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Comment by yamrzou | Hacker News Reader

Private prisons only profit because people commit crimes. So the question becomes: How to make people commit less crimes?

Sugar factories are only able to sell because people are willing to buy. So the question becomes: How to make people less willing to consume unhealthy food?

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> Private prisons only profit because people commit crimes. So the question becomes: How to make people commit less crimes?

Examine where this intuition comes from. Firstly, the problem is not "too many people are committing crimes", it's "prisons are profiting from people committing crimes", which creates a perverse incentive. Secondly, as a result of this perverse incentive, judges and lawmakers are incentivized to write and enforce laws such that the business model of incarceration is maintained. So the question of "How to make people commit less crimes?" is misaimed; the problem isn't with the people committing the crimes, it's with the people defining what is and is not a crime.

I'd say you're right here that private prisons are an example of a "bad actor" causing a major problem, and I'd even go as far as supporting abolishing private prisons (though some crime would still likely exist regardless)

But it still isn't clear that the other major problems mentioned (world hunger, economic instability, environmental damage, chronic disease, war) can be eliminated purely by eliminating bad actors

Sure, but the thrust of the thread here is to refute the blanket assertion that nobody wants these things to exist or actively chooses to create the conditions in which they exist. As you say, not all problems are the result of perverse incentives, but there are enough that are that we should be careful not to over-generalize. And it's not just nitpicking, because this has consequences for the OP; it's one thing to change a system that exists unintentionally, and quite another thing to change a system that exists intentionally.

fair enough; I agree with that

When you have multibillion marketing machine convincing you that "Fruit" loops are healthy breakfast, there is not much you can do to educate people otherwise. Do you think if there were legal unregulated heroin factories, there would be peoples fault that they are buying/consuming highly promoted heroin?

Regarding incarceration, when there is initiative to give prison time, instead of providing help (in case of light drug use) you get more people in prison.

Of course you can always say that it's up to people to make a final decision, but we arguing here that there are powerful interests groups that trying to influence the outcome of everyday decisions that lead us to before mentioned outcomes.

While I won't touch the sugar claim, private prison companies tend to think of themselves as real estate investors. They try to get desperate rural governments to give them land for pennies on the dollar.

They make empirically false claims for what the local economic impact is going to be by being obtuse.

I know this because I was involved with meetings with one trying to move into my home town.

I got them to admit the first in public meeting but they punted on the second.

And if you think there's a direct connection between crimes and prison terms, you are just under informed.

There are lots of people in prison who have long paid for their crimes but are still there because they are victims of their time (Cash)

Keeping people in prison is incentivized for private prisons.

so one solution (especially in the case of private prisons) would be to disband the bad actors

But do you see the value that comes from thinking about this as a structural problem? Until we completely cut off the pathway that gives private interest groups access to the levers of criminal law, bad actors will keep emerging

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