Un-best use of Capitalism.

(insert picture of mobius strip here)

As you know, that expression is now illegal, please come with us.

xpost i know ally but many people can a) vote against "three strike" rules or unfair mandatory minimums and b) pay more in taxes.

xpost i think private prisons have been around for a while now, are features of republican and democratic administrations.

x-post!

fine fine tom but you know what i mean.

B) is a perfectly valid point though not one that anyone is ever actually down with in practice (and quite honestly I'd rather see privately-owned prisons than see my tax money going to rapists, I'd gladly pay more for a more Euro-ized health care system or educational system, or a better welfare system). The A) I am questioning though?? I don't think those laws have generally been put up for public referendum or am I incorrect? Unless you meant they could vote out politicians that support such insane bullshit.

Plenty of people have voted to decriminalize a lot of these things that people are being thrown in jail for. They haven't been decriminalized. That's the basic problem going on here, as far as I'm concerned; get rid of drug laws and regulate the shit and A) higher national tax revenues a la cigs and booze B) like half the prison population gone poof shazam.

laissez-faire then. I'm not against privatization and I think the entrenched interest of prison guards might very well bethe same whether they were a civil service or trade union. I just think that often the right and the left get stuck ideologically on certain ideas and simply won't look at the facts.

Even state run penitentiaries are known to be the rock of a small town's economic platform. No one has started pointing fingers at these public institutions for encouraging crime though.

xpost
ally i tend to agree but there is something that you are forgetting, something that many, including myself, tend to forget when discussing goverment vs privatization. your tax dollars pay for the government contracts given to the private corporations anyways. its similar to a certain person working for Lockheed but Lockheed exists on govt contracts so even though Lockheed is paying this person, Lockheed gets the money from the Govt, who gets it from yr taxes.

We shouldn't care if it's a for profit or government agency provided that the expenditure to results ratio is best. But why would for-profits be more efficient if they have no competition?

My point still stands on which institutions I'd rather be giving money to.

But weren't they cheaper in peacetime than the previous system?

given all the teachers in poor areas ive ever met, and what they have had to say, the criminal justice system has a lot more to do with a child's capcity to learn than the educational system itself.

this is an xpost with amtrst's post a few posts above.

Oh how I pine for the halcion days of yore when one could walk the isles of a 747 and feel the shag rug between your toes.

Like the CIA, the Army, etc...? Or to be more fair, the Depts. of Defense, State, etc..., the Supreme Court et alia who are not privatized but largely suck anyway under this administration?

I mean, I wish at least this, just in keeping with the supposed spirit of free markets: I wish the federal government would in no case rely on private enterprises to provide citizens with services they're required, by the government itself, to consume. That would cover schools, prisons, and Social Security privatization bullshit, at the very least. And, hopefully, police, which is like the dystopian science fiction endpoint of it all.

I was just trying to point out that these institutions can be dysfunctional whether run as govt. agencies or as privatized govt. service providers. Is an ossified union dominated agency better, worse, or equivalent to a (relatively) unregulated, privatized company. That, largely seems like what the Democrats and the Republicans are offering us ideologically because that's who owns them.

As a taxpaying citizen I am under no obligation to think either approach particularly patriotic. I should start my own Democratic-Republican Party 'cause I think the Republicans simply whores for corporate money even at the expense of the Republic and 'cause I think the Democrats are similarly willing to ignore the ideal of the Republic as being above or beyond the special interests of one of their strongest constituents for their short-term electoral goals.

But I think the Republicans can claim, in a quite appealing fashion, that "our country" != "our federal government." One thing is puppy dogs and white picket fences and eagles flying on the mountainside etc, the other is a grey corrupt bureaucracy populated by blood-sucking fatasses manning endless filing cabinets. This kind of disassociation of homeland from govt. is useful to....whoever, not just because it allows for the dismantling of social services, but also because it allows Americans to point to whatever govt. scandal there is and shrug it off with a "Well, it's horrible, I guess, but it's got nothing to do with me, I'm afraid."