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Comment by nickpp | Hacker News Reader

> I'm pretty sure you'd find that they actually reduced exploitation

Correlation is not causation. It would be illogical to remove options and have less exploitation. When luck and free markets compensate for the removed options - great. A strong labor market with lots of employers is the best tool against exploitation. But here we are talking about a corrupted, monopolistic government-controlled market where there weren't many choices to begin with. New entrants should be encouraged and celebrated, not shunned and punished.

Minimum wage laws are incredibly damaging as well. For example, the unpaid part-time "job" that launched me in the IT field would be illegal now. And I would be much poorer for it. But, hey, I wouldn't have been "exploited".

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> It would be illogical to remove options and have less exploitation.

It may be somewhat counterintuitive, but it's certainly not illogical.

> Minimum wage laws are incredibly damaging as well. For example, the unpaid part-time "job" that launched me in the IT field would be illegal now. And I would be much poorer for it. But, hey, I wouldn't have been "exploited".

First of all, are you sure it wouldn't have existed? Just because you're willing to get something for free doesn't mean you're not also willing to pay for it; and minimum wage is a lot cheaper than a properly trained full-time IT person.

Secondly, having skilled workers available is a public good [1] that benefits all companies, so it makes economic sense for the government to invest (on behalf of all companies) in developing those skills. If these sorts of apprenticeships are generally useful, then having the government sponsor or subsidize them also makes sense.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_good_(economics)

> it's certainly not illogical

Please describe the mechanism then.

> are you sure it wouldn't have existed

I know it ended since I am still friends with the owner: the labor regulations become so onerous he gave up on having a couple overly-enthusiastic pain-in-the-butt kids around to train every year.

> having the government sponsor or subsidise them also makes sense

Of course government intervention begets ever more government intervention - it's the only one that can fix the messes it creates. But I lived under a regime where the government controlled everything - and we were starving.

The government is the most incompetent, slow and corrupt organization built by man. It makes sense, as it has no competition to push it to be otherwise - it's the ultimate monopoly. Boggles the mind that somebody would voluntarily rely on it.

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