- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
- cross-posted to:
- brainworms@lemm.ee
Cream get the money Dolla Dolla bill yall
You must log in or register to comment.
Thank goodness I had to say the pledge every day in school or I might have forgotten that we actually have liberty and justice for all while reading this
Pretty much exact argument much of the south made about ending slavery before the american civil war happened…
It’s not true then, it’s not true now.
Slaves were already barely profitable compared to paid labor before the civil war, and
slave labourprison labour is only profitable because it’s massively subsidized by the US government.Same is actually true for most fossil fuel production now - only has profits because of subsidizing.
The folks profiting spend part of that profit to pay for politicians to continue the cycle.
They’ve always liked slave labor because they see work as a punishing thing to force people to do, and hard, painful and dangerous work is what you force on people you don’t like(/judge to be immoral).
Increase the demand for productivity until the workers are sufficiently suffering (according to your personal idea of how much a worker should suffer). Now you’re their shepherd, putting them to work. You’ve taken personal responsibility to ensure they don’t have idle hands to do the devil’s work or whatever. The point is that you are good for forcing them to do this.
This, I think, is the foundation of the Christian work “ethic”. Which essentially is to voluntarily punish yourself woth your work like this, to save your boss the trouble. Leaders love this religion for some very good reasons.
The profit motive isn’t irrelevant to the equation at all, of course, but good profits aren’t necessary for them to desire the continuation of punitive labor.
Also frequently hear the same argument made for any change to the thoroughly corrupt healthcare scheme in the U.S.
That any form of socialized medicine would collapse the insurance industries putting thousands out of work and damaging stock portfolios and retirement accounts that may have invested in such. But hey, it’s totally ok to bankrupt tons of citizens and enslave ill folks to lousy jobs because they can’t afford to lose employment-tied insurance that would never be affordable as an individual.
Anything good for is but not thier bottom line: OH HEAVENS NO, THE EXPENSE!
Anything they can profit from: this is essential.
But no, we can’t plan out and try out a new or better system, because we might hurt poor old capitalism’s feelings. Won’t somebody think of the billionaires?
Using underpaid prison labor to deny people access to well-paying jobs, forcing more people into difficult situations.
Which again raises crime, which in turn raises the amount of underpaid prison labor.
See, the system works. Well, not for us.
This doesn’t have to be on or off. Don’t think “shut down”, think “draw down over time”. So instead of an immediate collapse, you get improvement over time.
Should they have “drawn down” slavery over time too last time around, to make it easier for their enslavers to adjust?
I mean, that’s what they did in fact. Same with serfdom in Russia. Official slavery was ended, but in fact there would be plantations with workers being mostly black and being paid almost nothing.
And now the U.S. is facing a second civil war because material conditions have largely unchanged, and the slavery issue is still unresolved, because of those attitudes.
What would it take you to prioritize other people’s rights over your desires for cheap shit?
This seems a very weird view of the USA level of life. A guy here advised me to travel and see the world, thinking that I’m an American.
I guess I’ll pass on that advice to you.
I mean, how many countries there are where you can actually live on welfare?
Okay, let me tell you a little story then.
I’ve actually done a lot more traveling than most humans anywhere will in a lifetime. On foot. Across half a continent. I rebuilt my life from literally nothing and now have some measure of wealth.
I am your walking, talking, right-wing American dream and I am telling you your defense of this evil system and this evil society is immoral and you’re not going to convince anyone to adopt your beliefs, or convince people to withdraw, or stop consensus against it from forming, or convince anyone to just accept it.
No one here is going to accept it. We are going to change it. We are going to take back control of our legal system from you and pass laws banning stuff you want, like prison labor, child abuse, slavery of any kind for any reason including wage slavery, restructure the economy to actually take care of the American people without them having to pay much if anything for it. All of those things and more, because we accept that that’s fair and just.
I’ve seen cities completely destroyed by homelessness, drugs, rampant income inequality, and kept down by governments in collision with big businesses and the cults they formed to justify and defend their behavior – of which you are a part. I scraped my way out of destitution myself and I know no one else should ever have to go through that. So I know the others are right, and you are wrong.
And you’re really powerless to stop us.
On foot. Across half a continent.
North American continent, let me guess.
