America Is A Terrible Country

[Kim]

High Security Unit (HSU) was a “control” unit for women within the Federal Correctional Institution in Lexington, Kentucky. In the less than two years that the HSU was operational it became a focus of national and international concern over human rights abuses.
It was opened in 1986 by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). This special unit of 16 isolation cells was sealed off in a basement from the other prisoners. Reports from different human rights organization including Amnesty International brought the attention to the existence of the unit and the inhumane treatment of prisoners.

The HSU prisoners lived in constant artificial lights 24 hours a day. Personal property was forbidden. Twenty four hours camera and visual surveillance recorded every activity. There were periods when the guards experimented with sleep deprivation: waking the prisoners every hour during the night. When prisoners filed complaints, the guards started waking them every half hour. Contact with the outside world was sharply restricted: Visitations were limited. There were frequent cavity searches done by male guards considered “constant sexual harassment” by the reports.

In August 1987, Dr. Richard Korn, a clinical psychologist and correctional expert issued a report for the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. Dr. Korn concluded that HSU was designed to force “ideological conversion”.

A report by the United Methodist Church concluded that the extreme isolation of the unit was cruel and unusual punishment. A 38 page report by Amnesty International said that the HSU was violating the international standards of treatment of prisoners.

A lawsuit was filed in behalf of prisoners Silvia Baraldini and Susan Rosenberg. It challenged regulations that allowed the isolation of prisoners based on their political beliefs or affiliations. Judge Parker said in his ruling that: ‘“The treatment of the plaintiffs has skirted elemental standards of human decency. The exaggerated security, small group isolation and staff harassment serve to constantly undermine the inmates’ morale.” He ordered the Bureau of Prisons to rewrite its regulations and transfer the prisoners into the general prison population .

In response to mounting opposition the Bureau of Prisons closed the facility in 1988.

The facility never housed more than six women. They were officially labeled “high risk,” though none of them was convicted of a “violent” act while in prison.Some of them were chosen because of their radical political beliefs:

Marie Haydée Beltrán Torres: Puerto Rican activist indicted for the 1977 bombing of the Mobil Oil Building in Manhattan.
Silvia Baraldini: She was active in both the Black Power and Puerto Rican independence movements in the United States in the 1960s thru 1980s.
Susan Rosenberg: A former member of the weather underground (sentence commuted by presidential order in 2001).
Alejandrina Torres: A former member of FALN (granted clemency by President Clinton in 1999).

Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Security_Unit)

I want to destroy every prison. Regular prisons are fucking awful enough in so many ways, but that this happened is just fucking infuriating and I want to find every fucking "patriot" in the nation and rub their nose in this as some would a dog to it's own shit.

[Krylo]

http://i.imgur.com/YgVby.jpg

L2gNv_8nTf8

[Amake]

KwU7fkPnEOI

[Locke cole]

Who the hell authorized this?

[synkr0nized]

ITT: An article -- well, more correctly, a Wikipedia entry about an historical event -- shows how an awful place was shown to be awful by concerned groups and then shut down accordingly after two years of operation.

[stefan]

Fun fact: There are countless for-profit prisons in the United States that have all but openly admitted to being, essentially, slave labor camps. There's more than a few documentary shots of inmates working literal cotton fields that looks like something out of a fucking pre-CW period piece.

The US has essentially become a modern Rome in every worst possible way, and the prison system is more or less a perfect example of it.

[Kim]

ITT: An article -- well, more correctly, a Wikipedia entry about an historical event -- shows how an awful place was shown to be awful by concerned groups and then shut down accordingly after two years of operation.

An awful place used as a test facility for ideological brainwashing and torture for political prisoners, approved by the federal government and was only shut down because it was found out and there was a response to it. There were no major punishments for those responsible so far as I can see, no meaningful lessons learned by those in power, and what's more the government TO THIS DAY continues to violate international standards for prisoner treatment and violate its own laws regarding prisoners. And all of this is in addition to the fact that prison facilities are themselves awful, horrible systems that accomplish almost nothing worthy of praise, do more harm than any alleged good, and are a major part of modern day oppression of minorities.

