegal so that they can't eat it and offend you. End result? They starve because you didn't provide them with better food before making seaweed illegal.

>My point is: you're doing this the wrong way around. First you fix their situation, and then you make child labour and sex tourism illegal.

And my point is, it's rather the inverse. Legal child labour and an allowed sex tourism industry creates great private interests and political manipulation (legal, developmental, etc) to ensure things do not change.

They're neither "short term problem fixers" not "stepping stones to something better", but part of the reason why the people are held down.

I'm honestly sorry to tell you this: the experiment didn't work. Turns out when we took away the reason for private interests to be interested in these children, the lives of the children didn't improve. It just means now nobody cares if they die anymore. The situation is unfortunately getting steadily worse as before they had companies keeping them alive for profit, and now they have nothing.

I agreed with your point of view years ago. I think everyone did. But the experiment failed. Pretty sad really. Yet another good anecdote on the infamous "don't fix what you don't understand".

>I'm honestly sorry to tell you this: the experiment didn't work. Turns out when we took away the reason for private interests to be interested in these children, the lives of the children didn't improve

I'm not sure where you had this experience. In the US and Europe, when child labor (and children prostitutes) was abolished, circa late 19th - early 20th century, the lives of children improved greatly.

In countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America where it's still either allowed or authorities turn a blind eye, not so much.

Moreover, the very idea of "let the kids be raped for money, lest they starve to death, it's the least we can do" is sick.

It's not by any means the "least" we can do.

In the US and Europe when child labor was abolished, society was already economically developed enough in order to support non-working children.

There were no aliens who forced that child labor abolition on the US and Europe.

I think you're missing the issue.

We have 3 choices:

1) Provide opportunity for street children to survive, and then ban exploitation of those children.

2) Ban exploitation of children, and ignore them as they die.

3) Leave it alone.

I'm saying we must choose 1 or 3. We must not pick 2. It is criminal. However, in developing countries in Africa, we have picked 2! Picking 2 is the "worst" we can do out of all possible options. It's sickening, and far too many people are still advocating for it.

Authorities in Africa and Asia no longer turn a blind eye because of grant money linked to abolishing child labour. People like you have forced that on them. And the children are now suffering far worse than before. You've made yourself feel better at the expense of those you wanted to help.

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