“But what about comparative advantage?” you say. Well, I would point to the example of a not-particularly-bright 7-year-old child in today’s world. Not only would nobody hire that kid into their office or factory, but they would probably pay good money to keep him out, because he would only mess stuff up.
This is an extremely minor critique given that I’m responding to a footnote, so I hope it doesn’t drown out more constructive responses, but I’m actually pretty skeptical that the reason why people don’t hire children as workers is because the children would just mess everything up.
I think there are a number of economically valuable physical tasks that most 7-year-old children can perform without messing everything up. For example, one can imagine stocking shelves in stores, small cleaning jobs, and moving lightweight equipment. My thesis here is supported by fact that 7-year-olds were routinely employed to do labor in previous centuries:
In the 18th century, the arrival of a newborn to a rural family was viewed by the parents as a future beneficial laborer and an insurance policy for old age.4 At an age as young as 5, a child was expected to help with farm work and other household chores.5 The agrarian lifestyle common in America required large quantities of hard work, whether it was planting crops, feeding chickens, or mending fences.6 Large families with less work than children would often send children to another household that could employ them as a maid, servant, or plowboy.7 Most families simply could not afford the costs of raising a child from birth to adulthood without some compensating labor.
The reason why people don’t hire children these days seems more a result of legal and social constraints than the structure of our economy. In modern times, child labor is seen as harmful or even abusive to the child. However, if these legal and social constraints were lifted, arguably most young children in the developed world could be earning wages well above the subsistence level of ~$3/day, making them more productive (in an economic sense) than the majority of workers in pre-modern times.
Thanks. I changed the wording to “moody 7-year-old” and “office or high-tech factory” which puts me on firmer ground I think. :)
I think there have been general increases in productivity across the economy associated with industrialization, automation, complex precise machines, and so on, and those things provide a separate reason (besides legal & social norms as you mentioned) that 7yos are far less employable today than in the 18th century. E.g. I can easily imagine a moody 7yo being net useful in a mom & pop artisanal candy shop, but it’s much harder to imagine a moody 7yo being net useful in a modern jelly bean factory.
I think your bringing up “$3/day” gives the wrong idea; I think we should focus on whether the sign is positive or negative. If the sign is positive at all, it’s probably >$3/day. The sign could be negative because they sometimes touch something they’re not supposed to touch, or mess up in other ways, or it could simply be that they bring in extra management overhead greater than their labor contribution. (We’ve all delegated projects where it would have been far less work to just do the project ourselves, right?) E.g. even if the cost to feed and maintain a horse were zero, I would still not expect to see horses being used in a modern construction project.
Anyway, I think I’m on firmer ground when talking about a post-AGI economy, in which case, literally anything that can be done by a human at all, can be automated.
This is an extremely minor critique given that I’m responding to a footnote, so I hope it doesn’t drown out more constructive responses, but I’m actually pretty skeptical that the reason why people don’t hire children as workers is because the children would just mess everything up.
I think there are a number of economically valuable physical tasks that most 7-year-old children can perform without messing everything up. For example, one can imagine stocking shelves in stores, small cleaning jobs, and moving lightweight equipment. My thesis here is supported by fact that 7-year-olds were routinely employed to do labor in previous centuries:
The reason why people don’t hire children these days seems more a result of legal and social constraints than the structure of our economy. In modern times, child labor is seen as harmful or even abusive to the child. However, if these legal and social constraints were lifted, arguably most young children in the developed world could be earning wages well above the subsistence level of ~$3/day, making them more productive (in an economic sense) than the majority of workers in pre-modern times.
Thanks. I changed the wording to “moody 7-year-old” and “office or high-tech factory” which puts me on firmer ground I think. :)
I think there have been general increases in productivity across the economy associated with industrialization, automation, complex precise machines, and so on, and those things provide a separate reason (besides legal & social norms as you mentioned) that 7yos are far less employable today than in the 18th century. E.g. I can easily imagine a moody 7yo being net useful in a mom & pop artisanal candy shop, but it’s much harder to imagine a moody 7yo being net useful in a modern jelly bean factory.
I think your bringing up “$3/day” gives the wrong idea; I think we should focus on whether the sign is positive or negative. If the sign is positive at all, it’s probably >$3/day. The sign could be negative because they sometimes touch something they’re not supposed to touch, or mess up in other ways, or it could simply be that they bring in extra management overhead greater than their labor contribution. (We’ve all delegated projects where it would have been far less work to just do the project ourselves, right?) E.g. even if the cost to feed and maintain a horse were zero, I would still not expect to see horses being used in a modern construction project.
Anyway, I think I’m on firmer ground when talking about a post-AGI economy, in which case, literally anything that can be done by a human at all, can be automated.