I hear this point of view, that mass incarceration is slavery with extra steps. But a (very quick and not in depth) google search shows that the cost to keep a person in prison for a year is $60-100k. And as far as I can tell in the cases where prisoners are laboring, while for admittedly shit pay, its not in $50k/year let alone one where where a profit would be returned for the "owners/jailers"
Now, if you're saying that the slavery comparison is more in that prisoners are legit balance sheet items for private prisoners to collect tax money? Well there is an argument there to be sure. But this seems like a structural problem. The existence of private prisons at all.
None of that is arguing in favor of crazy sentences for non-violent crime, however directly comparing it to chattel slavery confuses the argument against mass incarceration.
Prisons and more specifically prisoners are massively profitable to their jailers/owners no matter if they're private, state, or federal. Even private corporations are profiting from the US prison system. The federal government runs a corporation called FPI/UNICOR which sells out prisoners for profit. States also have programs or companies that lease their prisoners out to private companies who pay those prisons (or the government) a lot of money to get an endless supply of workers who can't complain about working conditions or being paid pennies a day (almost all of which goes back to the prison anyway). Some prisoners are forced to work for no pay at all.
Prisons will let people who are supposedly so dangerous that they need to be locked up and denied parole out of jail long enough to work their shifts at fast food restaurants, retail stores, plants (like Tyson Foods) and warehouses and they'll run their own companies inside the prisons themselves like call centers which get contracted out to private corporations or government agencies for a profit.
Some prisons also run farms, modern day plantations, that use slave labor to sell millions of dollars worth of food and crops to corporations whose products show up in our stores. Whole foods, kroger, walmart, and target all sell products made by prison labor. Food and crops raised on prison farms even get exported to other countries.
Inside the prisons everything prisoners get they have to buy from the prison which overcharges them for everything. The workers make pennies but the markups on what they need can be 600%. The commissary vendors are for-profit and the prisons get kickbacks from them to get exclusive access to the captive customer base. Private companies partner with prisons for release cards and make profit from that. Phone calls from prisons can cost over $20 for just 15 minutes (https://brilliantmaps.com/jail-call-cost-usa/). The US prison system is designed to make money. Private prisons tend to make more profit on their prisoners, but so do state and federal prisons, the vendors they employ, and private corporations. Of course even while the government and corporations rake in money taxpayers are still on the hook for a lot of unnecessarily expenses, including the costs of policing and the court systems that feed the prison system a steady stream of new and returning prisoners. Everybody knows that we could save billions in tax payer money is we focused more on keeping people out of the system, but there's profit to be made from slaves so no one will fix it.
If you think China is some mass surveillance state where every single yard of dissent is carpet bombed: yes, I can see why you think that way.
Just like the US, it can take a whike for thr CCP to get around to every individual. It's a large country. Your mistake is thinking that that's the line it has to get to before we can compare a country to China/Russia.
I don't disagree. It can (thankfully) take quite a while to get around to every dissenter. I also don't disagree that we have to wait for a particular milestone to compare ourselves to China/Russia.
Where you lose me is:
> I don't see much difference these days. Substitute wechat for X and that's the US for anyone non-white.
Again, I agree with you on most of your points. But I think you're doing yourself, and all freedom loving peoples a disservice by dividing the victims of this state action. Hence my sarcastic reply.
If there is to be any resistance to state over reach, telling the racial majority of the country that it doesn't happen to them or it's not a "white/euro american issue" is counterproductive at best.
> I think you're doing yourself, and all freedom loving peoples a disservice by dividing the victims of this state action.
There have been at least 2 explicit murders by state actors on the streets, hundreds of wrongfully deported people who aren't back to this day, and thousands stuck in concentration camps.
No, it's not at '6 million jews' level (yet). But I'm fairly comfortable admitting that these actions are at a scale where we aren't too different from Russia nor China. Downplaying it now is how we get to those massive, unignorable numbers later on.
>If there is to be any resistance to state over reach, telling the racial majority of the country that it doesn't happen to them or it's not a "white/euro american issue" is counterproductive at best.
It disproportionately is not happening to them, though. That's what made the 2 murders mentioned earlier so high profile. Undeniably white suburban citizens gunned down.
I'm not telling them to not take action. It's more like their inaction or outright support is why we got this far to begin with. No snowflake feels at fault in an avalanche.
I’m not a musician, but I have referred several friends to SH! You’ve helped them a ton, thanks!
Re the roll of blogs, I’m guessing that to an extent at least Spotify and other recommendation algorithms/bots are taking into account the buzz online and what bloggers are saying?
What if next door they put in a combination slaughter house and sewage treatment plant? What if they built a gigantic speaker pointed in your direction?
Or made a home for wayward youths who live yelling slurs?
I’m sorry, would you prefer lighter cars with fewer (heavy) safety features? I’m not opposed to that with informed consent from the customers, however I’m not sure what point you’re making
Downtown Denver also kind of just sucks. A couple good restaurants sure, but 16th street mall (recently rebranded as “16th St. The Denver Way”) is comparable to City Center in SF.
Whenever friends move here I say “don’t live downtown” and inevitably they do and they hate it.
16 St. is way better than it was. If you haven't been down there, go walk around at lunch sometime, there are a bunch of normies down there now. Yeah its all chains still, but it's not actively hostile like it was a few years ago.
Now, if you're saying that the slavery comparison is more in that prisoners are legit balance sheet items for private prisoners to collect tax money? Well there is an argument there to be sure. But this seems like a structural problem. The existence of private prisons at all.
None of that is arguing in favor of crazy sentences for non-violent crime, however directly comparing it to chattel slavery confuses the argument against mass incarceration.
reply