Spice, in case anyone isn't familiar: https://www.drugabuse.gov/publications/drugfacts/synthetic-c...
In Britain, even jails have a class system
111–120 of 183 posts
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're just thinking about one edge case. Any child is born into a hierarchy if they have a guardian of any sort. If you want to learn from a teacher you have to enter into a student teacher hierarchy. Any engagement with other human beings results in a formation of some kind of hierarchy. We all have different minds, bodies and skills that lead to different natural hierarchies.
I deeply disagree that "much of human government through most of human history" is an edge case. I do agree that families are somewhat naturally hierarchical, and that can be good. However, there are plenty of examples of that being taken too far. I disagree that teaching and learning can only be accomplished through hierarchy, although that's certainly the common mode in industrial education. So it's as I said: we h…
I think I misread the comment I was responding too.
I was more trying to say hierarchies are not always wrong, but I realize now that's not exactly what he was claiming. You're right they're often abused and should always be challenged. Nothing about nature is good or evil it just is.
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am having trouble taking this as a sincere question. You've honestly never seen or heard of hierarchical power being misused? I mean, just to pick one enormous historical trend, there's a reason the world has mostly gotten rid of monarchies, and it's not because we thought crowns and scepters were maybe a bit tacky.
> I mean, just to pick one enormous historical trend, there's a reason the world has mostly gotten rid of monarchies, and it's not because we thought crowns and scepters were maybe a bit tacky. How did that work out for them? * The abolition of the English monarchy led to the brutal military dictatorship of Cromwell, which ended only with the reestablishment of the monarchy. * The abolition of the French monarchy led…
Thank goodness I'm not talking about abolishing hierarchies, then.
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#114>> A December 2017 parliamentary report said up to 90 percent of prisoners have mental-health problems, and 12 percent turn to self-harm or attempt suicide multiple times. How could it be otherwise? Even ignoring the likely correlation between psychological problems and incarceration... Prison is a terrible environment by its nature and by design. Would we be surprised if concentration camp or gulag inhabitants had m…
> Prison is a terrible environment by its nature and by design.
Usually, yes. But not necessarily.
A prison could be more like a residential college or a boarding school.
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#115Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Rhetoric of Reaction Albert O. Hirschman [1] Hirschman describes the reactionary narratives thus: - According to the perversity thesis, any purposive action to improve some feature of the political, social, or economic order only serves to exacerbate the condition one wishes to remedy. - The futility thesis holds that attempts at social transformation will be unavailing, that they will simply fail to "make a dent…
Which is not what I'm doing at all. If we're going to talk about the abolition of monarchies, how is it that some of the freest and most prosperous countries in the world today are constitutional monarchies? Norway, Australia, Sweden, Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Japan, Luxembourg, and Spain all rank within the top 25 of countries by HDI as well as the top 25 of countries by…
When I said "mostly gotten rid of monarchies", I include constitutional monarchies in that. The monarchs in at least most of those countries have approximately zero power compared with their historical antecedents.
If anything, they're a fine example of the kind of dealing realistically with our heritage I'm talking about. Actual monarchies have a track record I would generously call mixed, and perhaps more properly call horrific. But being half-evolved primates, humans seem to like having an officially recognized big monkey to rally around. So we keep the Queen of England around as something akin to a hood ornament on the car of that nation. It works, even if it's not particularly rational. But then, neither are we.
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#116I can strongly recommend "A Bit of a Stretch" - I read it after reading "The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It's Broken" which is pretty terrifying.
An honest look at criminal justice is actually terrifying, even moreso because we don't even have a lead on alternatives.
Decriminalization of non violent drug use and a prison system focused on rehabilitation would be a start.
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not necessarily. Smuggling contraband into prison has got to be as old as the existence of prison itself, and there are numerous examples of contraband being snuck in and traded without the knowledge of the staff. It’s errant to assume that all cases of contraband existing in prison is due to corrupt staff. In fact, this issue is becoming more and more of a challenge today as drone technology advances and decreases i…
Smuggling is impossible unless staff turn a blind eye, or procedures are sufficiently lax. Preventing visitors from passing things to inmates is not rocket science, if you allow visitors at all. As for drones, let me try to fly a drone over GCHQ or the Pentagon and let's see what happens... But over a prison and then actually drop something? "Oh well, what can we do? Can't even find what they drop..." The point in al…
You should consider doing more research on a topic before trying to present your opinion/viewpoint as fact. You are stating patently false things, which invalidates your credibility.
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Smuggling is impossible unless staff turn a blind eye, or procedures are sufficiently lax. Preventing visitors from passing things to inmates is not rocket science, if you allow visitors at all. As for drones, let me try to fly a drone over GCHQ or the Pentagon and let's see what happens... But over a prison and then actually drop something? "Oh well, what can we do? Can't even find what they drop..." The point in al…
You should consider doing more research on a topic before trying to present your opinion/viewpoint as fact. You are stating patently false things, which invalidates your credibility.
Inconvenient things perhaps, but not false things... Unfortunately.
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#119>> A December 2017 parliamentary report said up to 90 percent of prisoners have mental-health problems, and 12 percent turn to self-harm or attempt suicide multiple times. How could it be otherwise? Even ignoring the likely correlation between psychological problems and incarceration... Prison is a terrible environment by its nature and by design. Would we be surprised if concentration camp or gulag inhabitants had m…
> Prison is a terrible environment by its nature and by design. Usually, yes. But not necessarily. A prison could be more like a residential college or a boarding school. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halden_Prison
New Zealand appears to be doing a reasonable job of youth detention, where the facilities are more like high schools than prisons.
Wandering through New Zealand's Korowai Manaaki youth detention centre, you can't help but notice the basketball court, veggie patch and classrooms — it feels more like a high school than a prison.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-27/nz-youth-detention-ce...
Re: In Britain, even jails have a class system
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everything can be misused, that doesn't make everything bad per se. Saying that hierarchies must be mitigated (because they are bad, I assume) is unreal.
Good thing I didn't say that, then. What I said was that we must look at what's natural and decide which bits require amplification and which require mitigation. And of course saying that hierarchies should be mitigated is far from unreal. It was the central message of the people who started America. They put a great deal of effort into checks and balances on power both at the federal level (between the 3 branches) a…
I'm not from the US, so excuse my ignorance.
I was under the impression that US federal law trumps state law. Is this not the case? And wouldn't that imply a hierarchical relationship?