Fun fact: There are countless for-profit prisons in the United States that have all but openly admitted to being, essentially, slave labor camps. There's more than a few documentary shots of inmates working literal cotton fields that looks like something out of a fucking pre-CW period piece.

For-profit prisons are some of the fucking grossest bullshit we allow in this country.

[Amake]

Re. synk, personally, I'm more for tearing down all the prisons. But then again, if we wait long enough to do that - thirty years or so I think? - then it will be physically difficult to distinguish between those and the United States.

[synkr0nized]

An awful place used as a test facility for ideological brainwashing and torture for political prisoners, approved by the federal government and was only shut down because it was found out and there was a response to it. There were no major punishments for those responsible so far as I can see, no meaningful lessons learned by those in power, and what's more the government TO THIS DAY continues to violate international standards for prisoner treatment and violate its own laws regarding prisoners. And all of this is in addition to the fact that prison facilities are themselves awful, horrible systems that accomplish almost nothing worthy of praise, do more harm than any alleged good, and are a major part of modern day oppression of minorities.

It sounds like you have a better argument here, but the OP as it stands doesn't really say much other than "Look at this piece of shit that happened in the eighties. Let's write off the whole nation because of it."

For example, I know there have been a couple, if not more, specials on national news series/shows that have gone into prisons and dug into what it's like for inmates. It's not pretty.


Amake: What would be the alternative solution for crime, then?
No, that's not an attempt to say that prisons are the solution, but as it stands now culturally we seek out punishment and correction for those who have broken our laws. Something has to happen to see that justice is served. If it's not right to use prisons -- which considering the general stereotype of prisons and the actual facts of many prison situations it's not -- it needs to be some kind of facility or program. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume a large number of the population is opposed to the idea of criminals just hanging out at home or whatever after being found guilty. I would say this then runs into the same problem that makes prisons so awful: resources. No one is spending appropriate resources into a proper correctional program, instead making it more a focus on punishment, treating inmates like shit regardless of what they are in for, or in the wort cases trying to turn a profit off of incarceration, as noted already.
So let me go back to the question: What would you propose (or, if you prefer, have you read that others have proposed or implemented)? Then, realistically, is that a viability for the US?

[Krylo]

Psychological and psychiatric treatment and humane correction with the intention of reintegration into society and/or a better understanding of what drives people to commit various crimes, rather than base revenge.

I mean, just ball parking here.

[Krylo]

Like the only reason that isn't viable is because the united states (and most other countries, I'd wager) is mostly full of dumb fucks who get their rage boners going instead of considering what would actually help the country in the long term.

The benefits, both economically and socially--especially paired with dropping laws against activities that are only illegal because of moralizing and lobbying (like most drug laws) and an effort to use the new knowledge gained to make life better for people so as to prevent initial crimes, would far outweigh the initial start up costs over a couple decades.

[synkr0nized]

Psychological and psychiatric treatment and humane correction with the intention of reintegration into society and/or a better understanding of what drives people to commit various crimes, rather than base revenge.

I mean, just ball parking here.

No, I fully agree this is the path our system should be founded upon, though it is not unfortunately already.

What I am asking is how to implement that if we just tear down the prison facilities? I would think it would be easier to overhaul them, though in both scenarios (just assuming the two for now for simplicity, I realize that may be naive) the first problem/hurdle is getting rid of all of the people and staff that support the current system.

[pochercoaster]

Majority of prisoners are in prison due to socioeconomic and racial issues, not because they are 'bloodthirsty violent monsters'* (a much smaller percentage of prisoners.)

Just look at the war on drugs for an example. If society wants to reduce crime then you do it by actually trying to help disadvantaged people, BUT since America loves shitting on poor people and minorities and the mentally ill and so on they end up getting imprisoned instead.

