• Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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    4 months ago

    Yep, slavery was largely re-instituted (in a less dominant form) during the reconstruction era.

    The US still has a significant portion of its economy based on slave-labor, including at least 54 state-run prison farms, and US-state-run companies like Federal Prison Industries which operates a multi-billion dollar industry with ~ 52 prison factories, where prisoners produce furniture, clothing, circuit boards, products for the military, computer aided design services, call center support for private companies. 1, 2, 3

    The US also has the highest incarceration rates in the world, with states like Louisiana basically being slave states. Most individual US states outrank all other countries.

    • Maeve@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      That last link…“freest country in the world” just means “most indoctrinated country in the world, and also slavers.”

    • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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      4 months ago

      Not to diminish how messed up prison labor is, or how private prisons shouldn’t be a thing at all, to say that prison labor makes up a significant portion of the US economy is a pretty big stretch.

      FPI/UNICORE only has about a half billion in gross revenue, and the entire private prison sector is around ~$8 billion.
      The US economy is in the $25 trillion range. Arby’s is about half the size of the private prison industry, and eight times larger than FPI. ($4 billion)

      Neither should exist in the modern era, and getting rid of them would be an almost unnoticeable impact on the economy.

        • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          I suppose I should have said “none”.
          Even though Arby’s has personally hurt me more than private prisons, I still think that privatized cruelty that somehow manages to be worse than our already pretty shitty penal system is worse that the gastrointestinal nightmare that Arby’s has given me.

        • ricecake@sh.itjust.works
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          4 months ago

          It’s not a great ruling, but it doesn’t serve to be hyperbolic. They said that fines or punishment for “camping” (existing while homeless) on a cities public lands aren’t de facto unconstitutional.

          Not forbidden to fine or evict the homeless isn’t the same as making homelessness illegal.