You make some great points, especially as to whether the government is actually capable of even doing the job. I have no idea how or where the line would/should be drawn as far as children being able to enter the workforce.

How's this for an anecdote though? I was working, doing sound at a gig only 2 nights ago and there was a young kid who came up to my boss and I at the front of house and was just standing there watching for a while, so we started chatting to him and he told us that he owned his own sound and lighting company and had been running it for a year and was doing quite well. I let him have a go on the lighting console and he was really good at it! The guy was 13 years old and he was killing it! He clearly really enjoyed what he was doing and it was evident that this was something he himself genuinely wanted to pursue, to which I say "kudos kid!" If he keeps it up he will undoubtedly be one of the best in the biz in no time. I don't feel that there is anything wrong with that, in fact I think it's fantastic. But is there a way of finding this stuff out on a case by case basis? Should there be some kind of psychological analysis to find out whether the child themselves actually wants to do the work? Again, regardless of whether the child wants to do it at that time, are they actually emotionally mature enough to make that decision? In this specific situation that seemed to be the case but we can't see the future. This of course isn't really taking into account whether dance festivals are really an appropriate place for children to be anyways, but I guess if they are gonna be there at all, it's probably better that they are behind the desk working and not in the crowd getting wasted...Haha there are a lot of facets to this which is why I thought it would be a cool discussion to open up.