Oil export just prolonged the agony. Soviets could not reform without touching the institutions and could not survive without keeping the institutions intact.
Gorbachev was not geriatric, but he was not a right caliber for that job, Soviet system did not produce those.
> Conservatives will not go into the night quietly.
David Frum in 2018:
> Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy. The stability of American society depends on conservatives' ability to find a way forward from the Trump dead end, toward a conservatism that can not only win elections but also govern responsibly, a conservatism that is culturally modern, economically inclusive, and environmentally responsible […]
Why? Do you experience memory issues? If you can do that for years and not go insane or break down you must be built different. I know people like that and envy them, but this is not typical.
Since I became a sleep maintenance insomniac (I fall asleep fine but wake up 5hrs later and generally can't fall back asleep), my memory has gone from phenomenal to abysmal. I struggle to keep things in mind. More than ever, I rely on notes and reminders
I have issues with that as well, started taking magnesium (both normal, elemental magnesium and magnesium l-threonate) and it's made a world of difference for me.
When that happens to me it's often because I'm ruminating about something, can't get it out of my mind and relax. If that's what's keeping you up, CBT (cognitive behavorial therapy) techniques can help to stop that thought pattern, or just taking some daily action (any concrete action besides just turning it over in your mind) towards resolving the thing you're thinking about can help.
White noise sometimes helps me sleep too, especially after waking up in the middle of the night.
I do powerlifting 3x week. No real aerobics, I should add that but I just hate it. Sometimes I’ll drop the weight and do high rep sets which does get my heart pumping.
My completely unscientific analysis: aerobics gets the blood circulating more and enables the body to remove stress hormones from the blood at a faster rate.
going to sleep between 11PM and 1AM and getting up between 5AM and 6AM is completely typical for a parent with kids in school.
OK 1AM might be pushing it but by the time you eat dinner, help with homework, do chores, get the kids to bed, and take a bit of time for yourself and spouse to decompress, yeah it's easily getting close to 11PM.
Then getting up in time to get dressed, get the kids up, make breakfast, get them to school and get yourself to work, you're probably getting out of bed at aroud 6AM or maybe 7AM at the latest.
You are grabbing the minimum, it depends on the person. I need 8.5 hours, but last weekend I slept 10 and 10. It was great for recovery, I just didn't have any free time
11PM to 6AM is very different from 1AM to 5AM.
Parents of little children who need you to wake up multiple times per night have it worse, IMO. And they often report memory problems and overall mental decline.
I have to force myself to bed at 11 or 1130 because my free time starts between 930 and 10 pm.
Lucky I can wake uo at 730, so if I go to bed at 1030pm I'm well rested
You need to fight for keeping any accomplishments you’ve got. US rolled back many child labor regulations, so we have 14 years old killed by sawmills again. It’s not like the US banned children from mines because it was economically more profitable.
How many 14 year olds getting a job even find a sawmill or a mine to apply to in the US?
Concerns over child labor when working at McDonalds or Walmart is one thing, but it's a real stretch to go straight to 14 year olds dying in sawmill accidents.
Saw mill, industrial lathe, or spot welder; I'm not sure it matters too much which one of these is killing desperate and poor children being abused for profit
Do you have any stats on how many children are actually dying in these ways, and whether it is in fact disproportionately hurting the poor?
I have a hard time believing many children are dying in this way in the US today but I'm happy to be wrong and learn something new if there is real data there.
Actually, that report includes a few examples of children killed on the job. Like a 16 year old who died while working in construction, he fell about 160 feet to the ground after trying to jump from a roof to a nearby powered lift. In Nashville. [2] (same link as [1])
It also details the rise in children being employed to do hazardous labor.
Killed in sawmills is a bit of hyperbole, but it's not far off from the truth it seems.
That report basically includes a few anecdotes without data though, plus data that actually could go against the idea the regulations are the fix. If the stats are showing how many children are illegally employed it really has no basis on whether existing regulations or rollbacks made a difference, the employers and the kids weren't trying to follow the law.
It looks like there is a discrepancy between State and Federal law, so the employers may indeed be acting in a twisted version of good faith. Despite the fact that Federal law supersedes state law. [2] https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/news/all-things-work/child...
I'm not implying regulations are the fix, I just think it's a little fucked up.
it was indirectly more profitable. no child labor -> children would have no distractions for grade school -> more chldren graduate -> graduates tend to contribute more to the national economy.
At least that was the theory. Clearly private lobbyists and various interests groups who want to erode the country don't care about such factors.
Exactly: Child labor laws are more profitable for society; child labor is more profitable for a small set of individuals. Lobbying by interest groups is often pushing away from the former and towards the latter.
