Nanook on Nostr: This may be an over reach but I can say that when I was a kid you could work younger ...

This may be an over reach but I can say that when I was a kid you could work younger than sixteen, not serving alcohol, but otherwise, and hours weren't greatly restricted. This allowed me to learn radio engineering where things like proof of performance testing was usually done at 2AM or later. Although one can easily see the potential for exploitation, there was another much more valuable potential in this and that is the potential for learning a craft at an age where your brain is still flexible enough to learn it well, through mentorship. This is lost today and as a result many valuable crafts. In Iowa, on a farm it is normal for families, entire families, to work long hours and really necessary for non giant corporate owned farms and it's how farmers learn to be farmers.