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Comment by iglio | Hacker News Reader

Just 23¢ to $1.15 is the typical hourly pay [1], work is not always voluntary, and not up to the same employee protection/safety standards as true employment [2].

Labour (and profit) sourced from the incarcerated creates problematic incentives, so needs proper oversight and regulation.

[1] https://www.bop.gov/inmates/custody_and_care/unicor_about.js...

[2] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/2022...

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Thirteenth Amendment Section 1. "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."

"except as a punishment for crime"

I think it's a bit of a strange interpretation to read that as a mandate that slavery as a punishment for a crime must exist within the united states. The spirit of the law seems more to be that its not part of what the amendment prohibits.

You think it's strange, but many of our countrymen do not. That should tell you what they're about. If you want to see the true face of a nation, watch how those with even the smallest amount of power exploit others.

Any other gems of stupidity from 1865 we should abide by?

    A report published by the American Civil Liberties Union in June 2022 found about 800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work, generating a conservative estimate of $11bn annually in goods and services while average wages range from 13 cents to 52 cents per hour.

    Five states – Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas – force prisoners to work without pay.

    The report concluded that the labor conditions of US prisoners violate fundamental human rights to life and dignity.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/sep/27/slavery-loop...

Clearly not everybody is in line with holdovers from the cotton fields of central north america.

https://harvardpolitics.com/prison-labor-is-a-human-rights-a...

My main realization becoming an adult was that time is linear but social progress isn't. The same way we look at ancient Greece philosophers thinking they had some pretty good ideas, a non trivial amount of people look at a century ago's society thinking some of it should be restored or expanded.

The reason slavery (disguised in many forms) is still a thing isn't because it takes time, and more because a number of people actively work in that direction. I'd assume those 1865 bits weren't left by mistake and forgotten.

I don't know how we can deal with that issue, but I think it will fundamentally be a tough battle.

Slavery is just so damn profitable. If there’s greed, there’s gonna be some kind of slavery ( at best, explorative working conditions)

I doubt that access to unskilled, unmotivated labor is really that profitable for most modern industries, since it ensures low productivity and displaces business improvements. The reason it works economically is that the taxpayers are paying for prisoners to be fed, clothed and housed, and so the labor can be bid out for very low prices, which makes the lack of skill and motivation break even.

> access to unskilled, unmotivated labor is really that profitable for most modern industries

It depends on how we qualify "modern" industries, but there's definitely a market for unskilled warm bodies. Recycling triage could be an example of that: the result is simple enough to assess that you can set a dozen of people on a line and adjust reward/punishment depending on the results. And it's definitely a modern problem.

The other aspect: while there will be better ways to do it, it won't beat the price of "slave" as long as there's no other risks in participating in the system.

In a very dark way, it's pretty hard to beat "almost free" through sheer technical advancement.

Is Nike not a modern company in a modern industry? Did people stop wearing shoes?

What about tmeu? https://www.bbc.com/news/business-65990529

Tech isn’t the only modern industry

> The same way we look at ancient Greece philosophers thinking they had some pretty good ideas, a non trivial amount of people look at a century ago's society thinking some of it should be restored or expanded.

I think far more is that a few people want power, and they are adept at manipulating the 90% who follow a herd (and are far less informed than your theory seems to imply). The bad people sell a vision of power and contempt; not long ago many other leaders sold a vision of freedom, universal rights, opportunity, democracy, and fundamental equality.

Nobody sells the latter any more, seemingly dumbfounded by their opponents - Biden, unlike every president pre-Trump, seems silent on it and sells infrastructure legislation. Progressives now sell despair - they can't get enough of telling everyone how despairing they are.

Not seeing an alternative, people follow power and hate.

We are biologically the same as every human who has followed every cause; we didn't evolve biologically; we evolved culturally. Unless someone stands up for that culture - unless we do - then it's not hard to predict what will happen to it.

> I think it will fundamentally be a tough battle.

Every battle has been tough - really much tougher than the ones we face now. Imagine being an abolitionist or for women's rights in the early 19th century - that's a tough fight. Yet they fought, and eventually prevailed. Our only real foe is us - our predecessors developed all the tools we need, the public hasn't forgotten about freedom and human rights in the last 8 years; we just need to stop despairing and whining and get to work.

> not long ago many other leaders sold a vision of freedom, universal rights, opportunity, democracy, and fundamental equality.

The first name that came into my mind was MLK. Rest in Peace.

In a weird way, I think as we're getting better access to information, keeping a clean image as a politician is way harder. Being openly dirty and overwhelming the audience with the dirt until the overtone window shifts becomes a more viable strategy than pushing for a cleaner agenda and have it burned through the ground with all the contradictions that emerge from being a politician in the first place.

I see a light at the end of the tunnel with people getting more engaged in the pressing issues and being more vocal in aggregate. Getting a better mix of sheer individual input and elected representatives could be a way out, we could accept that they're scumbags but genuinely act under our input, even if at times it will result in stuff like Brexit.

> Every battle has been tough

Yes, wholeheartedly agree.

> The first name that came into my mind was MLK. Rest in Peace.

We don't have to go nearly as far (or high) as MLK: Obama, GWB, Clinton, GHWB, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon (iirc), Johnson, Kennedy, Eisenhower, Truman, FDR, etc etc. ...

> keeping a clean image as a politician is way harder

Biden and Obama were/have been pretty clean. It's not that hard.

Lots of states force people to work via all sorts of rules like if you don't work you don't get paroled, or it will go badly at the parole board etc. So there you have something that is not required but pretty much anyone who has a hope of getting out someday will be competing for the few jobs available.

> competing for the few jobs available.

The quote given assuming it correct, was that

    800,000 prisoners out of the 1.2 million in state and federal prisons are forced to work,

Two thirds being forced to work doesn't sound like active competition for the few jobs available.

> Lots of states force people to work via all sorts of rules ..

US States .. states in other G20 countries not so much.

>US States .. states in other G20 countries not so much.

the article is about the U.S? Not sure what point you are trying to make.

I'm going to have to say there is something fishy about that quote - unfortunately https://usafacts.org/articles/what-are-prison-work-programs-...

I mean if it's 800,000 are forced to work it means that just about every employed prisoner is forced to work. This might be changing the meaning of forced.

There is force where you get moved out on a chain gang in the morning and brought home at night.

There is force where you get told if you don't work we will report to the parole board you refused to work and you won't get your parole at the hearing.

there is force where your family isn't giving you any money and so you need to work to make money.

But while there are lots of people who do not want to work at the jobs available because they suck and are dehumanizing there are obviously jobs that people do want and will compete for.

That doesn't make it mandatory, though.

Are you calling for a constitutional amendment, or are you trying to say that it's fine because it's in your constitution?

The trouble with quotes given in isolation, nobody knows your motivation for giving it.

I'm a prison abolitionist, and certainly a slavery abolitionist as well.

I just think it's not widely known that slavery is still legal in the United States so long as the slave is a criminal. Quoted the 13th amendment to spread awareness.

You might be excited to learn that in internet forums discussing things of this nature it is very common knowledge then.

It also tends to be used by specific demographics to derail topics like prison and slavery abolition. Without context, it's difficult to tell the difference between belaboring the point and a bad faith argument.

I personally gave you the benefit of the doubt, but it makes it questionable and some may not.

What forums?

On a wild tangent, I have always been fascinated by the amount of learning material on how to perform searches there is on the web.

It's something akin to learning how to learn. It needs to be bootstrapped first.

Or, was there some point beyond you asking for help? If so, maybe elaborate a bit.

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