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Comment by shiftpgdn | Hacker News Reader

This isn’t new, but it’s good to continue to report on it. I remember even back in 2005 it was generally well known that the gold farmers in World of Warcraft were likely Chinese prison labor. There were even a few articles about it: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/chinese-pr...

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There's a big difference between prisoners (who at least in theory are locked up as punishment for committing a crime) and people who've been trafficked into slavery. Even the US uses prison labour, but it's people who committed crimes. What's happening in SEA is kidnappping innocent people, locking them in guarded compounds and forcing them to scam people, and they get raped or beaten if they refuse.

That's true in principle but the laws and legal system are set up in such a way that a very large percentage of particular demographics will end up in this situation and from an outsiders perspective it doesn't look all that different.

Even if you see it as China enslaving its own citizens under false pretences of criminality, that's still quite different from private entities in one country luring people from another country under the false pretences of high-paying jobs and then enslaving them.

Yes, there are differences. But there are also some pretty worrisome similarities. And the numbers in the US are far higher than those mentioned in TFA, especially when taken over the decades that this has been happening.

The difference is that the US is a democracy and people voted for the politicians who created those laws (and the attorney generals who enforce them), so by democratic logic the people convicted by the system "deserve" to be imprisoned to some degree.

Tyranny of the majority is a thing.

Sometimes it's not even the majority. Politicians are elected for their main policies that usually involve a couple things, but there are thousands of laws and it doesn't follow that every one of them has majority support.

It's also a matter of inertia to "overthrow" the government in power. In democracies there's a peaceful way to do this, and in autocracies there isn't. The fact that autocratic governments aren't yet toppled does mean something, though obviously not much. But then, the fact that the government is democratically elected doesn't necessarily mean much either. (You sure Americans like Trump?)

>Tyranny of the majority is a thing.

While that may be true, surely philosophically speaking there's a significant, qualitative difference between saying "this is moral because people voted for it" and saying "this is moral because the stupid victims deserved it". Many people would accept the former, accept that prison labour is morally justified, but very few people would accept that it's morally okay for private criminal gangs to kidnap and enslave people.

Philosophically speaking, from the perspective of a victim it's all the same. They don't have the luxury of being able to philosophize about it, they are too busy dealing with the reality of it.

Fortunately politicians are never influenced by money or ideology and 100% represent the choices of the voters.

You can simply not deal drugs. It's not that difficult.

I'm glad you've never been framed for a crime you didn't commit.

"Even" the US isn't much of a moral barometer for prisoner treatment. The US uses prison labor because the US is one of the worst countries for prisoner (mis)treatment, certainly the worst in the west.

> There's a big difference between prisoners (who at least in theory are locked up as punishment for committing a crime) and people who've been trafficked into slavery[...] What's happening in SEA is kidnappping innocent people

Lots of people in prison are innocent, especially in the US. Prisoners are no less deserving of rights and fair treatment than victims of trafficking. Likewise, I'm sure many trafficking victims are guilty of committing crimes (as are most people).

>Prisoners are no less deserving of rights and fair treatment than victims of trafficking

Everywhere in the world it's accepted that prisoners lose the rights to freedom of movement and association; that's what being a prisoner means. In that sense trafficking victims are absolutely more deserving of those rights than convicted criminals.

Might is right, huh?

What would you consider an acceptable alternative? If criminals were not stripped of freedom of movement, then what would deter potential future criminals from committing crime? Prison is meant to act as a deterrent so that people with no moral compass have some incentive not to commit crimes.

According to the data, prison is not a deterrent:

https://www.vera.org/news/research-shows-that-long-prison-se...

Instead of focusing on the penal system, which is fairly hopeless, we should focus on preventing people from entering the penal system in the first place by focusing on systematic improvements that reduce criminal behavior as an appealing option. Look up "rational choice theory" with regards to criminal behavior: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rational_choice_theory_(crimin...

But that all said, the fact that the penal system is not mutated based on sensible performance metrics such as recidivism rate etc. is a human failing. The thing is, the system has already failed them at that point and they made their decision to not cooperate with society, so of course the people who have chosen to cooperate with society (the same people who have not sufficiently contributed to the systematic improvements that would have prevented that behavior to begin with) will fail to care about them.

My participation in this is to mentor young men (some are "at-risk", which basically means that their demographics are more likely to lead to criminal behavior), which I've done a few times and which is rewarding, because young men really need it right now. If I didn't have a 2 year old son who is keeping my hands quite full, I think I'd do it again.

The main purpose of prison is not rehabilitation, or deterrence, but to put dangerous individuals away so they cannot terrorize others. This is why we put rapists in cells (or, at least we try to) - every year in a jail cell is a year they aren't raping women.

that is not the main purpose at all

the main purpose is punishment, see: nonviolent drug offenders in prison

one might argue a higher level purpose is to keep "the right people" in prison, where they lose their freedom, sometimes including the freedom to run against, campaign against, and even vote out the politicians keeping them there

I might suggest that the purpose as stated, the purpose as expected and the purpose as actually practiced might all be different

> In that sense trafficking victims are absolutely more deserving of those rights than convicted criminals.

Except the innocent but incorrecty convicted (non)criminals.

On the other hand, some of the victims might not be convicted but guilty of something. But even those should better be taken care of by the regular system.

If there is profit in holding people prisoner, then there is an incentive to falsely imprison people. Or give them overly long sentences.

Agreed. There should only be a cost associated with punitive action. The incentive should be to get them out of the system (or, don't laugh- maybe rehabilitate them?), not to keep them in it.

