Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by sandworm101 | Hacker News Reader

>> "It will be on her credit history, it will make it difficult for her to get a job, for her to get housing, to buy a car, or do anything else that she needs to do, to be able to return to society," Foster told the I-Team. "They have a lien attached to anything you get in life.”

That is the purpose. People don't like to talk about how class-based US society remains. People, voters, actively want a hierarchy of citizens. Everyone is grouped into neat permanent boxes. There are the "illegals" who live in constant fear of arrest. There are "felons" who can only work certain jobs. There are "sex offenders" who can only live in certain places. Even for free, law-abiding, people there exists a hierarchy of citizenship ranging from "US national" to "citizen", with "native-born citizen" being at the top. Imposing lifetime financial burdens on criminals just creates another underclass of perpetually indigent persons. That is the goal of the policy and reflects the desire of a great many powerful people. Lack of social mobility makes powerful people feel safe. For a while.

The Cruelty Is the Point[1]. There's a segment of US society who are not satisfied until the maximum amount of cruelty is applied to people they identify as their opponents. Prisoners (and ex-prisoners) are an easy target because they've already done something to "deserve" suffering, and few will argue to treat them kindly. So these people can vote to fire all of their cruelty at this class with no pushback. I don't really think at its core it's about "people feeling safe." The people pushing for these things simply want an "other" to suffer, and so they vote to create underclasses and legal ways to inflict this suffering. And they rejoice in it.

I used to live in Florida, but sadly the state has taken a sharp right turn recently, and has become this deranged laboratory where politicians experiment with innovative forms of cruelty. Really pushing the boundaries and finding out what they can legally inflict. I've long since escaped that place (and hopefully the few very vocal sadists who determine the state's politics), but it's sad to know I live in the same country as them.

1: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/10/the-cruelt...

This. America has a retribution problem. The prison industrial complex was never about reform, or rehabilitation, it is about vengeance and retribution. That is what Americans most want.

I've got to wonder how much this phenomenon is because the US has eschewed social classes. Since there's no arbitrary "divine right" classes to occupy most people's apparent desire for hierarchy, people actively try to recreate such classes based on the available criteria.

New social classes emerged with capitalism to replace the feudal classes. This is the core reason why socialists aren't very fond of the bourgeoisie.

Sure, but wealth-based classes are still missing a larger philosophical justification. The flip side of the virtue of social mobility, if you will. So the philosophical justification gets filled in with the just world fallacy and whatnot.

I'd say the just world or similar is the contemporary philosophical justification. Fancier framing is that economical position reflects marginal productivity because of efficient markets. And "hard-work" and prosperity theology and genetical superiority and what have you.

Marx's thesis is that a system of production/social organization produces ideology (or "superstructure") for it's justification and stability (materialism vs Hegel's idealism). The justifications (e.g. divine right) are probably always quite bad and not very universally accepted.

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