*I'm not fond of necessarily dehumanizing/othering violent criminals but you get the idea

Edit: Ninja'd

Edit 2: I propose that one of the major components of the solution is overhauling the education system.

[Aerozord]

No, I fully agree this is the path our system should be founded upon, though it is not unfortunately already.

What I am asking is how to implement that if we just tear down the prison facilities? I would think it would be easier to overhaul them, though in both scenarios (just assuming the two for now for simplicity, I realize that may be naive) the first problem/hurdle is getting rid of all of the people and staff that support the current system.

you'd have to ween the system away from the current model. Its unrealistic to expect a 500 year old criminal-justice system to be replaced in a matter of years.

Most practical method would be to introduce alternatives. I think the first thing we need to do is give more rights to ex-cons. They paid their debt to society they should be given a clean slate. Its hard to live a legit life when most legitimate employers won't even give you a second look and you are black marked for life.

Once thats in place focus on diverting some of the inmates to rehabilitation programs and counseling. Use this as a proof of concept that there are better alternatives than 20 years of time out. Slowly enlarge the amount diverted to the alternative program as support grows until prisons are marginalized to something the mainstream considers a barbaric system of the past

[Amake]

One thing annoys me with these kinds of talks. We might put our heads together here and come up with a minutely detailed functional plan for the second American revolution, including a fair, benevolent and beneficial legal system, education system and whatnot, but there's little chance of it being used by anyone.

Not that I'm bitter over my own poor sense for details or anything.

Sorry, but vague grand ideas is about all I have to offer. Krylo's and poch's stuff sounds good though.

[Bells]

Good ideas are easy to make. A better system that actually works in the day-a-day of the real world is not.

You have what everybody has around the world. The actual thought for prisons is two fold... to produce just penalization for a crime, while providing rehabilitation. And providing seclusion for those deemed too dangerous or incapable of rehabilitation. It's not suppose to be a punitive system... it's suppose to be a fail safe for society while you continually improve social economical status of your citizens in order to reduce crimes.

Things is... this is really, REALLY fucking hard to do.

So saying things like "Bah this system is broken we should get a new one" which is... actually.. saying nothing. Or saying "police brutality is the root of evil we should fix that" which again... doesn't say a fucking thing really. None of that actually helps... you're just complaining of something that sucks. That's it. Even if it's merited, it is what it is.

So, if you really give enough of a damn to actually do something about it, you actually gonna have to take sometime and stop looking at the macro. Look at the micro, what is the problem around you and what would it require to be better.

If you just look at this problem from a federal level of complexity it's just too overwhelming. You're not going to get anything done. Ever. Same thing if you are trying to fix a problem that is stronger on the other side of the country... But if you identify issues around you, you just might find stuff you can actually do to help others.


Well look at that... helping better the world is actually hard -but possible- work, who would've thunk it!?

[Krylo]

One thing annoys me with these kinds of talks. We might put our heads together here and come up with a minutely detailed functional plan for the second American revolution, including a fair, benevolent and beneficial legal system

Just make me dictator for life.

Then invent immortality.

All problems solved forever.

[pochercoaster]

I'm not entirely confident about this position but I'll venture that it's not so much that people don't have an idea of how to improve or overhaul prisons, it's that they don't have the money/power to do anything about it, or those with the money/power don't care because they got rich by taking advantage of people in the first place.

Off the top of my head:
1. decriminalize marijuana and possibly other drugs as a large portion of the prison population is made up of drug offenders
2. offer rehab or therapy for drug offenders
3. set up third party organizations to keep the police accountable (does this exist in the US? *not sure*)
4. get rid of the godawful funding system that schools are currently forced to use (IIRC school funding is correlated to nearby property values, right? So schools in poorer areas get less funding?)
5. set up third party organizations to keep prisons accountable
6. abolish the death penalty in all states (because it's expensive and also inhumane)
7. expand welfare programs
8. decriminalize prostitution
9. raise minimum wage
10. get rid of zero-tolerance policies in school (see school-to-prison pipeline)

Edit: Okay these are more like "preventing people from going to prison" not so much overhauling prisons but jesus fuck the US has the highest incarceration rate in the world that's kind of part of the problem too. These issues can't really be separated.

