"Child labor" evokes images of 8-year-olds kidnapped by sweatshop overlords or sold by their parents and forced to work in coal mines for bread rations. And in truth, that describes many instances of child labor. So if no one else has done so, let me be the first to propose execution for people who subject children to such treatment.
But is it permissible to point out that those grim cases paint an incomplete picture?
Suppose that in some "developing nations" - a euphemism whose level of phoniness amounts to mockery - families are so poor that despite their best efforts they can't feed their offspring. Charity and foreign aid help many such children but cannot reach them all. So the youths have the options of theft or begging - or of a slow death from AIDS when they succumb to prostitution to support themselves. Then again, they may just starve.
I wonder whether they would condemn a foreign corporation that hired them to make, say, scarves or skateboards, and paid them enough to buy food and shelter. (Wages from such companies are generally far higher than local pay scales in the Third World, according to The Economist magazine.)
Might the children not, rather, condemn do-gooders from wealthy nations who make it their goal to halt underage labor in poor countries?
Those questions came to mind as I read about a coastal Georgia coffee shop owner who thought highly of his efforts to foster "social justice" around the world. Part of his shtick is selling only products that involve no child labor - presumably work such as growing and harvesting coffee beans.
I'll set aside the question of whether the shop owner eats food grown by America's family farmers, many of whose children labor harder than adults in other lines of work and don't think themselves victims of anything besides the "oppression" every youngster feels when he has to do as he's told. (Economist Thomas Sowell has catalogued some American entrepreneurs who got their start as "child laborers," by the way. See "Penney, J.C." and "Sears, Richard.")
I'll also give the shopkeeper in Georgia the benefit of the doubt that his activism focuses on dangerous, involuntary or uncompensated labor, in which case my hat's off to him.
But the "child labor" buzz phrase is an example of emotion and good intentions crowding out facts and outcomes. We are conditioned such that the moment we hear those words, we can imagine only the most unremitting evil - one that must be stopped without consideration of whether our actions will hurt the very children whose interests we say we're defending.
That such an absolutist stance may lead to monstrous suffering by minors who don't have a smorgasbord of options isn't thought a subject of polite conversation. It's more fun to congratulate oneself for having an elevated sense of compassion than to ponder the real-world consequences of one's ideas.
Saturday's not all right
I noted in a column in late April that the U.S. Postal Service had incorrect information on its website in support of its plan to eliminate Saturday delivery.
The shorthand version: The site claimed that Gallup polling showed public support for dropping Saturday versus dropping some other day, as the Postal Service grapples with collapsing revenue.
Dropping Saturday makes no sense to me, because it means a long stretch between Friday and Monday delivery - and between Friday and Tuesday delivery on holiday weekends.
As it turned out, the polls did not show support for halting Saturday delivery instead of ending delivery on a different day, and the Postal Service acknowledged as much after repeated inquiries. It planned to revise the wording to reflect the actual data, I was told.
Which brings us to late June. The incorrect claims are still on the Web page in question, though the page has been updated in other respects. And as of this writing, the agency isn't returning my messages.
However much the Postal Service may want to stem its losses, peddling false data isn't the way to achieve that.