I rebuilt my life from literally nothing
Most people do that at least once. Some never do though, but that’s what’s called a wasted life.
your defense of this evil system and this evil society is immoral
First, thieves won’t teach me morality, naturally, second, no person under this post has even tried to reach the point in conversation where I’d be able to say what exactly I would defend in systems and societies.
Which means …
Say, if there’s a murder, and if you are a suspect, who can’t be proven to be the murderer, but you actively destroy the evidence ascertaining who that is, then it becomes likelier that the murderer is you.
If you are using manipulative or aggressive tactics in a conversation, trying to give your opposition as few chances as possible instead of as many as possible, - then because of this alone you’ve discredited yourself and your point of view and you’ve lost. (No, it’s not a subject for a vote)
Most of this text is your attempts to describe me instead of myself. Which is worth less than used toilet paper. Also usually called a strawman argument.
And you’re really powerless to stop us.
Now this is the main emotional message you are carrying.
I don’t know whether the literal statement is true, however since you have to persuade yourself that your enemy is powerless, and I don’t, being fine with my enemy being possibly stronger than me, possibly hopelessly, - I think it’s wrong and I am not.
Ah, well, that makes it ok then.
gtfohI’m just saying that your reference to this is underlining a similarity, not a difference. And abolishing this gradually is better than not at all.
Same with the 3rd reich. Draw down the butchering so the butchers can do it just a little longer?
Right? No rush…
🙄
If that community wants to keep those lucrative prison jobs they need to step up and get incarcerated more.
Starting to wonder why Russia doesn’t have them.
Pretty lame deflection
They don’t need to because their concept of law is very flexible for the right people.
You don’t need to dress up your slave labour as “prison” when you can just have out and open slave labour.
So they are literally forced labour camps? How can anyone in the US still complain about Russia? (Just as a disclaimer, this is not a defence of Russia. I think the conditions there are terrible, but the US doesn’t seem far behind, if at all)
IIRC, unless you’re lucky enough to have someone outside of jail putting money into your commissary, you kind of have to if you want half decent living conditions.
Want more shampoo or feminine hygiene products? You have to buy them. Want more food than you were alotted? You have to buy it. It even includes things like toothpaste.
It’s so horrifically abusable too. You can easily lose the “privilege” of slave labor just because someone felt like it or didn’t like your face.
Cuz different rule sets apply to different parts of the world. That and the clever naming scheme the US usually applies to make things sound not as bad or marginably better than they actually are.
And it seems to have worked on you too since you agreed above that it actually has nothing to do with capitalism.
Did you reply to the wrong person? The person you replied to didn’t mention capitalism.
Did you actually read the thread? Because they supported a reply that did earlier.
Of course i read the thread - you have to be aware of how absurd that question is from the outset. And no, they didn’t support anyone claiming this is not the fault of capitalism.
The naming schemes he’s talking about are taken from marketing.
I never said it has anything to do with capitalism.
The US has way better propaganda - the marketing strategies invented in the 60s by the nephew of Freud were put to very good use at bypassing people’s reasoning and not just at making them feel needs, fears, and short-term endorphine jolts related to products and services being sold.
Also the US has way better circus and more bread than Russia.
Russia’s actively committing genocide and threatens nuclear war against anyone who directly intervenes, so there’s that.
I agree with you though. The U.S. is just a third world country with a nice coat of paint at this point.
Russia is a terrible place as is, but the US is too.
Regarding the 3rd world country: That is totally true.
And in Russia, they toss people in prison for disagreeing with the state, so there’s that.
Assange?
Criticize the US all you want, but he didn’t get targeted for disagreeing with the state.
He published evidence of US war crimes and is being persecuted for it. How is that not disagreeing with the state?
Where he crossed the line was in helping Chelsea Manning to bypass security mechanisms to get access to documents she would not have otherwise had access to. Otherwise, you would have had a situation much like The New York Times and the Pentagon Papers where the US government was constrained by the First Amendment.
They’re gonna start doing that here soon, when either one camp or another takes control of state or federal governments.
Fucking Florida bans books now. 🤦
It’s definitely going to be the far right who will throw people into camps if we get there. The most far left politicians in the US rarely if ever advocate targeting individual right wingers, but I can name a few far right politicians with substantial followings that suggested punishing people who disagree with them. I don’t have a lot of love for democratic politicians in the US but they don’t seem like a possible near term threat to people’s safety, they just won’t stand in the way of the people who are.