[synkr0nized]

it's not so much that people don't have an idea of how to improve or overhaul prisons, it's that they don't have the money/power to do anything about it, or those with the money/power don't care because they got rich by taking advantage of people in the first place.

This is definitely what I believe is the primary root issue.

[Kim]

We could also abolish for-profit prisons. Establish a set of basic human rights and basic standard of living for those in prison. Fund serious research on understanding those who commit crimes that are actually bad and keeping psychological staff on-hand and involved in every prison that exists.

Fixing these problems would be easy for those in authority. It's just that authority likes having millions upon millions disenfranchised and locked up. Capitalists like profiting off slave labor. Horrible people like making the prison system into nothing more than a revenge scheme.

The only thing keeping things from getting better are terrible people in positions of power.

[Aerozord]

We could also abolish for-profit prisons. Establish a set of basic human rights and basic standard of living for those in prison. Fund serious research on understanding those who commit crimes that are actually bad and keeping psychological staff on-hand and involved in every prison that exists.


yes but we aren't in authority, so what can WE do about it. Because until you can answer that its really not a very productive argument.

[Krylo]

Option A: Inform yourself of these issues and of the way politicians stand on them. Vote for people who will move toward them.

Organize protests around capital buildings, around prisons, anywhere else. Get word out. Educate others.

Call politicians, tell them this is important to you. Get other people to do the same.

Etc. etc. All the things you'd normally do to create change within the system.

Option B: Burn everything down, embrace anarchy.

Option C: DICTATOR FOR LIFE

[Aerozord]

Option A: Inform yourself of these issues and of the way politicians stand on them. Vote for people who will move toward them.

Organize protests around capital buildings, around prisons, anywhere else. Get word out. Educate others.

Call politicians, tell them this is important to you. Get other people to do the same.

Etc. etc. All the things you'd normally do to create change within the system.

Option B: Burn everything down, embrace anarchy.

Option C: DICTATOR FOR LIFE

cool, so who's calling politicians and organizing protests? Anyone from a major metropolitan area got one going? I kind of live in a dying city so not exactly ideal for large displays of political disapproval

[Krylo]

Do something yourself and stop complaining it's not good enough as a reason to not do anything, or expecting other people to do it for you. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good)

[Aerozord]

Do something yourself and stop complaining it's not good enough as a reason to not do anything, or expecting other people to do it for you. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_is_the_enemy_of_good)

Well yea of course, its why I volunteer for charity events and help people with things like welfare and studying. Not much but, every little bit.

[pochercoaster]

I don't understand why discourse is immediately considered unproductive. It's the first step in making any kind of progress; without it, many people would be unaware that such problems exist.

Waving around holier than thou attitudes, however, doesn't seem to contribute much of anything.

[stefan]

I don't understand why discourse is immediately considered unproductive. It's the first step in making any kind of progress; without it, many people would be unaware that such problems exist.


The problem isn't so much that discourse is unproductive as it is that the Information Age has led an entire generation of people to think that discourse alone can replace action entirely, and so they get so caught up in "raising awareness" that they never actually do anything to further their cause in a tangible manner.

[pochercoaster]

The problem isn't so much that discourse is unproductive as it is that the Information Age has led an entire generation of people to think that discourse alone can replace action entirely, and so they get so caught up in "raising awareness" that they never actually do anything to further their cause in a tangible manner.

It's very much doing the opposite. This might not be quite as evident in the US, though. However, the internet is used to organize political rallies all over the world all the time.

People whose voices were previously unheard or passed over can build an audience online, and that audience is only limited by who has internet access. This is huge. Raising awareness is huge. Up recently we had to rely on professional journalism to provide us with information about the world around us and get we'd that information through a filter. The mere existence of alternatives is very promising.

