Samuel Bostaph wrote: "So, what's wrong with "child labor"? And, what's the age cutoff, below which it can't be defended?" This sent me back to Jonathan Swift. I had assumed, I thought wrongly, judging by the discussion which followed that irony was the intent. Swift's "A Modest Proposal" is brilliant as ever. But now it seems that it was a mocking question after all. In the serious vein, as Anil Nauriya said, 'political', 'values' and 'normative' elements are an integral part of the discipline and most definitely in the policy area. Our science is driven by our subjectivity in the questions we pose. And contemporary societies' position on this issue is the collective subjectivity which uses science to find an appropriate policy ('choice' in the public sphere if you will). So it seems we have already agreed on the answer by way of anti-child labor laws that exist even in poor countries, however ineffectively they might be administered due to many complicated reasons. The task would be to institute right kind of changes alluded to by Steven Horwitz and Barkley Rosser in their posts, that would eradicate the conditions leading to child labor which benefits the employers also, if one is to believe the documentaries mentioned in another post. Sumitra Shah