Yet another thing about the Constitution that needs changing. The state shouldn’t benefit from a prisoner class, otherwise it would be inclined to perpetuate incarceration.
Yet another thing about the Constitution that needs changing. The state shouldn’t benefit from a prisoner class, otherwise it would be inclined to perpetuate incarceration.
BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today 1 week ago
Yeah the 13th Amendment is easily the biggest problem in the Constitution. Everybody has pretty much ignored it, because it hasn’t become much of an issue outside the prison world, but it is becoming apparent that MAGA intends to exploit the shit out of that monstrous loophole.
“Perpetuate incarceration?” These psychopaths are going to monetize incarceration, and literally revive the American Slave Economy.
Their dream is an entire national workforce that is 90% AI, robotics, or Federally-supplied slave labor (managed by a private, Trump-owned corporation). Imagine how much more profitable corporations could be under such a system? Imagine how much wealthier they could get if labor was nearly free (although they’ll still complain about costs, and demand government bail-outs, tax breaks, etc)? There is no possibility that the craven psychopaths can resist the lure of such riches. They have been moving toward this objective for decades, and now it within reach.
Of course, there will be a devastating Depression as millions PERMANENTLY lose their jobs (it won’t bother the wealthy, they fly above all that), and with unemployment and homelessness deemed illegal, they will go straight to the work camps. Need government assistance to feed your family, now that you are permanently unemployed? All assistance recipients have to work off their debt to the government by residing in the work camps, where you will be leased out to a corporation to do whatever they tell you to do. You are a slave.
Once this slave-based economy is established, it will be impossible to turn it back, without crashing the economy AGAIN, launching another devastating Depression like the one that hit the South following the end of slavery.
And as an epilogue: What do you think will happen to the most recalcitrant of resistors, who refuse to cooperate with a slavery-backed economy and government? If you can’t work, or won’t work, you are an enemy of the state, and you will be eliminated, along with anyone close to you that you may have influenced. After a while, resistance evaporates.
And that how we become North Korea.