[stefan]

It's very much doing the opposite. This might not be quite as evident in the US, though. However, the internet is used to organize political rallies all over the world all the time.

Effectively 98% of tumblr is more or less living proof that you are wrong. It's not stopping action, but its a very real thing that people who might otherwise have done at least some small part in support of a cause are now content to just spend time "signal boosting" and calling themselves a helper.

People whose voices were previously unheard or passed over can build an audience online, and that audience is only limited by who has internet access. This is huge. Raising awareness is huge.

Dead serious, in the last ten years, how many social movements have received success due to internet awareness raising where they would have otherwise failed? Occupy was a failure, Assange is stuck in an embassy while Wikileaks is rapidly fading into obscurity, countless movements so heavily based in signal boosting have imploded on themselves because of a lack of actual action.

[Kim]

Effectively 98% of tumblr is more or less living proof that you are wrong. It's not stopping action, but its a very real thing that people who might otherwise have done at least some small part in support of a cause are now content to just spend time "signal boosting" and calling themselves a helper.

Please point to any evidence you might have that civic activity has decreased since the launch of Tumblr or that Tumblr has in fact deterred people who would otherwise act in public from doing so.

Otherwise, this is baseless conjecture on your part.

Baseless conjecture in the face of political rallies organized via Twitter, for example.

Evidence-free statements in the face of contrary evidence.

[Krylo]

Dead serious, in the last ten years, how many social movements have received success due to internet awareness raising where they would have otherwise failed? Occupy was a failure, Assange is stuck in an embassy while Wikileaks is rapidly fading into obscurity, countless movements so heavily based in signal boosting have imploded on themselves because of a lack of actual action.

Yes, talking on the internet was the problem with these, and not brutal government crackdowns and attempts to delegitimize, arrest, torture, and/or kill participants.

[The Kneumatic Pnight]

3. set up third party organizations to keep the police accountable (does this exist in the US? *not sure*)
There are some, but police districts within the US are often fairly decentralized and individual intransigence within these decentralized districts are often met with a relative dearth of institutional ways to force compliance.


4. get rid of the godawful funding system that schools are currently forced to use (IIRC school funding is correlated to nearby property values, right? So schools in poorer areas get less funding?)
Firstly, school funding is not really pegged in this way, so what you're going to be seeing causing such an effect is the way the US handles school funding. Specifically, schools in the US are funded semi-independently at three levels: municipal, state, and federal. That is to say that municipal and state spending are usually never going to go fund another municipality or state. Therefore a more wealthy municipality would theoretically have a stronger tax base from which to fund schools, and therefore be able to provide more funding per student.

In practice, a few states like mine pool all municipal spending and disburse it across the whole state with state funding (which is to say, one would be basically paying two separate education taxes to the state which would then be divided up in their own unique ways and distributed at the same time). And every state has funding designed to bolster spending in poorer areas and minimum per-pupil spending quotas for every school and district. And then the federal government provides its own method of attempting to do the same thing.

So, from there, as to your base idea that school spending is associated with property values: I cannot actually answer that. But, I think, probably not. If anything the picture is a bit stranger.

http://i36.photobucket.com/albums/e10/KneumaticPnight/figure-pex-1_zps5fcb9173.gif (http://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/figures/figure-pex-1.asp)
[That would be per-pupil spending in each school district by district poverty quintile. Low would be districts with the lowest incidence of students from families below the poverty line and high would be those with the highest.]

(Interestingly, and not really spelled out in this, poor rural areas are somewhat left out compared to high income rural areas, particularly fringes around urban areas. Meanwhile, high income cities are similarly [perhaps more steeply] underfunded per-pupil than impoverished ones.)

[Bells]

We could also abolish for-profit prisons.

How much does it cost to the taxpayer per month to sustain a federal or state non-profitable prison on the current structure? How much it would cost if you took out the for-profit inmates and inject them into the federal system?

