Libertarian Thread #2: We Shall Never Die!

Not form the standpoint of
police officers
lawyers
judges
bailiffs
court stenographers
prison guards
wardens
probation officers
parole officers
public defenders
magistrates and on and on

Epignosis wrote: timothy leary wrote: Does not surprise me, it is the American way, a lot of money to be made in locking people up. Locking people up costs a lot of money.

The prison building and maintaining industry is exerting a lot of influence these days.

By the way, I feel horrible for the guy in San Marino... He's extraordinarily unique in a very bad way 

Well we all agree on all of that. But why then do we criminalize all of that? 

Epignosis wrote: All of you woefully missed my point. Locking someone up costs taxpayers money.  It cost us money to house, clothe, and feed people who are not supporting themselves.  That someone else profits from this isn't what I'm arguing about.  But even if private industries are profiting from it, that isn't their fault.  They are merely on the receiving end of an inefficient government. The reason we mainly have so many people doing time is because we criminalize a lot of things that should not be criminalized, and we enact ridiculous penalties against non-violent criminals.

Didn't miss the point. Obviously we pay a lot to keep people in jail. The reason we're not cutting back is because the prison industry is a rolling stone that's building momentum now that we've nudged it over the slope.

^ Well said. Though few people realize that... 

^What a completely useless stat. Why are farmers a bookmark?

Epignosis wrote: timothy leary wrote: Does not surprise me, it is the American way, a lot of money to be made in locking people up. Locking people up costs a lot of money.

That makes it a profit opportunity if you privatize it.

timothy leary wrote: okay genius, its not a useless stat because now a lot of rural economies have replaced farming with watching people in cages, most everything is useless it seems unless it comes out of your mouth

Actually it is quite useless. People don't even know how many farmers we have in this country. If they're unaware of the benchmark used to measure the population, how is that stat useful?

That's like saying the number of people in the US prison population is only 1/46 of the number of miles between the Earth and the Sun!!!!!!!!!!!! Or we lock up 65 times more people in the US than there are albums listen on ProgArchives.com!!!!!!!!!!

They're true, but they're completely meaningless. The idea of a stat is to give some sort of inner understanding for the magnitude of the number. The stat you meantioned is useless really for two reasons:

1) People don't know how many farmers the US has.
2) People have no idea how to estimate how many farmers the country should have.


A better stat would be be, If the entire prison population taken as a whole would rank above Phoenix and Philadelphia as the fourth most populous city in the United States.

Or even better just say the raw number. That gives a pretty good idea.

It's called NIMBY.

Yeah, I've played Sim City.