ETA: In line with this sub-thread, I'd say: There are and always will be private interest groups lobbying against the former and towards the latter; and so there will always need to be public interest groups lobbying against the latter and towards the former. That applies to LVT as much as environmental and labor protections.
AFAIK modern capitalism doesn't incentivise behaviours that cause broad economic growth over a long period without any short-term profit. That's what governments are needed for.
Child labour in mining is uneconomic though. You'd still get children here-and-there for whatever reason, but mining involves hugely expensive machines doing most of the work, or heavy lifting that a child can't do. If you're comfortable spending $10 million on a machine and putting a small child behind the wheel, odds are great you'll go bankrupt trying to run a mine.
I genuinely doubt 14 year olds are being killed on any mass scale by sawmills in the United States. That seems incredibly hyperbolic.
The closest thing I could find was a single 16 year old killed in Wisconsin last year. Very sad, but n=1, and the attribution to 'rolling back' child labour regulations seems spurious (did the previous regulations prevent 16 year olds from working?).
Edit: I'm noting the downvotes, but I stand by this. Just because something plays into your political preconceptions doesn't mean it's true. (We should all be doubly sceptical of spurious factoids that just so happen to perfectly align with our political views!)
--- Using data from the National Household Travel Survey, the fatal crash rate per mile driven for 16-19 year-olds is nearly 3 times the rate for drivers ages 20 and over. Risk is highest at ages 16-17.
--- Given that Risk increases as age decreases, 14-15 year olds are at a high risk of fatal injury while driving on the road. https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/teenagers
This was with a few minutes of searching. You have to filter out child labor deaths abroad and other breaking news, but the deaths are there and they're increasing.
Note that for each death that results in a successful lawsuit, you should assume there are other deaths happening where the family either (1) couldn't afford to bring a case, (2) agreed to private settlement, or even (3) it just didn't get big enough to make the broader news.
- Washington: "Washington’s youth employment laws identify prohibited duties for workers under 18 years old. Rotschy had a student learner exemption permitting minors to do some work that is otherwise prohibited, but use of the walk-behind trencher was not part of the exemption."
-Alabama: "The department’s Wage and Hour Division found Apex Roofing illegally employed the teen in violation of a Fair Labor Standards Act child labor hazardous occupation order that prohibits workers under the age of 18 from engaging in dangerous jobs designated by the act, including roofing or construction operations."
-Iowa : I would like to see data that shows the crash rate for teens going to/from work vs general teen driving.
In half of the examples, the company was having the worker do prohibited work. If the company is breaking the law, how does the fact that labor laws were changed affect that?
Children are easier to convince or coerce to do work that is prohibited.
I'm not sure your intentions with trying desperately to convince yourself that it's safe and reasonable to have children work dangerous jobs.
14 year olds can work all sorts of jobs already, they can make money and learn skills.
There is obviously a reason these laws were passed. So the evidence you are so sure does not exist has been around for a century. These laws weren't vibe based.
Its interesting that the takeaway here is that teenagers are too fragile to do a job and must forego learning a new skill. Is the idea really that it's okay to die on the job as long as you are 18 or older?
Roofing companies shouldn't have anyone falling off the roof, there are OSHA regulations for a reason. 16 year olds being bad drivers has nothing to do with their employmwnt status. Using trenchers is dangerous no matter who you are, that isn't age related and if we are collectively concerned with how much damage they can do we should not use the machines.
Protecting and teaching kids is totally reasonable, but how far down the path of trapping them in a bubble do we really want to go?
As a global society we've generally agreed that if you are under the age of 18 you are not grown enough to make decisions that could put yourself or society at risk.
- You cannot sign up for the military, even though you might know how to aim and fire a weapon.
- You cannot vote in elections.
- You cannot purchase nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. (In the USA this age is higher at 21)
So the takeaway is that yes, teenagers are too fragile and don't have the risk assessment capacity to work some of these dangerous jobs.
Yes, we have OSHA and other safety regulations. Still the jobs are dangerous. Adults are more likely to call this out or recognize when these regulations are being disregarded, but a 14 year old might not realize that what they are doing is more dangerous than it should be.
> You cannot sign up for the military, even though you might know how to aim and fire a weapon.
> You cannot vote in elections.
These two are both linked. In the US, military enrollment age was 20-45 (The Enrollment Act). Around the two world wars it was lowered to 18, primarily because they didn't have enough troops and most kids graduated high school at 18.
The 26th amendment set the voting age to 18 because that's what the draft age was already set to.
Neither had anything directly to do with developmental differences by age. The first followed social norms for schooling age and the second just followed along.