Find out those numbers and you'll learn why For-Profit is seen as a positive thing in some states.

You wanna make them work their cost? Where will you set the line that defines them as working slaves for the government? How about civil rights and human rights? How can you uphold the costs of a non-profit system that si better than the current one without putting more money out of your pocket for it? And if you are Ok with paying more to have a better system... how are you going to convince the other millions of people on your country that don't like to pay more taxes?

You wanna impose those extra taxes only on really rich people? Watch the economy and job growth take a nose dive...

"no for-profit prisons" sounds Altruistic as fuck.. but the practicality will be put in question within seconds after the idea gets mentioned.

Establish a set of basic human rights and basic standard of living for those in prison.

Already exist. Both in national and international form. The problem is not setting standards. Setting standards is easy... words on a paper, any schmuck can do it. The problem is maintenance, empowerment of the state and enforcement of those standards. You can write 10.000 new rules with a heart of gold, it will do no good if they are not getting actually done.

Fund serious research on understanding those who commit crimes that are actually bad and keeping psychological staff on-hand and involved in every prison that exists.

Already a thing. You want MORE of that? Fair enough... where is the funding coming from? Are your educational standards in the country adequate to create the type of professionals you are talking about? If not, the problem is not research is education and jobs (that since they are on no-profit prisons, go back to the tax payer).

You say every prison, but not every city has the structure to prepare and invest in those professionals. Just there you already have about 30 other serious problems with Logistics and local education priorities, funding and structure.

Fixing these problems would be easy for those in authority. It's just that authority likes having millions upon millions disenfranchised and locked up.

No it's not... it's just an easy caricature to make. So very very easy... i know quite a few here like to think of anybody "in power" (whatever the fuck that means...) as a member of the league of doom, but that's just a Fogged Delusion... Not to got the other way around, because there ARE in fact evil people in power who want to subdue those weaker and easy to prey on.... but to think that those with Autority can just snap their fingers and make it happen sounds like you are getting your facts about the world more from movies than from any other source.

The world is not black and white, evil is not black and white... this is not an easy thing to fix, it cannot be done overnight, it is not all about a signature in a piece of paper and the stream of consequences you haven't even thought off are so huge you would probably question yourself if you knew, before making such watered down thin claims....

Capitalists like profiting off slave labor. Horrible people like making the prison system into nothing more than a revenge scheme.

Talk about conjecture....

Historically, you can point out that trend, yes... just like with Global Warming. I can pick a number of years and show to you, with real data and facts, that the Global temperature has gone DOWN instead of up... but if you see the entire measurement instead of just a slice of it, you can clearly see that it has gone up non-stop.

Same thing with Capitalism, i can find tons of examples of shitty companies running slave factories or even worst, big companies hiring slave factories overseas to work for them... but on the overall view, for a serious company, a really big player in the capitalist world, there is nothing better than a well trained, well payed employee doing his job and refusing offers from competitors... and as much as you might desire to consider that every rich guy on the US (or the world) has a secret clubhouse where they meet to scheme and plan everything together.... that's just not real. It's the same flavor of nut you see on 9/11 conspiracies and Fox News.

Perspective. It fucking matters.

Capitalists like to make money. Any industrialist will tell you that it's ten times easier to make money by paying people the necessary for them to be happy than to keep holding them down forever on TRUE slavery... and by the way... if you even consider calling up some bullshit like "modern slavery" or "walmart employes slaves" or whatever the hell thing like that... don't bother. Slavery is one thing and one thing only... it's terrible, it actually still exists in many places in the world and it's not "making just barely enough"... it's WAY worst than that.

Shitty jobs are not Slavery, they are shitty jobs on shitty companies. Be in for profit prisons or out of them. Even comparing that to people who actually suffer real slavery in the world is insensitive and quite frankly repulsive.

To say Capitalism is a revenge scheme to create slaves in prison is as warped as anyone can get from making opinions without educating themselves...