I think we’ve seen how far the Democrats will go down the authoritarianism path during the lockdowns, which was horrific and corrupt, but you’re right, it’s not nearly as bad as what the stupid fucking Republicans will do if they get their way next year.
How far did they even go? Forcing people to stay home and wear masks during a pandemic is not the same as saying you want to exile leftists(which FYI trump did say). They are not equivalent and being unaware of that is dangerous.
They forced people to accept vaccines they didn’t want under pain of losing their jobs.
Which is inherently destructive and abusive to the working class.
Actually shit like that is what empowered dipshits like DeSantis and Abbott, and why Florida and Texas are so especially hard-nosed against the Democrats and left-wing culture in general.
The left doesn’t want to admit that what they did was wrong, which will keep them from being able to win over enough moderates to stop the right, so I suspect the right will ultimately win and impose their horrific flavor of authoritarianism on the rest of us.
The LGBTQ+ community, women and minorities will suffer the most. Especially the kids. They’re the ones I feel the worst for.
Also, let me be clear that I am not drawing any kind of equivalency; actually my point is that Democrats at their worst (which we saw the past few years) is not as bad as the Republicans at their worst is going to be, and it’s partly Democrats’ fault for empowering the hard right by giving them something legitimate to oppose.
“Most far left politicians”? We don’t have any real far left politicians. All we have are lefty wannbes who just care about furthering their careers within the Democratic party. We need a third party and we need it now. A party that holds true leftist values and not what the democrats claim to support. We have had enough lip service by the so called leftists in the Democratic party.
Prison colonies in Russia are indeed worse than in USA. People die from sickness and malnutrition there who’d come there healthy. And, of course, because of beatings with broken bones etc which somehow nobody knows about until the prisoner dies.
Things like rape and unofficial hierarchy seem to exist in US prisons too, but in general seems just uncomparable.
But people die due to e.g. bad ventilation, missing cooling and failing disease control in the US too.
Just have a look at how great the US prison systems have handled Covid.
The mortality in US prisons is ~40% than in the general population, and that is not counting 2020, where it was ~60% higher.
I’m not arguing it’s bad, but really still not Russian levels.
Source? Is it Hollywood movies?
Source is living in Russia for 27 years and talking to people, also reading stuff from various leaks etc. And obviously mass media. If you are asking about Russia.
If you are asking about USA, then my only sources are mass media and Reddit.
Fair enough, I believe you.
The difference is, it’s often a news story when it happens in the US.
In Russia, it’s a Tuesday.
Y’all are making some weird arguments based on not much.
Let’s have a look at TB as a marker for prison population health. It will exist for a long time without killing someone and will spread quickly in poor conditions.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(21)00049-9/fulltext
Now I accept the argument on relative abundance of TB and would welcome an alternative marker.
Oh no, is your community relying on slave labor because capitalism deems it not efficient enough to exist? Boo hoo so sad, better vote pro-slaver again next election, they will surely fix the problem this term.
This is not a meme…
Once you know how and why was the private prisons created or operate and “earn” their money you would be sad if not depressed…
I recommend watching a documentary on this topic.
 
I’m not disagreeing with you, but you should really at least name a documentary and share some insight that it brings.
Your mom’s not a meme
Some moms are memes.
All memes are pop culture.
True or false: all moms are pop culture
False. The set of moms that are pop culture is a strict subset of the set of moms.
Good, you’re not glitching yet and Project Castor can continue.
Your meme’s not a mom
Both of our statements are factually accurate.
what emoji did you use at the end there it’s blank to me
I don’t see one at the end of their comment, but they have a cherry blossom at the end of their display name if that’s what you meant?(not what you meant!)
there’s 3 emojis showing up as   (Object replacement characters) at the end of the reply text
Ahh I see. Or don’t, actually lol. It’s just blank for me, not showing the [obj] symbol
deleted by creator
Prisons and terms of incarceration are managed by the government and not by free market. This critique should be addressed to the legislature and not to capitalism.
What exactly do you think a private prison is, buddy?
deleted by creator
They are not separate and that is the problem. That separates “crony capitalism” or “corporationism” from “free market capitalism”.
