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this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Yeah. For-profit prisons need to go. Privatization works on many things but not this.
It works at turning private profit for private, sociopathic investors, almost never at improving or even maintaining a formerly government run service.
And the governmental service almost always goes to shit because it was defunded to cut wealthy investor's taxes at their demand, leading to cries for privatization by the same wealthy investors when it goes to shit as a result.
Effective grift if you have the lobbyists, the bully pulpit, and no conscience or humanity.
Market capitalism belongs in optional products/services, like fidget spinners and massages. It doesn't belong in prisons, healthcare, utilities, roads, etc, because private industry is all about getting maximum return they can get away with at the product/services expense, and finding new ways of giving even less while pocketing more, even if that means buying courts and politicians with that profit to make it legal.
Despite what they say about themselves, market capitalists have antisocial motivations in practice. They're want to own everything, purely out of ego and greed, and it will never be enough.
They won't because slavery is as American as apple pie.
So it's not very American at all? Apple pie didn't originate in America.
Are you trying to pretend you have really never heard this saying before? Or are you just salty and lashing out because I'm pointing out that America is still a country that is based on slave labor?
No, I'm pointing out that it's a stupid saying since there's nothing particularly American about apple pie. Slavery certainly isn't unique to America, either, but it is very relevant to its history.
I never said it's unique to America and I wouldn't just say it's relevant to our history considering, as we're discussing right now, there are currently more slaves in the United States of America than any point in its history.
But yeah let's argue the semantics of an old saying instead.
Equating prison labor with the system of slavery that existed before it was abolished is very disingenuous. Both are shitty practices, but not the same thing.
People are literally rounded up off of the street and put in jail to work against their will. Quite often it turns out these people were innocent. They're also abused physically and mentally and sometimes simply left to fucking die in their cell. And let's not forget how often they're raped! And the fact that they're always being raped is literally comedy to most of the world.
You're trying to downplay this, and also, for some reason, change the subject to semantics.
Were they brought to prison crammed into boats like livestock and bred like them as well? Forbidden having any rights due to the way they look even when not in prison? A lot of slavery's legacy has resulted in people whose ancestors were slaves being fed to the prison system, yes, so they're connected, but it's extremely unhelpful to lump them together as being entirely the same thing. You can hate the prison system without completely equating it to the institutional slavery of the past.
I never said it's exactly the same. I'm just saying it is literal slavery. They are forced to work against their will.
But okay what is the acceptable terminology? What word do you personally feel is morally acceptable to call the people that are currently being forced to work against their will?
Also I just want to be very clear, and I don't think you understand this, but you are flat out saying that a person who is being forced to work against their will cannot be considered a slave as long as you treat them relatively nicely when they are not working the fields.
This is a literal argument for why slavery wasn't bad in the past. They were better off then in Africa.