Cafe Hayek

Thank you for providing the only sane voice in this thread.

Everyone who is from the first world country and who has never visited a third world country should stop talking about child labor. Now. Just stop it. It's very easy to bash child labor but do you know why the child labor exists in first place? Do you think parents of those child have any other alternatives? For their parents, it's a choice between living another day or dieing of hunger. For them, the so called 'abusive' work condition is the only option to survive.

To give a little personal perspective, let me tell you my story. I am from India. And when I was 10 years old (in 1990), my mom took up some side work to support us. She would do it 7 days a week and I would do it in evenings and full day on Sunday. We did it not for food but to make sure that me and my sisters could go to school and get the books we need. It was back breaking work but it was worth for me and my family. I was lucky enough that I worked so that I can go to school. Few of my other cousins were not that lucky. They had to work so that they can eat in evening. Because of my education, I have been successful and have been living in USA for last 5 years. Those poor cousins are now grown up and doing an average job but they are doing everything possible to send their kids to school. I am sure their next generation will be much much better off.

Before you decry child labor next time, ask yourself, what's the alternative for the child? Are you…

People choose to believe (and to not believe) in all sorts of wacky stuff[1].

UFOs, Illuminati conspiracies, Rumpology...

But when it come to not believing in scientific theories that are obviously standing the hard tests of the scientific method and that are making correct, testable predictions, well, it does become somewhat frightening at that point.

Perhaps it's just social norming at work, and people find it easier to say whatever they need to continue to fit into their social cliques. TBH, I hope this is mostly the case, because at least then there is some method to the madness.

Also, it's hard to not throw Hayek's Scientism[2] into the mix again here...for too long, perhaps, Researchers have attempted to apply scientific principles to area's of study that simply are not suited for such attempts, thus creating a generation of layperson's who are having much easier time dismissing anything that does not fit comfortably into their intuition due to often-flawed research.

In any case, I am finding this same disheartening truth when I talk to people about some of the few solid findings that neuroscience has made about our decision-making processes, so I believe I have some direct, albeit minor, understanding of the issue.

[1] http://listverse.com/2013/06/12/10-bizarre-things-people-believe-in/

[2] http://cafehayek.com/2011/12/hayek-on-scientistic-hubris.html

Like most things in history: it's complicated. Generally, in a feudal system: yes, you had a job for life and that was that. How stable was that? Not very, as food is still 'variable' until the industrial revolution and the green revolution of the 1930s-1960s[0]. But starvation and epidemics are a bit orthogonal to the question of employment. Still, the skills and, importantly, the tools used were expensive to learn and teach.

The feudal system, as done in Europe in the middle ages, is actually a result of just one man: Emperor Diocletian. His policies essentially ushered in feudalism as Europe knew it. He forbade the travel of skilled craftsmen, inadvertently encouraged the self sufficiency of large estates, and tried to fully regulate all prices in the empire. His early attempts gave Rome the Tetrarchy and yet more civil wars; essentially his efforts were total failures. He actually retired, a first, and went off to grow really big cabbages in modern day Turkey. Though many of his reforms flopped, the feudal system of 'jobs for life passed onto kin' did stick for about 1500 years.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Revolution

[1] https://cafehayek.com/2006/09/an_empire_of_re.html

How about a couple cartoons?

http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/10/by-far-the-2-best-cartoons-about-the-minimum-wage-ever/

Seriously though, if you're determined to doubt the law of demand applies to the market for labor - as I suspect you are - then Don Boudreaux has some questions for you:

http://cafehayek.com/2013/10/the-science-of-the-minimum-wage-debate.html

(I can of course give specific EXAMPLES of people being denied work they would like (and that their employer would like to give them) because their productivity is too low to justify the minimum wage, but I suspect you'd just dismiss that as "anecdotal evidence". Is that what you want to see? Or if not, what would "data that explicitly shows this causation" have to look like for you to find it relevant?)

Oh, and if you decide correlation data might be acceptable, I'd start with this report:

http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-11-427

(TLDR: in 2007 it was attempted to gradually bring the minimum wage in American Samoa up to the level in the rest of the US. The resulting hit on employment levels was truly impressive and hard to explain any other way than that setting the wage level above the market level destroyed jobs.)

To start off, "liberal" is hard to define, really. I identify as "classically liberal," but that can greatly differ from modern liberal, progressive, etc.

Friedrich Hayek tried to answer this in the 40s, when "intellectuals" were into communism and eugenics (this video is not from the 40s obviously.)

http://cafehayek.com/2014/10/hayek-on-intellectuals-and-socialism.html

To be frank, I think it's because those who are highly educated often believe they know what's better for a person than the person does; economically & politically speaking.

In terms of acceptance of minorities, especially (gay, trans or just ethnic) I think that liberal mindset comes from an academic need to include minority opinions into discussion.

I do think there is a bit of a shift happening and that's many professors, etc standing up against "safe spaces" on campus. The irony of course is that many young people vouching for these areas often identify as liberal, but yet suppressing the ideas of others is anything but. So...you really have to be careful in how you define "liberal," as it appears the title is shifting a bit due to millennial deposition.

It just doesn't work that way in economics. Even worse, the reductionism in economics is unethical, because when it registered (somewhere) that humans are not "objective, utility-maximising spheres" they more or less started advocating that they /should/ be. That got us to "corporations are people" and 24-step daily checklists to "make better use of your time". It also made fast-food the superior choice (time is money!), so at least the "spherical" part is coming along.

Some citations are clearly needed here. In particular about the normative claims you believe economics makes - as far as I know the field is very strictly positive [1]. Economists will say that fast food is better because people are choosing to consume it, and most of those same economists will discuss the topic over a lunch of artisinal kale salad locally grown by vegan hipsters.

[1] There are cases where economists are clearly motivated by normative concerns to draw a particular positive conclusion - e.g. that the law of demand doesn't work for low skill labor. But that's a different critique. http://cafehayek.com/2016/12/41844.html