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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

It may be unlikely, but it isn't impossible- "inspirational power" of a sort inspired the revolutions of 1848 and similiar, after all.

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Overcoming Bias Commenter's avatar

If your debt contract had an opt-in tickbox for debtor's prison, it would not only be moral, but actually a good idea. Perhaps debtor's prison really is ineffective. All that would happen is nobody would tick the box. This is the real reason slavery was abolished; slaves are non-competitive with free labour. Simply put, the south would have out-built the north, otherwise. Or Hitler would have tried it, and out-built the allies. Or perhaps we'd be communists. North Korea could easily reunify the peninsula. Etcetera.

The real reason for USG's current prisons is that prisoners are being exploited, but at one remove so that the debtor's prison rhetoric won't be repeated. Prisons are privately owned, and the companies essentially get grant money for each prisoner. Regulation keeps competition down, so per-prisoner prices are high while at the same time prisoners live in often squalid conditions. Because if there wasn't regulation, why, those evil private companies would exploit the prisoners even more, right? And trick the government-grant-lending agents, of course, with all their insider's knowledge.

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