I always find it humorous when parents reply and make justifications for why we need bad laws (in this case it's in related to age verification for social media).
One parent (who probably should know better) said:
"In ever previous era, with every previous vice society has agreed to put at least some barriers in front of children and to do so in a mostly if not perfect way. Most 8 year olds cannot simply go get a case a beer anytime they want, and if they do there is ample opportunity for parents to find out about"
umm when I was a boy (ok, this is more like when my pop was a boy, but none-the-less the point remains) I could walk into a store and pick up beer and cigarettes for my dad.
More recently however (now actually in my life time) I could walk into a bar (and did at 16 alone in France) and ordered some bit of alcohol.
The point is that this is just logically misplaced thinking and wrong in so far as there is probably not a single "child protection" law that has been rolled out everywhere, actually needed, or been positive:
"society has agreed to put at least some barriers in front of children"
We can take this straight back to the early 1900s when the first laws were put in place to 'protect' children.
The consequences of restricting children from working for instance may have had good intentions (though it may also have been more about ensuring employment for adult men than protecting kids as our textbooks tell us... but lets not go there...) ... but ultimately it's either ignorant or intentionally malicious or something.
When a child has a choice of working and surviving or dying they're probably going to choose work even if that work is dangerous. It's naive and classist (akin to racist) to think you know better than them.
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🌈ᚩ🌈
in reply to Mr Penguin • • •nobody cared when i bought booze or tobacco with 14. nobody, not even my parents were (they certainly should've) giving a shit when i was shitface drunk aged twelve.
the problem with these laws is that they take away responsibility from parents and society because "there's a law against that!".
everyone just waits for the authority. which seldom acts, and if it acts it's most often the cases that don't make life hard for the authorities anyway.
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Mr Penguin
in reply to 🌈ᚩ🌈 • • •🌈ᚩ🌈
in reply to Mr Penguin • • •Mr Penguin
in reply to 🌈ᚩ🌈 • • •@bonifartius People don't give a rats ass if kids are being exploited. If they did we wouldn't have government education or child protective services or people buying iPhones with components sourced from China and derived from raw materials mined with child labor (despite that actually being a good thing as kids = working means kids not starving even if it does negatively impact health long term).
No, most just want to appear to care about the kids for votes, career advancement, financial exploitation (teachers unions, etc), literal child exploitation (law enforcement), other sorts of exploitation like sexual exploitation (football couch), and similar.
Nanook
in reply to Mr Penguin • •Mr Penguin
in reply to Nanook • • •The laws are stupid. I only had a few beers because of the 'juvenile' repression. Not because I ever enjoyed alcohol. Meanwhile it's no big deal in much of the world and the problem that is drinking is often negligible by comparison to more repressive regimes. It's not perfectly clear cut in-so-far-as there are different drivers in different places, but criminalizing stuff isn't some magic fix for societal problems and often just expands the damage.
Humorously even when you have the impact you want (say reduction in excess drinking) there are often other negative consequences. I don't recall the details, but they tried to curb drinking in the Soviet Union in Russia with some success, but it had the negative side effect of undermining the countries economy. It was to such a degree they reversed course very quickly.
Nanook
in reply to Mr Penguin • •like this
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