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When there are slavers to shoot, we all can have a little American pride - as a treat
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this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2024
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Can you elaborate on how there's still currently slavery in America?
Probably referring to prison forced labor or "wage slavery"
Guess that means the civil war was a waste of time. Can celebrate anything until 100% of societal wrongs are righted.
Also literal slavery under the 13th amendment for convicts, which is one of the primary drivers of disproportionate incarceration rates of minorities for non-violent crimes.
You're not wrong, but it's certainly a huge step in the right direction.
While you are right about it being a step in the right direction, the big “except” in the 13th amendment led to slavery never leaving. Vagrancy laws and other racial laws led to slavery because forced servitude was legal as a punishment, but with worse conditions since the employers cared less about slaves than plantation owners since there really wasn’t much penalty for killing them, and instead of buying them you were only leasing them. Being in the convict leasing system was lethal.
I wouldn’t call it a huge step, the 13th amendment was terribly written. It was just the first step in the right direction, making it look a lot larger than it was.
The primary driver of disproportionate incarceration rates is for-profit prisons, not the legality of involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime. Most states don't allow involuntary labor to be forced on convicts. Only voluntary and deeply underpaid labor.
The issue is deeper and more fundamental than that - the fact that the drive of right-wing loons to make everything profitable, whether pro forma 'for profit' or not, has created a sick system of incentives to incarcerate individuals, regardless of whether it can extract economically useful labor from them, simply because it can extract rent for each person so incarcerated from state governments subject to severe regulatory capture.
The fact that it's disproportionately minorities is just because the country is still deeply fucking racist.
There are not as many for profit prisons as you think. Regular state prisons are used for cheap labor to benefit people politically, and for racists to hold power over minorities
If we got rid of private prisons right now we would still have disproportionate incarceration and many prisoners forced to labor even if someone didn't make a profit off of it. Yes, it is part of the problem and for profit prisons should be abolished, but doing that only fixes a small part of the problem.
You may be right, I may be overestimating the effect of for-profit prisons. I would have sworn it was closer to 25%, but my memory is like swiss cheese.
The other point, that the exact form of labor exploitation performed by most states on the incarcerated is not addressed by the 13th amendment, still stands.
I mean, for-profit prisons make a LOT of their money from forced servitude which is made legal by the 13th amendment, so it's not like they're wrong either.
Again, most states don't allow involuntary servitude in their prisons. It's more like setting the minimum wage outrageously low. It's exploitative and must be ended, don't get me wrong - but it's not something that the 13th Amendment addresses.
They probably are referring to prison labor. Five states can still force prisoners to work without pay. While a vile injustice that must be fought and extinguished, it is very far from the system of slavery we fought to eradicate in the Civil War.
It's kinda disingenuous to not also mention that in most (all?) states in which they do get paid minimum wage doesn't apply, and they get paid laughably little and get way overcharged for basic stuff and telephone use such that they may as well not be paid.
I do mention that in another comment.
Google for profit prisons. People are being thrown in these things for next to nothing to keep the numbers up and from there they are forced labor. Hell multiple judges have been caught being paid to make sure they get people sent to jail.
This is 100% slavery and it's 100% legal. On top of that... The number of slaves that were active in this country back then is a fraction of the number of people that are currently in these for-profit prisons, many of them for next to nothing.
Slavery is alive and well in this country and it's not going anywhere.
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.
Easiest example is for profit prisons. Next is prison made products.
13th amendment. It's baked right in.