In the free market, the one who makes a good the cheapest will take over unless their competitors adapt. Sounds good. Problem is, child labor IS cheaper. Polluting IS cheaper. Pushing wage costs onto government programs IS cheaper than paying your workers enough. Result? Cheaper products that dominate the market. To say that people will spend their money elsewhere is silly when we have Walmart as an example.
Examples? Where are these masses of children looking for work? Where are the parents encouraging their children to find jobs or trying to find jobs for them? Some examples, facts, theories? Define children in this context as preteen, as many teenagers do want to work but are not allowed to and face severe punishment if they do. You can't just say without government violence children would be working in factories instead of adults. Give some information or a well thought out theory, a one liner gives no credibility to your claim and shows you haven't put much thought into it.
I'll provide another counter point to your groundless claim, since you seem to have ignored most of what I've already said. The unemployment rate in the US is somewhere between 6% and 23%. The government figure of 6% is absurd, another outright lie by government. I suspect the real unemployment rate is somewhere in the range between 11% U6 number which mainstream media usually presents and the 23% Shadowstats number which mainstream media has discussed to some extent.
http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-chartshttp://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/01/11/john-williams-shadowstats-com-december-payroll-jobs-report-unemployment-rate/If you call it 17%, that is still a very large portion of the population that is unemployed. It does not include children. What jobs are children going to be doing in the US or any other developed first world country with wealth? What employers want to hire children when there are a tremendous amount of unemployed people with more skill, experience, and physical ability? How will children compete in the workforce with adults? What parents are so tight on money that they have no other option but to find their children a job (not cutting grass or washing cars occasionally, a real full time job)? What jobs would these children be doing? Examples please, or at least some real logical theorizing.
It simply would not happen, child labor was already disappearing when the FLSA was forced upon the masses, manufacturing was becoming more efficient and more automated, families were sending their young children to school instead of to work because they could afford to and with less labor input required per unit of product output education was viewed as more important for future jobs.
To expect corporations to do the right thing (environmentally, socially, whatever) is a false hope. They won't. Regulations are there to force companies to do the right thing (minimum wage laws, environmental protections, FDIC, etc). That's not to say corporations are evil. They aren't. They just need a little direction to keep them honest.
An important question to ask is how has the government actually helped with the alleged goals?
Minimum wage laws came about from the KKK and labor unions to price blacks out of the labor market. I've already provided links referencing this, and minimum wage laws are still keeping you black men in particular disproportionately unemployed and unemployable, but also harmed by these laws are most young adults in general who have far greater difficulty finding their first jobs and gaining the experience and skills required to advance their careers and earnings. In a high unemployment rate market older and more experienced workers benefit tremendously from minimum wage laws. Given a minimum wage greater than the value a person can provide, an employer will either eliminate the job and pass that work on to other existing employees or eliminate that service or function, automate that job function, and hire a more skilled and versatile worker (generally older) who can also perform other job duties that justify the higher pay. This gives a much greater guarantee that older workers will always have a job if they want one, even if their previous position is eliminated. It's not difficult to see why unions, often composed of members mearning significantly above the minimum wage, always push for a higher minimum wage that would not affect the majority of their members.
http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2007/02/union-members-not-minimum-wage-earners-benefit-when-the-minimum-wage-risesEnvironmental protections are a subsidy to big business and their lobbyists. Many environmental laws will require a specific technology or product to be used allegedly to reduce the output level of some pollutant. A particular company may be the sole manufacturer of that technology, hold a patent and either prohibit others from manufacturing it or charge significant royalties which allows multiple manufacturers but also higher profits for themselves as well as multiple revenue streams. The laws are a subsidy to big business because it mandates that specific product or technology rather than a more sensible method of regulation such as putting an upper limit on PPM of specific pollutants and no regulation on how that PPM is achieved. The result is less competition, higher prices (essentially a regressive tax or subsidy), and slowed progress in the development of superior and alternative "green" pollution or emissions reducing devices. There are many cases like this of subsidy to big business under the thin veil of environmentalist. The subsidies to the corn industry, production of corn ethanol (a net negative energy fuel), resultant high fructose corn syrup in just about everything (artificially cheaper than real sugar) resultant from those subsidies... There is so much harm the government does under guise of "environmental protections", so much of it amounts to a regressive tax to subsidize big business.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/2006/07/bill-walker/the-environmental-disaster-called-ethanol/FDIC? Seriously? Just another subsidy to prop up the rich bankers. I'm surprised you brought this one up, but really, just more government evil harming the masses.
http://www.examiner.com/article/why-we-need-to-shut-down-the-fdichttp://libertarianinvestments.blogspot.com/2011/11/problem-of-fdic.htmlIt's good that you acknowledge corporations are not evil, government on the other hand is evil. It harms everything it touches and the individuals who cause this destruction are sheltered from any accountability or repercussions for their actions.
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