It's frustrating that most reform and change is happening at the state level. It just means a completely fractured political environment where some states are progressive around data and prisons, whereas others are regressive. As a company, how do you even enforce things like privacy standards at a state level instead of national? Seems like a terribly complicated and inefficient system.
California bans private prisons
261–270 of 646 posts
Re: California bans private prisons
#262Earlier quoted context omitted.
> ICE detainees > release all the prisoners ICE detainees aren't prisoners. ICE are facists holding people in concentrations camps. They should absolutely be released.
Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. We've had to ask you this before. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If I'm allowed to ask "What should we do about the Jewish Question" in a manner that appears civil, it's still not a civil discussion, regardless of the tone. If someone responds "don't you dare ask the Jewish Question," they aren't at fault for the lack of civility; the premise of the question was deeply uncivil.
Contextually, if someone on HN is asking "what should we do about the prisoners?" about people detained by ICE, the premise of the comment is uncivil. They are not prisoners, they have committed no crime (even by the standards of US law), and they are being held in deeply inhumane conditions. By any reasonable moral standard, the question is not "what should we do about the prisoners", but "how should we free people who are inhumanely detained." Allowing such an uncivil premise while banning emotional responses only reinforces the view that these people have committed some crime, and that they somehow 'deserve' the abhorrent treatment.
Furthermore, "concentration camp" has never meant "death camp", as many people seem to assume. I don't understand how it is incendiary to state they are concentration camps, when they largely meet the standards of a concentration camp.
I don't expect my posts to help these people, but I also refuse to remain silent about their inhumane treatment. If you still think this is inappropriate, I accept my ban, but I ask that you consider banning posts with such uncivil premises as well, even if they are written in an inoffensive tone.
Re: California bans private prisons
#263I 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).
Isn't my proposal giving prisoners more choice? Right now they have no choice which prison they are sent to. Are you worried that some private prisons might engage in sleazy marketing, convince convicts to choose them, and then treat them like crap? That can easily be fixed by letting prisoners switch after a certain period of time. Heck, the law could be that anyone in a private prison can at any time choose to serve the rest of their sentence in a state prison. That would ensure a baseline of care.
Also, I think the point about lobbying proves too much. If lobbying is so much cheaper and more reliable than innovation, why don't all companies lobby instead of innovating? Apple has billions of dollars sitting around. Why don't they lobby to make the iPhone the sole phone used by federal employees? Heck, why don't they lobby to get rid of the new import tariffs affecting their products? I don't think companies leave $20 bills on the sidewalk, so lobbying must not be as effective as people like to believe.
I agree that lobbying is bad, but my objection to it is that the government is allowed to pass laws that coerce people in such ways, not that some companies take advantage of that power. Basically: hate the game, not the player.
Re: California bans private prisons
#264Just 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…
They key difference is that health care clients want their services.
But while the exact rationale doesn't hold, there are inherent problems on competition and freedom of choice on health care that kinda break capitalism. There is also the rationale that one does want minimum health care coverage in a society, and a market is not able to provide that.
Re: California bans private prisons
#265Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 $38 It's kind of easy for a country to dictate drug prices when they had no hand in developing them. Now show me a country like the US that develops just as many drugs. Ah, you can't, there is none.
The epipen has been around since the 70s. Your telling me it cost so much to develop that they still need to charge 600$ each? that's ridiculous.
There's a reason it costs less in canada and the UK and it has nothing to do with R&D costs.
Re: California bans private prisons
#266Just 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.
> Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems
They've been told socialized medicine is evil communist plot to steal their hard earned money. Many Americans have not been outside of the states and have no concept of what life in other countries might be like. There's a good percentage of Americans that are completely ignorant of how the rest of the world does things, and also dismiss this as inferior. They've been told their entire life that the US is the greatest country, so, why would we do it any other way?
Re: California bans private prisons
#267[flagged]
Dogmas are a disease. We have different economic & market tools. We should use the right tool for the problem. Some markets are best served with a free market system, others with a single payer system, others with a monopoly. There are studies (no reference) which indicate that every euro spent by government on education has a 10 times return on investment: better educated people, have better jobs, pay more taxes, cr…
> Dogmas are a disease… We should use the right tool for the problem.
It's bizarre to me how rare this stance is.
I understand disagreement over what exactly the "right tool" is, because these things are complex. But people who believe there is only one right tool for every job -- big government, small government, free markets, more regulation, whatever -- strike me as intellectually lazy.
Re: California bans private prisons
#268Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yep, that’s another distinction I wish would enter public perception. Much like how socialism vs communism distinction was made to try to separate some of their better ideas from a long legacy of negative baggage. I think libertarians would benefit from creating a clearer spectrum within their own community between the more practical (and popular) small government/minarchist side and the more extreme anarcho-capitali…
I'm not attempting to prescribe a definition or usage of any terms. I'm simply describing a very common way in this these terms are already being used, and pointing out that your usage should probably be further clarified. If you wish to use "libertarian" to refer to something very specific, like perhaps the Libertarian Party in the USA, you're free to do so. I just think you should make that clarification, because p…
I don’t think I was disagreeing with you...
Re: California bans private prisons
#269Earlier quoted context omitted.
The public sector isn't any better. The Price of Prison Guard Unions https://capitalresearch.org/article/the-price-of-prison-guar... PORAC's contribution to California's prison crisis http://www.cjcj.org/news/5423
Classic to see the correct take get downvoted. If anyone's interested in actually learning about the causes of mass incarceration, I'd strongly recommend John Pfaff's _Locked In_: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01L6SLKK8/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... In short: a) It's not the war on drugs. b) It's not private prisons. c) It's not sentencing laws. You could get rid of all of those and America would still lead the "free" worl…
For the lazy:
Pfaff is convinced that aggressive prosecution is the biggest cause of over-incarceration. His argument here is compelling. He notes that while incarceration rates began to climb in the 1980s as a response to rising crime, those trend lines continued through the Nineties, even though crime was steadily falling. Why did that happen? Examining all the relevant variables (crime reports, arrests, charges filed, and convictions), Pfaff found himself looking squarely at the prosecutor’s office. As less crime was reported, arrests dropped proportionately, and among those who were charged with a crime, conviction rates held steady. But prisons continued to fill, because prosecutors were filing felony charges against ever-growing percentages of their dwindling arrestees.
From https://www.nationalreview.com/magazine/2017/02/20/john-pfaf...
Re: California bans private prisons
#270Earlier 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 One provider might charge a fortune. But then another will come along and realize he can get all this business by charging slightly less than a fortune. Then another comes along and charges slightly less. And so on until they are charging just enough to make a slight profit. That’s how a…
No, that's how a free market is supposed to work but no one's ever seen a free market in the wild.