California bans private prisons • Hacker News Board

Re: California bans private prisons

#221

Post by jtolmar » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

scarejunba wrote: post #193

imsofuture wrote: post #187

[flagged]

Nonsense. There are things where the pricing mechanism of allowing free enterprise allow us to search for and converge to an optimum. There are other things where information asymmetry, problem opacity, and transaction costs mean that it's better handled a different way. It isn't an ideological problem. You'll see this choice in places like companies, where people band together to solve a problem rather than invoicin…

That's markets, not capitalism. Capitalism is specifically the arrangement where the means of production can be bought and sold (on the market). It's only been around since the industrial revolution - prior to that the means of production were too simple to do this sort of thing with, and there was just land and labor. Markets have been around a lot longer.

Non-capitalist but still market-based systems are possible. You can have worker ownership (worker co-ops like Bob's Red Mill), consumer ownership (consumer co-ops like REI), state ownership (national healthcare or municipal utility companies), or some mix of them. These organizations can and often do still compete with each other on the market.

Re: California bans private prisons

#222

Post by lanevorockz » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:31 PM UTC

It is very silly to be happy about something you not yet know the results, it's interesting and can be a case study. As long as the government doesn't fiddle with the numbers to manipulate voters.

Re: California bans private prisons

#223

Post by arcticbull » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:34 PM UTC

ekianjo wrote: post #219

arcticbull wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is great for some things, and awful for others. Capitalism works best when there's no power differential between customers and service providers because the goal is to maximize profit. If my choice is to pay for cancer treatment or die, you can (and do) charge me literally whatever you want in a capitalist system. If I get no choice in which prison I go to, well, I get bilked. Basically anywhere you have n…

> If my choice is to pay for cancer treatment or die, you can (and do) charge me literally whatever you want in a capitalist system. Erm, no. Because if people can't pay for it, then your drug get no sales, and you lose your investment. The problem right now is that there are several payers involved and nobody sees the real cost of things. Were you to pay directly for drugs from your own pocket without intermediaries…

Tell that to your $600 epipen. Seriously. Canada doesn't even have socialized drug insurance for prescriptions and it costs $100 and in the UK $38. Drugs would be, in a perfect system with no socialist intervention, priced at whatever value they provide you. If that's your life, it's very expensive. There's no room for mercy in capitalism.

There's a reason Sovaldi is $84,000 and it's not because it costs a lot to make. It's the same reason as soon as they realized that you could treat cancer with Thalidomide the price rose two orders of magnitude.

Re: California bans private prisons

#224

Post by TearsInTheRain » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #27

I'm so happy about this. Private prisons are the scum of the earth. They're totally antithetical to a free society that values human life. They often lobby for minimum occupancy levels in law (effectively requiring by law a certain percentage of citizens to be marked as criminals). Any profit they skim off the top is money that should be spent rehabilitating criminals and making them functional members of society. Ne…

It feels like there are just 0 incentives for a private prison to actually rehabilitate anyone. Perhaps private prisons could work if they were compensated based on recidivism rate or something

Re: California bans private prisons

#225

Post by scj » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

chroma wrote: post #109

I think private prisons could work if: - Convicts could choose whether to be sent to a public or private prison. - Private prisons had financial incentives for post-incarceration behavior. Eg: If their prisoner recidivism rate after 3 years was 10% lower than the average public prison, they would get a 20% bonus. Those changes would create enough competition and align incentives such that we could see some real innov…

With private prisons, lobbying is likely cheaper and more reliable than innovation.

I assume you didn't intend this in a sinister way, but exercise caution when speaking of experimenting with prisoners. Even with good intentions, remember that these people have limited choices, and will probably lack the ability to withdraw consent (assuming it was given in the first place).

Re: California bans private prisons

#226

Post by 29_29 » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:35 PM UTC

55orolder wrote: post #185

I find it fascinating that private prisons draw such ire while the prison guard union draws so little, when the prison guard union has all the exact same incentives and is drastically more powerful. California would have had legal marijuana a decade sooner except for lobbing by the union, they're a major force for mandatory minimum sentences and tougher sentencing in general. This seems like a trivial easy-PR win for…

All good points. We can now feel good about ourselves as orthodox liberals, and not think about the price we are paying for exactly the same problem.

Re: California bans private prisons

#227

Post by cleong » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:36 PM UTC

mindcrime wrote: post #184

cleong wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does Libertarian idea of a penal system not rely on the idea of discipline? I'm curious as the western world has moved on from the previous system where a crime was considered a personal offence to the sovereign. In which case, criminals were displayed in public and tortured. To a system where criminals are to be reformed and disciplined into a normalized individual. An eye for an eye seems to be a regression back to…

At best, describing the (common) Libertarian approach to justice as "an eye for an eye" is over simplified to the point of absurdity. For example, the vast majority of Libertarians are opposed to State sanctioned executions for crimes, even in the case of murder or a crime where financial restitution isn't obviously applicable. Of course there are debates in Libertarian circles about exactly what the nature of restit…

Are they against capital punishment? That's different from rejecting disciplinary and penal institutions as a whole. Is there a reason why restitution is considered the only mechanism for punishment? How do Libertarians disagree with the idea that a penal institution can be a source of social reform as well as political stability?

Re: California bans private prisons

#228

Post by celticmusic » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

I've never understood how we, as a society, accept private prisons.

I've also understood why police hiding behind bridges was considered acceptable.

Or how the hell a debate about waterboarding could ever happen when it's clearly immoral.

At some point in my life I just decided we suck shit as a society and move on.

Re: California bans private prisons

#229

Post by luckydata » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #207

etaty wrote: post #179

Just for fun, same sentence on health care. > I'm so happy about this. Private health care insure are the scum of the earth. They're totally antithetical to a free society that values human life. They often lobby for minimum health care coverage in law (effectively requiring by law a certain percentage of citizens to be marked as clients). Any profit they skim off the top is money that should be spent on research and…

Yes, I'm also in favor of socialized medicine for basically exactly these reasons. Shocker, I know. The system works! I grew up in socialized medicine, and you get sick, you go to the hospital, they treat you and you leave. There's no step 4. Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems is beyond me. It's all in y'alls control.

Because they've been sold lies for years and most of them can't really believe everything they know about such an important aspect of their life is bull.

Re: California bans private prisons

#230

Post by ekianjo » Thu, Sep 12, 2019, 9:37 PM UTC

arcticbull wrote: post #223

ekianjo wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If my choice is to pay for cancer treatment or die, you can (and do) charge me literally whatever you want in a capitalist system. Erm, no. Because if people can't pay for it, then your drug get no sales, and you lose your investment. The problem right now is that there are several payers involved and nobody sees the real cost of things. Were you to pay directly for drugs from your own pocket without intermediaries…

Tell that to your $600 epipen. Seriously. Canada doesn't even have socialized drug insurance for prescriptions and it costs $100 and in the UK $38. Drugs would be, in a perfect system with no socialist intervention, priced at whatever value they provide you. If that's your life, it's very expensive. There's no room for mercy in capitalism. There's a reason Sovaldi is $84,000 and it's not because it costs a lot to mak…

> Canada doesn't even have socialized drug insurance for prescriptions and it costs $100 and in the UK $38

It's kind of easy for a country to dictate drug prices when they had no hand in developing them. Now show me a country like the US that develops just as many drugs. Ah, you can't, there is none.