I have noted, and perhaps you have too, that laissez faire ideologues, like all ideologues, are strongly inclined to nitpick every little bone capable of contention of any work that challenges their faith-based ideology, while swallowing whole weightless junk like this.

As I read it the first time, it didn’t seem to pass the smell test, and now that I’ve looked at it closely I see why. Let’s take a critical look at the article instead of taking it at face value as our libertarian friends have done:

I’ll discuss the red flags in the order I’ve found them.

* First clue:

“According to a press release by the garment employers in October 1994: ‘50,000 children lost their jobs because of the Harkin Bill.’”

Alam earns his first red flag by citing a *press release* from one of the parties with the greatest economic interest in discrediting child labor reforms. He appears to present this piece of public relations with complete credulity and without the professional detachment one would expect.

He earns a second red flag by making press releases (instead of direct interviews with sources) a significant part of his research. (Similar examples provided below.)

* Second clue:

* “A UNICEF worker confirms ‘the jobs went overnight’.”

* “A senior International Labour Organization (ILO) official has no doubt that the original bill was put forward ‘primarily to protect US trade interests’”

* “When UNICEF and the ILO made a series of follow-up visits they found that the children displaced from the garment factories were working at stone-crushing and street hustling – more hazardous and exploitative activities than their factory jobs.”

* “In the wake of the mass expulsion of child garment workers it was plain that something had gone very wrong. UNICEF and the ILO tried to pick up the pieces.”

* “‘What we have done here in Bangladesh is described as fantastic,’ says a senior ILO worker. ‘I wonder how fantastic it really is.’”

What do these passages have in common? They all purport to provide, without attribution, direct quotes from UNICEF or ILO officials or represent (official?) UNICEF/ILO positions.

ALL of Alam’s quotes from UNICEF and ILO sources are anonymous, which is curious, since Alam is presenting these statements and assessments as if they reflect official UNICEF/ILO positions, so there should be no need for anonymity.

If, nevertheless, for some reason these officials felt the need to be quoted off the record, professional practice requires Alam to tell us the officials spoke on the condition of anonymity and why they made this requirement.

Similarly, in the only two instances where Alam seems to be attributing quotes to people using their real names (both of them industry representatives), he only gives us their first names–no affiliation, no title, and no location.

Red flag #3.

* Third clue:

“When UNICEF and the ILO made a series of follow-up visits they found that the children displaced from the garment factories were working at stone-crushing and street hustling – more hazardous and exploitative activities than their factory jobs.”

I’ve done some research. This statement comes word-for-word from a UNICEF report, not from any interviews with UNICEF officials. (It can be found at http://www.unicef.org/souc97) This report presents a far more balanced assessment of Bangali child labor reform efforts than Mr. Alam suggests. Mr. Alam has been selective in his use of material within in a single source.

Here’s a more damning example–the first two conclusions from the UNICEF report Mr. Alam (and through him, Mr. Landsberg) cites:

“1. Hazardous and exploitative forms of child labour, including bonded labour, commercial sexual exploitation and work that hampers the child’s physical, social, cognitive, emotional or moral development, must not be tolerated, and governments must take immediate steps to end them.

“2. Governments must fulfil their responsibility to make relevant primary education free and compulsory for all children (article 28
of the Convention) and ensure that all children attend primary school on a full-time basis until completion. Governments must budget the necessary resources for this purpose, with donors ensuring adequate resources from existing development aid budgets.”

These conclusions directly contradict the anti-interventionist, libertarian ideology you all advocate.

That’s red flag #4.

* The fourth clue:

“Tom Harkin is sponsored by a key US trade union….”

The claim that Tom Harkin “is *sponsored* by a key US trade union” reflects one of two possibiliities: either (1) Alam is practicing spin here (which I don’t think is the case) or (2) Alam has uncritically and naively accepted the spin of industry opponents of Harkin’s bill (which is what I’ve concluded).

“It was when it [the Harkin bill] was reintroduced after these amendments in 1993 that the Bill had its devastating impact in Bangladesh.”

Note the passive language here which is a classic rhetorical device used to slip unattributed or unsupported conclusions into a piece hiding advocacy behind a pose of detached reporting. Again, this might represent spin on Alam’s part. I think it probably reflects an effort to hide his source.

That’s red flag #5.

* The fifth clue:

I’ve done some research on Mr. Alam’s background. When he wrote this article in 1997 he had no credentials and apparently no experience reporting on child labor, the economics of child labor, international efforts to curb child labor, the history of child labor in Bangladesh or anywhere else in the world, or journalism of any kind. I cannot find another piece he has written on child labor since this article was published 13 years ago.

By all accounts, Mr. Alam seems to be a gifted photographer.

What on earth gives him the exalted status to warrant libertarians trotting out this article as an argument for preserving child labor *13 years* after it was published in a leftist rag?

Maybe it’s because that’s the best they got.

If you haven’t taken a look at the posts under “Worked Up” that are relevant to this discussion, I recommend it. The tenor of those posts is different from what you find here.

In reading this, I’m struck by the similarities between Harold’s argument here and Steve’s argument about the effects on labor of eliminating all taxes on capital.

Despite the fact that making all capital tax exempt implies an inevitable and irreversible shift in tax burdens to labor, Steve makes the “rising tide (eventually) raises all boats” argument. Similarly, Harold notes that according to the Doepke model, CLR may not help today’s children but eventually does so.

I raise this point because it drives home to me an asymmetry (double standard, maybe) in the libertarian arguments I see here.

On the one hand, libertarians move readily and enthusiastically from the immediate effects of one of their policy prescriptions to the secondary and tertiary effects laissez fair theory leads them to. For example, if we eliminate all taxes on capital, it will enrich capital owners (before it benefits labor), who will invest more thereby raising worker productivity, which creates more jobs and raises wages. See, they say, labor benefits; society benefits.

This is a wonderfully coherent narrative, and any initial, short term dislocations are easily dealt with through the invocation of “creative destruction”.

On the other hand, when they are asked to consider the merits of some economic reform prescription, the libertarian brain freezes. They grasp at some intial market distortion, wave it furiously in the air, and condemn the proposal as dragging society toward poverty and socialism.

Just try to get them to discuss the beneficial secondary and tertiary effects of a reform prescription (as Harold does above–under “Working Overtime”). Make an agrument similar to the concept of creative destruction about how those follow-on effects overcome the initial effect they condemn. It’s all for naught.

It is very rare to see even a modest concession of merit like Harold received from Steve.

This is why I say libertarian advocacy of laissez faire policies
has come to resemble less economic theory based on evidence and reason and more like faith-based ideology.

Nice work. Thank you.

Bennett-

“OK so you can’t enrich the parents by boycotting child labor.”

I don’t think it’s in dispute here whether parents of children who lose income are enriched (or even impoverished) by child labor boycotts.

The issue is whether reducing child labor (by whatever non-market means)…

(1) increases wages and income of parents, generally, (through reductions in the supply of labor) offset the income lost from their children,
(2) increases the long-term income of child laborers by increasing the likelihood they will receive more years of schooling and reducing the persistent physical and psychological damage of long hours of labor at a very young age, and
(3) increases the wealth of the society at large via the effects of (1) and (2).

There is evidence available that answers both (1) and (2) in the affirmative. I don’t know about evidence re: (3).

“What about lending the families the money to educate their kids, would that work?

These families are not creditworthy. Moreover, this solution violates the laissez faire assumption that seems to previal on the other side of this argument, i.e., it’s a non-market intervention that distorts the market.