> You cannot purchase nicotine, alcohol, or other drugs. (In the USA this age is higher at 21)
There are many studies showing the risks of consuming these chemicals are much higher for people under the age of around 20. I don't know if those data were known before age limits were set, but there is a good reason to keep it today that has nothing to do with teenagers' ability to make decisions. Alternatively, I'd be just as happy seeing these also removed and us better teaching kids what the risks are so they can make their own decisions.
> As a global society we've generally agreed that if you are under the age of 18 you are not grown enough to make decisions that could put yourself or society at risk.
What "global society" is this? Most of the world by numbers doesn't seem to have signed on to this agreement. Well-off countries may have made child labor largely illegal, though some of it persists inside their borders, but this just moves most of it offshore. Not that the places where it lands didn't have child labor before, but the scale of their operations grow with exports and industrialization.
Car dependent suburbs where children spend 18 years at home, with no sidewalks to walk on and nowhere to walk to, and no public transport, only the schoolbus or their parents' car: fine.
Children banned from working in sawmills: "how far down the path of trapping them in an overprotective bubble do we really want to go?!".
We could do a lot to let children be more independent, interact more with the world, be able to walk or ride to school or to the shops or to friends' houses or to parks or to get jobs in various places to avoid bubbling them, first. The kind of company wanting to hire a 16 year old for its sawmill seems far more likely to be doing it for cheap labour than for the child's good.
Yes and for this exact reason, many argue for better gun safety regulations. I grew up before mass shootings became a daily occurrence (this is not hyperbole), but I still had at least one classmate in Junior High and HS die every year from gun related deaths. Either being shot and killed intentionally by a friend's parent or from suicide using their parent's gun.
We’re up to three terribly sad anecdotes. Even if we multiply that by a hundred to account for the shadow deaths you mention, we’re still nowhere near a mass epidemic in a country of over 300 million.
The claim, though, was that rolling back labour law has led to the situation deteriorating, so we would need statistics from today, to compare with statistics from the 1970s, 1950s, etc. Are children dying at work at a higher rate today than they did in 1950? 1970?
We don't need death statistics to know that children working with poverty wages to make rich people richer is bad.
Your argument is that unless we have thousands dying, it's fine?
I don't understand why people are even arguing this. Children working is never going to make society better. It might make more money for a few, but that's about it.
I honestly can't believe I'm seeing people arguing against child labor laws. I thought this was the kind of thing that you'd read in books and think "those were crazy times" but never witness it, yet here we are.
No. It's pretty much always a result of another system failing. We're not talking about a kid helping out in their mom and pop's shop. We're talking about kids working in meat plants because it's cheap labor.
If they have to work to help out with money, then our system has failed in providing an adequate environment for a kid to grow up.
If a child wants to learn a craft or pick up specific skills, that should not be done in a work environment that can put them in danger. Again, that's another failure of the system.
Most of us already have to basically work until death since they can't ever properly retire, so I see zero benefits in forcing humans that are still developing into that reality even sooner.
>> I honestly can't believe I'm seeing people arguing against child labor laws.
And where are you seeing these people, exactly?
My argument is that the claim “winding back labour law has caused a rise in workplace deaths involving children in sawmills” is unsupported by any statistical evidence, and very likely false. There are no statistics that support this claim.
False assertions are no way to debate about policy, provided we want good policy that is actually effective at keeping people safe. Such policy must be evidence based, and not vibes and feels based.
Okay, let's assume then all this thread is about being pedantic, and not because you're actually against child labor laws. My bad.
Still not sure how sending kids to work will increase their safety. You've mentioned evidence but I've never seen any evidence that supports it increases their safety. We've seen evidence it can decrease their safety since some are killed/injured, even if you dismissed it as not statistically relevant.
So in the end, this goes both ways: we don't have evidence that allowing kids to work improves their lives or society, making it a bad policy.
My guess these policies were based on greed, not "vibes". Clearly better, right?
I’m not saying sending kids to work will increase their safety, and - again - I’m honestly not sure how you’re getting that from what I’ve said. I would respectfully suggest reading the posts of others in good faith.
I’m saying there exists no evidence that the number of children dying in sawmills has dramatically increased as a result of changing labour laws. This is important, not pedantic, because it goes to the heart of the claim that modern labour law has changed in a way that harms children. If the data isn’t there, this claim is false. If this claim is false, we shouldn’t be rushing to revise labour law on the basis of it.
One person can claim that modern labour law kills children, another can claim it protects children. Until some statistics come in, all of this is noise.
Labour law exists to protect workers. It is too important to get wrong, such as by rushing into ill considered changes on the basis of vibes or feels. There may well be other reasons to adjust labour law - based on facts and hard evidence that it’s not working in some way.
I don’t understand why you seem to take such umbrage at the view that important safety laws should be made on the basis of actual data, so we can ensure they’re effective.
