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Amazing work! Suprising to hear that he had to heart that the US had to embrace immigration as part of it's identity while there were large xenophobic sentiments. Nothing new under the sun!

To this day, I'm still appalled that child labor laws don't apply to international goods - it's a little nuts that we say we're against it, but we allow the sale of good made from it still. It'd be neat to force manufacturers to prove no child labor to export to no child labor countries. Anyhoot




Importation of goods made with child or slave labor has been illegal for ~100 years. It is just extremely difficult to track and prosecute. If I buy a product on Taobao, what would the proof of no child labor be? What about the components? Like the battery might be made by adults, but where did the lithium come from? You'd need a paper trial going back to natural resource extraction to keep it clean.

Maybe keep it simple and put heavy tariffs on countries that don't police their own child/slave labor.


> countries that don't police their own child/slave labor.

Which appears to be something the US should do, too.


Thank you for the insight!


It's worth pointing out that child labor is on the rise again in the United States [0]. From the article:

> The number of minors employed in violation of child-labor laws last year was up thirty-seven per cent from the previous year, according to the Department of Labor, and up two hundred and eighty-three per cent from 2015. (These are violations caught by government, so they likely represent a fraction of the real number.)

0. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/06/12/child-labor-is...


> To this day, I'm still appalled that child labor laws don't apply to international goods

doesn't apply to us goods either.

did everyone already forgot the meat packing plant (top 50 largest company in the world ot something) caught using children to clean the plant at night?

no photographer would get into those plants today though.


On the other hand we live in an era where most people have a camera on them (their phone) in all waking moments, one that doesn't need film or developing, making it far easier for whistleblowers to make conditions known than in the past.




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