• AllonzeeLV@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      Privatization works on many things

      It works at turning private profit for investors, almost never at improving or even maintaining a formerly government run service.

      And the governmental service almost always goes to shit because it’s defunded to cut wealthy investor’s taxes at their demand, leading to cries for privatization by them when it goes to shit as a result. Effective grift if you have the lobbyists and the bully pulpit.

      Market capitalism belongs in optional products/services, like fidget spinners and massages. It doesn’t belong in prisons, healthcare, utilities, roads, etc, because private industry is all about getting maximum return they can get away with at the product/services expense, and finding new ways of giving even less while pocketing more, even if that means buying courts and politicians with that profit to make it legal.

      Despite what they say about themselves, market capitalists have antisocial motivations in practice.

        • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          Are you trying to pretend you have really never heard this saying before? Or are you just salty and lashing out because I’m pointing out that America is still a country that is based on slave labor?

          • samus12345@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            No, I’m pointing out that it’s a stupid saying since there’s nothing particularly American about apple pie. Slavery certainly isn’t unique to America, either, but it is very relevant to its history.

            • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              I never said it’s unique to America and I wouldn’t just say it’s relevant to our history considering, as we’re discussing right now, there are currently more slaves in the United States of America than any point in its history.

              But yeah let’s argue the semantics of an old saying instead.

              • samus12345@lemmy.world
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                10 months ago

                Equating prison labor with the system of slavery that existed before it was abolished is very disingenuous. Both are shitty practices, but not the same thing.

                • EdibleFriend@lemmy.world
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                  10 months ago

                  People are literally rounded up off of the street and put in jail to work against their will. Quite often it turns out these people were innocent. They’re also abused physically and mentally and sometimes simply left to fucking die in their cell. And let’s not forget how often they’re raped! And the fact that they’re always being raped is literally comedy to most of the world.

                  You’re trying to downplay this, and also, for some reason, change the subject to semantics.

                  • samus12345@lemmy.world
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                    10 months ago

                    Were they brought to prison crammed into boats like livestock and bred like them as well? Forbidden having any rights due to the way they look even when not in prison? A lot of slavery’s legacy has resulted in people whose ancestors were slaves being fed to the prison system, yes, so they’re connected, but it’s extremely unhelpful to lump them together as being entirely the same thing. You can hate the prison system without completely equating it to the institutional slavery of the past.