Why end the homelessness crisis when you can criminalize homelessness and have an endless supply of slaves to produce “proudly made in america” things for 15cts an hour ?
Because slave labor is notoriously inefficient relative to precarious industrial labor (particularly as your prison population ages), the cost of incarceration eclipses the savings (especially as housing/energy costs climb), and the cruelty inflicted on the populous undermines the health and well-being of the overall population in a way that stunts technological and cultural development.
States like Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma are case studies in economic mismanagement through mass incarceration. Four of the highest incarceration rates in the country and some of the worst economic growth in the nation.
Trying to treat homelessness through incarceration is a bit like trying to treat malnutrition through cannibalism. The policy is inherently wasteful and destructive, sacrificing far more than one might hope to create.
If you think the bourgeoisie isn’t that cynical, I have a bridge to sell you.
The real value of mass incarceration is not in the people you incarcerate but in the submissive atmosphere you cultivate outside the incarcerated group. Mass arrests create a functional economic blacklist of racial cohorts and social dissidents. Associating with these people can be as poisonous for your welfare as being one of them. And “high crime” neighborhoods can be targeted for “economic redevelopment” which often means mass displacement of residents through state seizure of property and other “slum clearance” measures.
I don’t doubt there’s cynicism in the modern incarceration system. But it goes a lot deeper than just “arrest a guy and press gang them”. An enormous component of the War on Crime was busting up minority social welfare groups (The Black Panthers, most famously, but ACORN and BLM in more recent iterations) and scattering their non-incarcerated members.
We’re seeing the same thing play out on college campuses. Organizers and leaders are targeted for arrest and expulsion in order to break up cliches of students focused on that individual leadership.
Even in the short-term, mass incarceration is - at best - a loss leader. And if you look at what’s happening in the UK right now, even their police and prisons are getting cannibalized by a government intent on gutting every conceivable public service.
They’re farther along the death spiral than we are, but we’re all headed in the same direction.
The major “desired” impact, I suspect, is not in direct profits from the slave labor but in the wage suppression that it causes outside of the prison population.
Because slave labor is notoriously inefficient relative to precarious industrial labor (particularly as your prison population ages), the cost of incarceration eclipses the savings (especially as housing/energy costs climb), and the cruelty inflicted on the populous undermines the health and well-being of the overall population in a way that stunts technological and cultural development.
States like Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma are case studies in economic mismanagement through mass incarceration. Four of the highest incarceration rates in the country and some of the worst economic growth in the nation.
Trying to treat homelessness through incarceration is a bit like trying to treat malnutrition through cannibalism. The policy is inherently wasteful and destructive, sacrificing far more than one might hope to create.
The real value of mass incarceration is not in the people you incarcerate but in the submissive atmosphere you cultivate outside the incarcerated group. Mass arrests create a functional economic blacklist of racial cohorts and social dissidents. Associating with these people can be as poisonous for your welfare as being one of them. And “high crime” neighborhoods can be targeted for “economic redevelopment” which often means mass displacement of residents through state seizure of property and other “slum clearance” measures.
I don’t doubt there’s cynicism in the modern incarceration system. But it goes a lot deeper than just “arrest a guy and press gang them”. An enormous component of the War on Crime was busting up minority social welfare groups (The Black Panthers, most famously, but ACORN and BLM in more recent iterations) and scattering their non-incarcerated members.
We’re seeing the same thing play out on college campuses. Organizers and leaders are targeted for arrest and expulsion in order to break up cliches of students focused on that individual leadership.
Short term profit is all that’s considered, longevity is disregarded.
Even in the short-term, mass incarceration is - at best - a loss leader. And if you look at what’s happening in the UK right now, even their police and prisons are getting cannibalized by a government intent on gutting every conceivable public service.
They’re farther along the death spiral than we are, but we’re all headed in the same direction.
The major “desired” impact, I suspect, is not in direct profits from the slave labor but in the wage suppression that it causes outside of the prison population.