The Pros And Cons Of Cotton Factories Regulation
Arguments from across the line
Free market ideologues, in their well-meaning crusade against regulation, stress that it is imperative for markets to be self-regulating. Whenever the government encroaches on a private business’ rights to limit its actions, there is a misallocation of resources. If people are not allowed to do what they find most profitable, the incentive to invest and innovate is lost. Hence, if the government puts a ceiling on property rent, landowners lose the incentive to perpetuate their existing property, or build new ones. Or, if the state restricts the sale of exotic financial products, two willfully contracting parties that may have gained from innovative transactions, which fulfill some eccentric need, cannot realize the potential profits of free contract. At the risk …show more content…
of sounding unoriginal, they must be left, like the title of free market front runner Milton Freidman’s book, ‘free to choose’.
The Semantics of Freedom
Labor ought to be free
In 1819, a new bill to regulate child labor, the Cotton Factories Regulation Act, was tabled in the British Parliament.
The suggested regulation was a spectacular ‘light touch’ by contemporary standards. It would prohibit the employment of young children (under the age of nine). Older children (between ten and sixteen) could still work, but their working hours were restricted to twelve per day. The new act would apply only to cotton factories, which were agreed to be exceptionally hazardous to workers’ health.
The proposition caused immense controversy. Opponents saw it as subverting the fundamental nature of freedom of contract, and thus demolishing the very bedrock of the free market. In debating this legislation, a few members of the House of Lords objected to it on the grounds that ‘labor ought to be free’. Their defense was: the children want (and need) to work, and the factory owners want to employ them; what is the problem?
Today, even the most zealous free-market advocates in Britain or other developed countries would not even consider bringing child labor back as part of the market deregulation they so ardently
want.
Free market ideologues, in their well-meaning crusade against regulation, stress that it is imperative for markets to be self-regulating. Whenever the government encroaches on a private business’ rights to limit its actions, there is a misallocation of resources. If people are not allowed to do what they find most profitable, the incentive to invest and innovate is lost. Hence, if the government puts a ceiling on property rent, landowners lose the incentive to perpetuate their existing property, or build new ones. Or, if the state restricts the sale of exotic financial products, two willfully contracting parties that may have gained from innovative transactions, which fulfill some eccentric need, cannot realize the potential profits of free contract. At the risk …show more content…
of sounding unoriginal, they must be left, like the title of free market front runner Milton Freidman’s book, ‘free to choose’.
The Semantics of Freedom
Labor ought to be free
In 1819, a new bill to regulate child labor, the Cotton Factories Regulation Act, was tabled in the British Parliament.
The suggested regulation was a spectacular ‘light touch’ by contemporary standards. It would prohibit the employment of young children (under the age of nine). Older children (between ten and sixteen) could still work, but their working hours were restricted to twelve per day. The new act would apply only to cotton factories, which were agreed to be exceptionally hazardous to workers’ health.
The proposition caused immense controversy. Opponents saw it as subverting the fundamental nature of freedom of contract, and thus demolishing the very bedrock of the free market. In debating this legislation, a few members of the House of Lords objected to it on the grounds that ‘labor ought to be free’. Their defense was: the children want (and need) to work, and the factory owners want to employ them; what is the problem?
Today, even the most zealous free-market advocates in Britain or other developed countries would not even consider bringing child labor back as part of the market deregulation they so ardently
want.