But the people who profit are not the people who are able to falsely imprison people.

Incorrect, they get kickbacks: https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-ma...

I think this is sort of the exception that proves the rule. The people profiting form prisons have direct incentives to increase prison populations , but the people who can actually falsely imprison people have, at best, illegal side channel incentives.

There are non-illegal side channels, like "tough on crime" judges getting political donations from deep-pocketed interested parties.

Except when judges get kickbacks from prisons for sending them prisoners.

https://www.npr.org/2022/08/18/1118108084/michael-conahan-ma...

This is not as simple as your argument makes it out to be. The US has a long history of imprisoning people so they can be used as slaves. Netflix has a good documentary on it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krfcq5pF8u8

> In that sense trafficking victims are absolutely more deserving of those rights than convicted criminals.

No. you assume conviction = guilt, and that whatever treatment that comes thereafter is just.

For instance, it appears you would endorse treating people like these trafficking victims if they were first convicted by some court you consider valid, since "that's what being a prisoner means".

I question the utility of imprisonment to achieve any legitimate social goal. It may not be an effective deterrent of the most heinous crimes. It doesn’t seem to work as rehabilitation. It only works as physical prevention of recidivism in people that lack self-awareness and self-control to prevent it, but unfortunately those are exonerating conditions in our system. It seems to me that prison should be understood and used in the opposite way: not punishment, but a compassionate alternative to remove people from society. Punishment and deterrence are something different from a behaviorist perspective, and there are other things that work better, faster, and cheaper. Physical pain is punishment: pepper spray, bullet ants, microwave cannons, carbon dioxide. Deterrence is mainly the quality of alternatives available, for which there should be a floor established, like an agricultural labor camp at sub-minimum wage.

The problem comes into play when there’s a financial incentive to imprison people.

I know a few degenerates who would happily go to prison if prison labor was mining gold in WoW.

Of course, in the US you can still enslave prisoners

""" Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. """

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirteenth_Amendment_to_the_Un...

Citation needed? I'm unfamiliar with what metric or data you could be referring to in order to conclude that the US is the worst country in the West for prisoner mistreatment.

Any metric. Pick a country with a well regarded prison system (e.g: Norway) and then compare the U.S. system on every metric to see the disparity. Injury, sickness, malnourishment, violence, education, recidivism, drugs, forced labor, mental health. No country that is typically considered as part of “the west” comes close to any of these metrics when compared to the United States.

A question for you: which country in “the west” can you think of that has worse prisoner treatment than the US?

Apples and oranges. Norway is a tiny country with a very homogenous population. The US is huge and very diverse socioeconomically, racially, and culturally.

Which western country do you have in mind where it might be worse to be a prisoner than the US?

The big difference between the US and other western countries' philosophy about prison is that most (all?) EU countries see the main goal as rehabilitation whereas the US sees the primary goal as punishment.

Prison labor is not intrinsically bad, but they should not be exempt from minimum wage laws. Ideally there should be some mechanism for forcing prisons to pay the prisoners a fair market wage; even if the prisoner doesn't deserve it, the rest of the labor market deserves to not compete with underpaid prison labor. And we need another constitutional amendment, removing the exemption for convicted criminals in the 13th.

If those issues were cleared up, then giving prisoners the opportunity to learn how to earn money legitimately would be good for rehabilitation. So prison labor is not intrinsically mistreatment.

I don't think "Even the US" is a valid way to justify slavery. I mean, even the US had slavery at one point right?

"Slavery is still constitutionally legal in the United States."[0]

[0] https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/editorial/bs-ed-1209-13...

The difference is really not that large, if it exists at all which I don't find to be the case. What severity of crime justifies enslavement? You can have your sentence extended for refusing to labor, regardless of what you're originally in there for. Is that just? Is there "a big difference" between that and trafficked labor?

The USA still uses slave labour, sorry to inform you. Bust somebody for pot possession, and to protect society, gotta force them to work for basically free? Give me a break. Your country is still a slave leasing one, if not a slave owning one

The ancient Greeks often used crime or war as an excuse to capture slaves. At least they had the honesty to call them slaves afterwards

> There's a big difference between prisoners (who at least in theory are locked up as punishment for committing a crime) and people who've been trafficked into slavery.

Considering what can probably get you in jail in a country like China, I’m not so sure about that.

its also a really big misalignment of incentives when prisons can use prisoners as a profit center though their labor. they take away jobs from free people who would have been able to do those jobs and get a (more)fair wage for it

Labor historically in a lot of places, was built on peasant-serfs, indentured servitude with a duration, or in many cases slaves. I believe that many educated people in the West are not aware of the extent to which this is true throughout history.

I agree that this is true, however I also think that when we imagine slavery in the West we think of chattel slavery and the reality is that what we call slavery in these peasant-serf contexts was not the same thing, did not have the same mortality rates, etc.

Sorry, but that is insufficient evidence to me for something to be "generally well known." It is well known that there are flawed incentives to testify in Western contexts to things that did not happen in East Asia, this is known among South Korean defectors (not denying that NK is objectively terrible, one of the worst countries in the world - but defectors to SK have been known to say outright false things because this is how they get paid and get media attention and many of these publications will pay for stories).

Something that is "generally well known" by contrast is that China almost certainly harvested organs from prisoners in the 90s and early 2000s.

My friend in Eastern Europe ran a bot farm in WoW. He ran bots on his computers that farmed resources, then sold resources for gold and then sold the gold to Chinese for end-user resale. The only labor involved was hiring some college students and paying them for each top-level character they progress that can be used for farming. He even bought my character for $50 when I stopped playing.

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