Either way, the critique is to be addressed to the legislature. It is the government that ultimately allows for such pathological situation to exist.
deleted by creator
jeez, you people are wilfully ignorant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex
deleted by creator
It doesn’t get much more Capitalist than maximizing profitability by minimizing manpower expenses and there really is nothing in the Capitalist ideology about the methods of doing so which involve the use of force to make people work for free not being allowed, quite the contrary (it’s all about how businesses should be free, not people)
Capitalism has nothing at all about Morality, which is something that always came from outside it, be it traditional Conservative Family Values and Religion or the various The Greatest Good For The Greatest Number theories from the left (some genuine, others hypocrite).
The Everybody For Themselves that Capitalism promotes is actually the moral of the Sociopath (in the Psychology sense of zero consideration for others, not in the movie sense of evil-doing for the pleasure of it which is ridiculously off).
I’m not seeing how it’s a stretch to criticize capitalism when someone says they don’t want to get rid of slavery because “think of the economy!”
@Ensign_Crab @Dnn “Who would do these jobs if people possibly wrongfully convicted weren’t forced to do these jobs?”
Slavery is a strict outcome of unregulated capitalism. That’s literally where “classical” slavery originated. Money gave slavers power, and they used that power to abduct people into slavery which made the slavers money.
Better veiled versions of that plopped up all through the centuries past slavery (and before that) as well. Factory towns were exactly that as well. You worked in the factory/mine and instead of money you received company vouchers as income. These vouchers you could only spend in the company shops and company housing. So if you tried to leave the company, you had nothing. And since they could essentially charge you whatever they wanted, they’d make sure you earned less than what you needed to survive, so that you’d rack up debts while working there. So if you left, you were forced to pay your debts, and if you couldn’t (and you really couldn’t in most cases), you’d just go to prison, and be forced to work in the mine/factory anyway.
Completely unregulated capitalist sectors (e.g. the mafia) use the same exact system to this day.
Have, for example, a look at human trafficing rings.
Not really, since slavery is the ultimate expression of underregulated capitalism.
If you think American corporations don’t exploit penal slavery and wouldn’t be doing outright chattel slavery if they were allowed to, you’re just too naive.
I wrote it’s not wrong but the criticism is wrongly addressed. What you wrote is known and that’s why regulations exit. And still we have this kind of slavery. Don’t give your regulators a pass here.
Sure, regulators are forced to fix it, but only because unregulated capitalism is completely broken. Capitalism itself is the festering wound, regulation is the band-aid that we stick onto it, to make it not leak bile over the part of the floor that we care about.
I’m not giving anyone a pass. Just because “regulations exist” doesn’t mean that all the necessary ones do or that it’s because pro-regulation people don’t want it. Ever heard of regulatory capture?
They don’t call it the Prison Industrial Complex for nothing. It’s just as insidious and powerful as the MIC.
deleted by creator
lmfao, I can’t even imagine the mental gymnastics you have to do to separate the two… https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison%E2%80%93industrial_complex
My thoughts as well.
Guys but China is the bad one!!%(+%!
They are bad, yes.
There can be 2 bad guys.
True, they’re all bad lets focus on the countries we live in.
No, let’s condemn all the rotten ones. We as a world should not tolerate genocide. Fuck china and fuck any apologist. May their darkest nightmare become reality.
Why is it that all of your comments are anti-china and you have no comments critiquing other posts about negative things the USA has done? You’re saying let’s condemn all the rotten ones, but you seem to be condeming only a certain group of ones you think are rotten. I think you might be biased against China guy.
I just happen to have a lot of china dick suckers in my feed today. Wish I could block you lemmy.ml guys, fascist cocksuckers.
Why did you bring up China at all?
Also, I don’t think they are rotten. They are committing genocide. I KNOW they are rotten.
Prisoners deserve everything they get to them.
That’s an unhelpful way to think about criminal justice. If the number 1 priority is to reduce crime and increase safety, the criminal justice system should focus on rehabilitation instead of just throwing them in shitty gang-run prisons for revenge or whatever. That helps nobody and destabilizes society.
Especially when “lock 'em up and treat 'em like shit” usually leads to more crime and “lock 'em up and throw away the key” leads to large prison populations that are long past their tendency to cause trouble.
Do you think all prisoners are guilty?
Do you believe all crimes (including non violent ones) should be punished equally with "deserving everything they get to them?
