What is amazing is that people think regulations can fix anything, whether poverty, economic situations, military conflicts, or anything, when time and time again the people at the top are shown to be utterly corrupt and bought.
It almost makes you want to be a republican and just argue for getting the state -every state- out of everything. Sure, we'd still be getting screwed, but perhaps a bit less.
> Last I checked the USA didn't have mandated paid holidays, unlike literally every other country in the world.
The UK, Netherlands, Japan, South Korea, and ~57 other countries do not have mandated paid holidays. Norway provides for two days. It's certainly common, particularly in the developed world; claiming it's literally every other country is blatantly false.
I guess maybe I'm confusing what I'd call holidays with what people in other countries would call leave or vacation days. What I mean meant was mandated paid days off work, whether a holiday/public holiday/bank holiday or annual leave/vacation.
Workers in the UK are entitled to 28 paid days off work, the other countries you've listed have similar entitlements.
It turns out that I'm wrong either way, the USA is joined by Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, and Tonga. So to be correct, literally every country apart from a handful of Pacific Island nations making up less than 1 million people and the USA entitle their workers to as least some paid leave from work.
In all those societies beyond the US, the same is true. In Belgium, for instance, union protection was initiated after the government protected management of a firm in Ghent, which systematically raped women working for them. This was known, and then a supervisor managed to not just rape one of the new hires, who chose to attempt to unionize the firm, but he also killed her. Note that she wasn't just raped once, and was not in fact killed on the first rape. The government refused to persecute him.
That caused protests against this practice, demanding justice. The government had the police fire into those protests, which of course was highly illegal, even at the time. They managed to kill the brother of the woman that was raped, which initiated the action that got Belgium one of it's major worker protections.
What action caused the government to change it's mind ? A mob kidnapped the entire management of the firm, tortured and hanged them, then marched on city hall, demanding the head of the entire city commission. The police commissioner, it is said, marched in and told them that, given that 2 of his officers had joined the people calling for their heads, they probably had about 48 hours before they too would be hanged.
Now you analyze the situation for yourself, and decide what you think happened. Did government "grant" those worker protections ? I tend to strongly disagree. It also illustrates the folly of trusting anyone but a lawyer you hire with making sure you actually get what you have the right to.
> Have you heard of things like paid holidays, free public education for all children, the abolition of slavery, ... ?
Yes, in all cases, the government was on the wrong side of those fights. In 2 cases (abolition of slavery and paid holidays) the government killed people extra judicially (of course) to try to prevent them from coming into existence (extra judicially means the government ordered either the police or the army to shoot them, then disclaimed responsibility, even if in quite a few cases it was known exactly who gave the -obviously illegal, even then- orders, as well as who executed them. Hell, in one case a governor was convicted for failing to pay out a bonus he had promised a police officer for shooting at protestors). In all cases, the government imprisoned many people to try and prevent them from happening. THAT is the government.
Those law changes, those were enacted by congress, usually after a massive electoral defeat. In other words, what happened in all cases is that people decided that they
But even those facts fall incredibly short of describing just how evil government is.
Let me describe a situation that occurred recently near me.
There's a lot of regulations about child abuse. Like anywhere else I guess, but there really is a lot. There is a government organization that is supposed to take in reports of child abuse and investigate what measures need to be taken to protect the child.
Now you might wonder, what could possibly go wrong here ? Well, their mandate is to determine what measures can be taken to protect the child. They cannot (and will not) propose anything else. In other words, no matter what, they will propose using "special youth services" to protect the child.
So what happened is this. A phys ed teacher in a school was found to ... well we all know what he did. It wasn't outright rape, it was less than that, but not much. So the parents that initially found this reported it to the school board, that, after 6 months and multiple reports filed a complaint against the teacher. They are now without a phys ed teacher, as he is suspended, but they cannot withhold pay or benefits. The parents made the horrible mistake to also report child abuse to the government, and this organization was set on it. This was done at the beginning of those 6 months, so the school board had done nothing at that point and the parents were receiving zero feedback about their complaint.
