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Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

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Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#51

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

riot504 wrote: post #40
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say you have a reasonably well-paying remote job and you could live anywhere. Let's also say you're married and have children. Do you want them to go to good schools? Do you want them to receive quality healthcare that does not break the bank? Do you want to use convenient services like Uber/Lyft when the need arises? Do you want access to a network of professionals that can help you grow your career? If you an…

Are you serious with those questions? I grew up on island in Alaska. Completed my last two years of high school in a small farming community in North Carolina. Joined the military and after ten years separated from southern Turkey, yet, somehow I was able to land a job as a data scientist. I joined the military due to a lack of academic discipline though I still was accepted to the state schools in North Carolina, ju…

I never meant major cities, just any city. In another post in this thread I give examples of Indianapolis, Chattanooga, and St. Louis. They could hardly be described as major cities (at least compared to ny/la/sf). But the rural areas beyond those cities' suburbs are highly impoverished. Infrastructure costs are higher in rural areas. It makes more sense to subsidize efficient urbanization than to spend far more on inefficient ruralization. My other post in this thread has better detail in this regard.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#52

Post by ashark »

riot504 wrote: post #44
ashark wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moving more people into cities is a bad approach we need to spread people around the country and raise up small towns instead leaving them. Why? City-dwelling is, broadly, much cheaper (in terms of infrastructure and services) and more environmentally friendly than other arrangements.

How many services do you need? Schools, hospitals, housing, grocery stores and clothing. The outdoors then becomes your entertainment.

Water, power, communication, unemployment and other poverty support, mail, law enforcement. Everything. Are you arguing rural living comes with cheaper services and less environmental harm, in the typical case? That'd be great, if true.

[EDIT] Transportation. Worth including on the list, in particular.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#53

Post by aaron-lebo »

mikeash wrote: post #49
aaron-lebo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's some truth to it but the original post is way too simplistic. They are suggesting that prison, even today, is equivalent to slavery. There is injustice within the modern prison system, but prison is not slavery, at least in the right context it is a place for punishment and rehabilitation. Sure prisons make a profit off their prisoners, but those profits are nothing like those obtained by slavery, it's an ext…

The Constitution explicitly permits slavery for criminals, and many prisons take advantage of this. How is that simplistic?

It is simplistic exactly because that is not equivalent to slavery circa 1860 which is what is suggested through "we never quit doing slavery".

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#54

Post by RingwormOne »

bjl wrote: post #39
RingwormOne wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery has had significant long term effects on the black community. That can't be denied. Disproportionate poverty in the black community is directly tied to slavery. However I disagree that slavery - as the term is usually meant to mean - still exists in the form of incarceration. We as a society have decided that certain things are illegal. The black community, because of poverty (so because of slavery), dispropo…

The 13th Amendment explicitly legalises slavery as the punishment for a crime, and its used all the time.

And when we talk about slavery it's usually in the sense of racialized, bondage-from-birth slavery rather than penal labor.

The two are very different, and using the word 'slavery' to refer to both conflates meaning and disguises the important differences between the two.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#55

Post by rm_-rf_slash »

riot504 wrote: post #44
ashark wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moving more people into cities is a bad approach we need to spread people around the country and raise up small towns instead leaving them. Why? City-dwelling is, broadly, much cheaper (in terms of infrastructure and services) and more environmentally friendly than other arrangements.

How many services do you need? Schools, hospitals, housing, grocery stores and clothing. The outdoors then becomes your entertainment.

Schools need good teachers and administrators. Hospitals need good doctors and nurses. Housing needs construction labor and assurance for the developer that their investment will pay off.

We as a nation do not produce many good teachers. We do not produce enough doctors period.

This isn't SimCity. Can't just plop a school or hospital down for a fixed sum and expect things to sort themselves out.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#56

Post by gumby »

occultist_throw wrote: post #18

Ive always taken an unpopular view about slavery. "We never quit doing slavery." It is true the Constitution was amended after the Civil war to include banning of slavery in most circumstances. However, slavery is explicitly still allowed as a "punishment for a crime". Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave". After all, it only takes only 6-12 angry white men to find you guilty. I would…

I was really surprised to see you start with this being an "unpopular view about slavery" but the voting has shown that I was naive. It's pretty uncontroversial to the majority of historians and sociologists that post-reconstruction institutions like sharecropping, Jim Crow, chain gangs, "farms" such as Angola and Parchman, and of course the widespread lynching, were all structural continuations in fact of the previous de jure social system.