All people without the ability to process issues in shades of grey instead of black and white should think for like 5 seconds before they continue to embarrass themselves on the internet
Shit… Grow a conscious please… Prisons are supposed to be for rehabilitation, not slavery.
What an absolutely horrible mindset you must be in all the fucking time to think that someone deserves, at any point in time in their lifetime no matter what they’ve done, to be a fucking slave.
State prisons are not part of “capitalism”.
If you mean “capitalism+slavery”, then yes, this is known to cause problems, hence all the civil rights efforts since Renaissance to make citizens roughly equal (even cut aristocracy a bit) and every resident a citizen.
deleted by creator
Just not allowing myself to behave like an envious little punk. I do see problems with the existing social systems, it’s just that being prevented from robbing those who have more is not a problem. It’s a very good design feature.
deleted by creator
Ok so you are born into wealth
Not at all, just my parents, while not perfect, have taught me to work for myself and respect the rights of others and their independence.
As for you being envious, the existing system benefits you, you are not dying from hunger or doing unqualified labor under threat of a whip.
It’s not a system of distribution of some common good which fell from the sky and now has to be shared fairly. Nobody “feeds the 1%”, they use what they own.
Everybody in America does labor under the threat of a whip unless they’re an unemployed adult hanging out in the boonies somewhere.
deleted by creator
you not only opportunity of education but wealth
WTF? You think everybody not running around with leftist bullshit is rich?
This system only benefits you. Born into wealth or a caste system
Oh, wow.
Then get a passport and see how the rest of the world is doing.
I happen to live in that “rest of the world”, LOL.
You will change.
I change all the time with experience, that’s why I despise those who don’t and instead whine how somebody has better toys than them.
deleted by creator
I’d argue this guy probably had his original identity beaten out of him by his scumfuck parents and he resorted to adopting theirs to avoid violence from them, and that is why he thinks the way he does. And if true, he doesn’t really benefit from the system either, but is just a brainwashed victim of it.
There’s no billionaire who didn’t steal from the hard work of others. Every billionaire is a scoundrel of some sort, a thug if you try to take their cash cow from them.
Name a billionaire who has stolen from you or somebody you know and describe how.
deleted by creator
I prefer giving the boot. Sadly no communist is verbose enough in person to take it.
deleted by creator
Arguably almost all of them since they all seem to engage in some unethical behavior or another for profit.
A better question is to name which ones haven’t.
This should make it even easier for you to name one.
Dude obviously you are out of your league. Yes all profits are theft, you worked to make $100 profit for the company, they paid you $10, $90 is taken, it’s not hard. But even if you aren’t ready to learn about Marxism…
Walmart: Please, PLEASE defend the billionaires that own Wallmart… #1 in stealing wages, yes, wage theft, actual theft. Please look it up. Even not considering Marxist ideas, just plain old theft of wages. Their employees have to live on government handouts, IE: You are paying more in taxes because Wallmart won’t pay their employees a living wage… They’re stealing from you… Like, this isn’t hard.
Please use your brain. Bezos’ company bans their sellers from selling lower somewhere else, forcing a monopoly on low prices for Amazon. Those companies and people make less money… Like… C’mon, just because it isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it’s not theft. Also wage theft, Amazon commits massive wage theft…
Google steals your data.
Apple bans companies from repairing their products.
Oil companies literally cause problems in the middle east in order to control gas prices…
CEOs are making TONS of money off of… stealing… war… propaganda…
All of this creates more profits, and takes more money from you or their employees. Literally takes no effort to look this up. You are being contrarian for no reason. Or you are deliberately creating propaganda, because even if you don’t believe in Marxism, billionaires are still, easily, obviously, objectively, stealing…
Billionaires have constantly stolen wages by not increasing wages in line with inflation for their employees. Most recent examples: Jeff Bezos, Fast food giants.
I take solace in your downvotes that your opinions are unpopular and wrong and as such no one believes you. Look on the plus side, your brown nose covered in poo will protect you from the sun.
unpopular
Irrelevant obviously.
wrong
Doesn’t follow from downvotes. It’s obvious, again. Votes don’t support statements.
no one believes you
Irrelevant, unless my goal was to make someone believe into something. It wasn’t.
Also there’s no poo anywhere around me and it’s raining, which is quite pleasant after such heat. But thank you for your good wishes.