Yes, that sawmill incident was with 16-year-old, but there are more at other industries. E.g. WI regulations were relaxed to allow 14-years-old work 40 hour weeks as well part of the year. If there is not enough pushback fatalities are a matter of time.
It is probably a "rare freak accident" to be shot by a baboon but nonetheless it is illegal to to create dangerous situations like giving a loaded weapon to animals at the zoo.
You're (wilfully?) misunderstanding. No one is saying that laws somehow magically cease to apply to unusual events (wut?). The argument is that good legislative lawmaking is based on data and evidence. Rushing to make legislation to respond to (media coverage of) freak occurrences rarely leads to good lawmaking.
Try to engage in good faith. You don't really think that people don't know what child labour is illegal, and require a Wiki link to elucidate this obscure fact. You're just performing outrage. Why do so? What benefit does doing so bring you, or anyone else?
No, you literally wrote "it’s generally a bad idea to legislate for over a third of a billion of humans on the basis of rare freak accidents".
> Rushing to make legislation to respond to (media coverage of) freak occurrences rarely leads to good lawmaking.
I agree. Yet, laws against child labor already exist and they work as a "blanket" safety mechanism against all threats to children, regardless of what incident might happen.
> Try to engage in good faith. ... You're just performing outrage.
Please do not accuse other people of acting in bad faith.
> No, you literally wrote "it’s generally a bad idea to legislate for over a third of a billion of humans on the basis of rare freak accidents".
I genuinely have no idea what your point is. The most generous reading I can give this is that you took my words to be an assertion that we should abolish all laws relating to workplace accidents, but that is a farcical misinterpretation. Both on its face, but especially in the context of the wider discussion.
> I agree. Yet, laws against child labor already exist and they work as a "blanket" safety mechanism against all threats to children, regardless of what incident might happen.
Of course they do. I'm unsure why this requires explanation. What's the alternative? Non-blanket child labour laws? What would that even look like? Again, I have no idea what your point is.
> Please do not accuse other people of acting in bad faith.
This exchange began when you accused me, in a one line comment, of finding the death of children acceptable. If that was intended to be a good faith, constructive comment, I'm happy to hear how exactly.
More broadly, I reject your view that bad faith comments ought not be called out. Why not? In the best case, it helps a person become aware that they're not engaging constructively; alternatively, it's informative for others, and can help them from entering into a pointless discussion.
I would judge that someone falsely claiming that 14 year olds are being killed in sawmills as a result of policy changes they dislike is the one deliberately trying to derail the conversation more than someone who correctly claims "no, that is false".
The burden of proof is certainly on the person claiming there's an increase in child labor death. However just because they didn't provide proof doesn't make the claim "false".
The increase in child labor-related deaths is happening and will continue as child labor laws are rolled back in states across the US.
> The increase in child labor-related deaths is happening and will continue as child labor laws are rolled back in states across the US.
You’re accepting the claim because you already believe it to be true, but both you and the original person making the claim have no evidence for this. This is a very dangerous style of political argument. “Well, there are no facts here, but this claim reinforces my already existing beliefs, so the vibes check out!”
We want policy around workplace safety to be evidence based, not vibes and feels based, because the former will save lives and the latter will not.
I'm curious why you think these laws were enacted in the first place? Do you think there was not evidence back then which convinced a majority of people to want that big change?
They were based on mountains of data, collected methodically over a number of years to make an ironclad case for reform. That’s good law making! I support this!
However, data from 1910 is accurate for 1910, not for 2024. If children are dying en masse in workplaces today, it ought not be difficult to collate the data required to tighten the laws further. And yet, all I’ve seen is assertions, vibes, and vague conspiracy theories.
Policy making is a balancing act; we calibrate laws for the circumstances as they develop. The only way to do this intelligently, or even competently, is on the basis of evidence.
Fair. I am willing to wait for evidence that a 14 year old was killed in a sawmill as a result of these policy changes before cementing my conclusion that it was a false claim.
The use of hyperbole is actually misses the point and derails the conversation.
If a point is valid and clear hyperbole isn't needed. Concerns over children dying in job related accidents or being made to work extreme hours or in bad conditions is a fine point. Children falling into sawmills just muddies the waters and will draw in people who disagree that that is a concern at all.
You forget that it was normal before. PS2 had many separate chips you need to program and balance throughout and latencies to make the most of hardware. PS2 was able to achieve 60 fps in many impressive games. Console hardware was very specific, the original Xbox being just an Intel PC was an exception.
can you elaborate on "wall-piercing search"? Most of them do let google bot index the full content, or the displayed content is enough... for a high rank. People need to stop clicking on them, or search needs to punish them (at one point google/matt cutts said they would do this), but this won't happen.