Now this organization within the government simply did what it's mandate said it should do. They proposed "placing" the child (ie. taking it away from the parents and placing it in foster care). After all, that's all they could propose. They did not report this to the parents, and then the parents proceeded to make the biggest mistake of their lives. You see, 2 months in, they hadn't had any feedback. The teacher was still there, and they couldn't even legally keep their kids out of phys ed without a doctor's note. So what was that huge mistake ? They reported to the government, and asked what was being done. Nothing was being done against the teacher, but the government employee helpfully told them that their request for help with child abuse could be marked as "urgent". Needless to say, the government employee wasn't a lawyer, and completely failed to inform the parents that this was a legal term, that would initiate a separate procedure. Nor did said employee inform the parents about the mandate of the organization she was working for. If either was done, the parents would have immediately stopped all proceedings and gone an entirely different path.
Why ? Well you see the government started the procedure for urgently protecting the children involved. 2 days later, without prior notice to the parents, a child services car and 2 police officers turned up at the school and took the children away. You see, they were urgently -as requested by the parents- removing the minors from their environment, to protect them.
Soon the parents would find out that the procedure to get the children back takes at least 6 months, and involves defending themselves (yes, really) to a youth judge. In those 6 months, in the urgent procedure, parents do not get visitation rights (not that those could have been feasibly provided).
Now you need to understand that when it comes to placements, there are WAY too few foster families to place children. Likewise, to say the orphanages are overloaded is understating matters to the extreme. There is one spot available per 3 children or so. So what happens ? Well, they find places anywhere in the justice system, in other words, free spots, even temporary free spots, in prisons and orphanages. Where did they find those places for these 2 children ? One they found in an utterly overloaded orphanage that at one point separated boys and girls, the other they placed in a prison. They did not want to place both of them in prison, plus it's standard practice to split up siblings (yes, really), so the girl ended up in an orphanage and the boy (14 years of age) ended up in prison, with a "roommate" of 22 years of age, and no supervision. The parents were not informed of their children's whereabouts, as is standard in the urgent procedure.
When the procedure completed, just shy of 2 years after the children were effectively kidnapped from their parents because A GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEE sexually assaulted them, the girl, barely 12, returned pregnant and the boy, addicted to cocaine.
So let me state this again. Because parents reported to the government that a government employee sexually assaulted one of their children, the children were kidnapped. After kidnapping, without so much as informing the parents, the girl was raped and the boy (claims) he was forced to take cocaine. What the teacher did to the girl seems far preferable in comparison, as horrid as that sounds.
Needless to say, the teacher is suspended. Which means, in case anyone might feel this matters, that he is not expected to turn up at work, but enjoys full pay and benefits until he is either convicted or cleared. The school is not allowed to tell anyone the reason for the suspension, and they have zero information other than "can be up to 7 years" about how long this situation is likely to persist.
Because it is not known who raped the girl, there is no legal complaint possible (no worries, an investigation "is in progress", but since there is nowhere to put the kids, they can't actually be removed from that orphanage, and of course there is no money for something basic like 24h supervision, and of course, it could simply be the case that the supervision is who raped the girl). For the boy, yes they know who did it, but what's the point in going after that guy ?
Of course child services did exactly what their mandate said, and therefore is being sued for this, but this is unlikely to yield any results.
THAT is government at work. This is what government will do when you ask them to protect children.
And that is one reason you should NEVER EVER FOR ANY REASON cooperate with any government department for anything. Especially nothing you feel strongly about. There are many others.
I think even you will agree that the abuse that started the whole situation was far preferable to the government's help. FAR preferable.
Regulation does not work. And having the government help you with regulations can result in incredible disasters.
And, by the way, remember this the next time you read in the newspaper that a school "hid" sexual abuse, fired the person involved, and does not initiate any action against them (which would expose them to a wrongful termination lawsuit that, yes, the government would help the teacher with).