I guess this topic is like climate change.

I have noticed a gross difference in how US history is taught today (to my son and my gf's sons) vs how it was when I attended a US high school. Much less depth, much more boosterism, no discussions of "how would you act if this old institution were still in place today".

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#57

Post by dEnigma »

occultist_throw wrote: post #36
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's being downvoted because it's pushing a false narrative that it's only black people that are being incarcerated, and they're being incarcerated explicitly for cheap labor. There are major issues with regards to race in America, but real life is more nuanced than "it's happening because racism."

Waitsec. So, because I didn't write a dissertation on this topic, nor did I write a longform article, it's invalid? Hardly. It's not hard to look up that google maps census dot map. And then go find prisons in Google Maps and find it on the census map. Might be pretty surprising what you see... then again, might not. Hint: https://demographics.virginia.edu/DotMap/ Turn overlays. Go to Indianapolis, then look to the W…

Insulting the community won't help against the downvotes. The healthy path is to just ignore the votes and freely discuss your opinions, whether they resonate with other people or not.

By that I don't mean "ignore other people", only their effect on your comment score/karma. You should listen to their arguments nonetheless.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#58

Post by RingwormOne »

goliatone wrote: post #48
RingwormOne wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Slavery has had significant long term effects on the black community. That can't be denied. Disproportionate poverty in the black community is directly tied to slavery. However I disagree that slavery - as the term is usually meant to mean - still exists in the form of incarceration. We as a society have decided that certain things are illegal. The black community, because of poverty (so because of slavery), dispropo…

I agree with the sentiment behind your comment, however I would also consider how the legal system seems to work. If you can’t afford a lawyer then the likelihood of “breaking the law” seems to be higher than otherwise. Also, slavery had plenty of detractors and apologists had arguments in favor of slavery. Some of those arguments were pretty rational sounding (pretty wrong to)

Sure, but that's why it's important to ensure competent public defenders are available to all people accused of a crime. I'd be very interested to hear suggestions on how we can improve the public defender system.

Your second point may be true, but that's the case for almost everything. Doesn't mean that everything is right or wrong. We need to judge things on a case by case basis.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#59

Post by Avshalom »

slamdance wrote: post #37
occultist_throw wrote: post #18

Ive always taken an unpopular view about slavery. "We never quit doing slavery." It is true the Constitution was amended after the Civil war to include banning of slavery in most circumstances. However, slavery is explicitly still allowed as a "punishment for a crime". Instead of "Black = Slave", it's "Black = criminal , criminal = slave". After all, it only takes only 6-12 angry white men to find you guilty. I would…

so we end the war on drugs and outlaw private prisons. Do you really believe this will satisfy BLM? Do you really believe this will solve the problems in the inner cities? Chicago? Baltimore? St. Louis? There are a LOT of fingers pointing for political reasons, yet some topics and ideas are deemed "off-limits".

I mean, it'd be a good start.

Re: Patterns of Death in the South Still Show the Outlines of Slavery

#60

Post by quuquuquu »

tomjen3 wrote: post #41
ajross wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The question is, how do we get rural economic development going again? That's like asking how to revive the blacksmith industry in the aftermath of the industrial revolution. These regions aren't declining because of inattention, they're declining because their native industries are shrinking. Surely there are regulatory treatments that can be applied here to relieve some of the suffering, but "return to the good o…

I might agree with you if gp had said how to get the coal industries going again - but is there really _nothing_ which can usefully be made in community with lots of space and (compared to the bay area) insanely cheap housing?

Plenty of things could be manufactured or coded in these areas. Cheap housing and materials in general mean you could make a really awesome hacker house or even factory for physical goods.

Of course the real problems are:

1) VCs don't invest here

2) A startup's success is usually based on its ability to sell itself (using networking contacts) to a larger corporation

3) who then REALLY don't want to have an office in Nowhere, Alabama

If they did want to do it, they would have done it already. Lord knows they have the money.

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