Last year I have been learning we are doing everything from the slavery era. It only got renamed.
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Wait, could I move to the US and rent a sexy inmate for my mansion? To parade in front of my geek friends? And play video games with?
(I mean I'd cruelly punish him of course, being in the US, like I wouldn't put any toppings on his ice cream, or something unusually painful, or whatever the law says you have to do).
Oh this is delicious. Keep in mind they hate abortion and hate sexual education. It's not a conspiracy any more. They want the poor to be uneducated and reproductive to have a jailed bottom slave minority.
I put it to you that this might, with a few tweaks, actually be a step in the right direction. I'd rather be at work than in prison. Community service is a thing. This is clearly coming at it backwards on pretty much every count, but there's a kernel of a good idea in there.
Here, they let you learn for a job instead in prison. Seems the better option, imo.
Fair enough, but for this to be just it must be voluntary for the prisoner and it must not be used as a motivation to deny parole.
Do you trust not being put in jail for anything they come up with?
Goodness no, I'd more or less expect it. The whole model is upside down.
Yep. And it’s perfectly legal, because the US never banned slavery.
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
I think we’re one of the only countries in the world who still has legal slavery. Pretty awful.
There are a few sharia lands and a bunch of not-yet-sharia lands with like half the population dreaming of it.
Taken together - a huge chunk of the globe.
There are also a few countries where the Western concept of slavery wouldn't work, but with pretty feudal-despotic cultural legacy, like, ahem, Japan and Thailand and what not, which may have something similar to slavery again in future.
So I wouldn't say USA is that different.
And in Russia there are whole small towns functional because of prison colony facilities there where prisoners work.
Still, prisoners working for private companies with prisons collecting their wages, - seems kinda uncomfortably close. Because, yes, if they are safe enough to be let out into society, they are safe enough to not be prisoners.
Anytime you see one of those “silly laws” - stuff about not being able to ride a horse on Sunday or whatever - that’s why. “Vagrancy” laws were basically put in place to funnel black men into legal enslavement.
Why do they call it "land of the free" again?
“They Thought They Were Free: [German society 1933-1945]”
Cognitive dissonance. Discrimination is illegal, so obviously anyone who experiences it is crazy or lying. Clearly, they should have just followed the law against selling loose cigarettes if they didn’t want to die.
Sounds like gaslighting.
For the same reason narcissists like to say they're the best.
America calling slavery slavery challenge impossible!
Yes, convict leasing was designed to be a direct replacement for slavery. It was used that way right after slavery ended when you could arrest a black person for anything you could think of. No job? Arrested, leased. No home? Arrested, leased. Etc....
So slavey never ended! Cool cool. Totally not a corporate dictatorship masquerading as a democracy...
the laws never pretended it ended. the thirteenth ammendment very plainly allows it:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
emphasis mine. it never said you can't have slavery any more, it just said if you're gonna do slavery you have to convict someone first.
Not saying it's not true, but it was pretty much in the spirit of English legal tradition. This probably even wasn't a huge point of contention when written.
If that part is changed, no kind of convict labor (or "public work" or whatever it's called in Europe and elsewhere) will be legal. All the convicts will do is rot in the same building for many months and years.
Without some deep prison reform you'll have an increase in suicides and mental health cases. I've spent only 10 days in a mental hospital (from medical commission for conscript service, I live in Russia), and every opportunity to go do something unusual was happiness there. Even to help nurses with carrying somewhere some vaguely piss-smelling bed sheets in bags. It was nothing like prison. It was nothing like a usual mental hospital even. Still boredom gets you.
Like I said, without a deep reform. With said deep reform - convict labor being allowed only with competitive wages somehow limited in use (say, only available upon release?), so that these wouldn't go to overpriced prison goods or something like that to indirectly reproduce slave labor, - then yes.
Actually, about prison goods - I think prisons can afford to provide inmates with a free delivery service, while what they buy they pay for themselves. Prisons in general shouldn't sell anything to inmates or buy anything from them, the power imbalance is unacceptable. Or maybe it won't be a free delivery service, just prison authorities will be obligated to accept those deliveries.
That’s how propagandized Americans are. lmfao They act as if this is some shadowy hidden part of our culture
It's not like you'd expect people to be closely acquainted with an obscure legal document like the constitution.
Oh, wait...
Dylan roof got Burger King and Luigi is facing terrorism charges and the death penalty.
Yup, it never ended, it just rebranded
I believe it's called neoslavery, I think the last privately (legally) owned slave was released in 1946 if i recall correctly, now the only legal slavery is prisons
I guess it became more egalitarian and less racist though? One can say they failed to end slavery, but they managed to end exclusively black slavery.
So it turns out that USA is actually not land of the free, but land of the equal. Seems what they like to accuse USSR of. Those damned commies.
If by "more egalitarian" you mean "less blatantly racist", the sure.
https://www.ussc.gov/research/research-reports/2023-demographic-differences-federal-sentencing
And if you want to get more details, watch like any episodes of John Oliver.
America is not "the land of the equal".
I was joking
It was hard to tell the tone of your voice from a piece of text.
It's legal per the 13th Amendment.
Doesn't make it right, and it says a lot about how little both parties value human rights that it's allowed to stand.
Oh, that's nothing. Ever wonder who tough on crime legislation actually benefits, and who's lobbying for it?
Government: "WELL ACHSHUALLY, They aren't slaves because they consented...
~under~ ~the~ ~threat~ ~of~ ~23~ ~hour~ ~solitary~ ~confinement~ ~with~ ~zero~ ~amenities~ ~and~ ~nothing~ ~to~ ~do~ ~and~ ~shitty~ ~food~ ~and~ ~absolute~ ~boredom~~,~ ~and~ ~practically~ ~psychological~ ~torture"~
Oh no that's most states. Alabama is straight up sentencing them to labor. There's not even a fiction of them volunteering.
Yeah it was written that way in order to have slaves with extra steps
This is how states fight wildfires
And then they don't qualify to work as firefighters after they are released.
"dates back more than 150 years"
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm
Interesting timeframe
Meet the new boss. 🎵
Same as the old boss🎵
Literally in some cases recently freed slaves were arrested for being black and leased back to the same locations where they were enslaved to the same people.
If you don't want slavery, then make it illegal. Maybe even make a constitutional amendment.