The only thing keeping things from getting better are terrible people in positions of power.

So hire better people to run your country. Whose fault is that? No matter how much money gets injected in the system, money is not mind control. And the small tactics to keep away certain groups of voters are largely noneffective to the end game. You simply cannot pull a scheme that big these days and make it successful in countries like the US.

And no. It's not "the only thing". It's WAY more complex than that... WAAAAY more complex.

If you REALLY think the Prison system is messed up and need to change, then you really need to think what's the price you're willing to pay to make it change... cause it's not going to be free. Thinking it even can be is a Pipe Dream.

You cannot request for change you can't comprehend. The fact that you think any piece of this puzzle is "easy" shows how "evidence-free" you really are about your thought process over this. There are many clashing issues that go beyond "Attacking the rich bastards" and blaming them for everything...

Again, this is not an impossible problem. Capitalism is the root of some of the most evil things upon this earth. Slavery in society and in the work place ARE things that exist (just not as it has been mentioned here so far). And a better system to Rehabilitate instead of Punish would be wonderful... but it's not the snap of a finger that's going to do it.

[stefan]

Yes, talking on the internet was the problem with these, and not brutal government crackdowns and attempts to delegitimize, arrest, torture, and/or kill participants.

This has happened with literally every protest movement in history, it's a part of the obstacle you should plan for well in advance, not a fucking excuse. Risk of getting your teeth kicked in and your arms broken is par for the course in protest, its why molotov cocktails were invented.

Occupy was more or less screwed from the beginning because they had no real goals except "get people aware of wall street being a bag of dicks," which was rightfully called out well in advance of the infamous crackdowns by several veterans of other social movements. (also because people already knew Wall Street was a bag of dicks, an excellent example of people "helping raise awareness" when awareness is already as fucking high as its going to get)

I feel I should clarify which side of the argument I'm on before this gets too out of hand. I am not in the camp of "signal boosting is useless, work from within the system! ::V:." I am totally on the side of belief that the system is fucking broken and needs to be torn down, violently if necessary. I just feel like sharing posts on twitter is going to do absolutely nothing towards that goal at this point, because anyone that WOULD agree does, and anyone that doesn't won't.

How much does it cost to the taxpayer per month to sustain a federal or state non-profitable prison on the current structure? How much it would cost if you took out the for-profit inmates and inject them into the federal system?

Find out those numbers and you'll learn why For-Profit is seen as a positive thing in some states.


I have seen the numbers and they largely show that for-profit prisons actually end up costing more in taxes than state run prisons. Private Prisons are paid for by the government per head incarcerated, the "profit" is for the third party that owns the facility.

[Bells]

I have seen the numbers and they largely show that for-profit prisons actually end up costing more in taxes than state run prisons. Private Prisons are paid for by the government per head incarcerated, the "profit" is for the third party that owns the facility.

Than show the Math. You seen the numbers... you can provide some source for it. Also mind you that changing the current system for a better one is likely to increase those costs regardless....

[Krylo]

This has happened with literally every protest movement in history

And every other protest movement in history has succeeded.

[stefan]

And every other protest movement in history has succeeded.

Many havent! Many have. However, almost all of them knew going in that they were on the losing side and didn't use it as a justification for not succeeding, when they spent all their time trying to "rile the masses into action" only to find that the masses don't give a shit about protesters until buildings have started to burn down.


Than show the Math. You seen the numbers... you can provide some source for it. Also mind you that changing the current system for a better one is likely to increase those costs regardless....

here's a specific example. (http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/06/641971/private-prisons-cost-arizona-35-million-more-per-year-than-state-run-prisons/?mobile=nc)

[Kim]

For-profit prisons also use bribery and political leverage to bring people into the prison system who otherwise would not be being brought into it, because it makes them money.

Also, Stefan, the Egypt protests made major use of social media like Twitter and Facebook. They were far more successful, in the short term at least, than comparable US protests.

It turns out, and this may blow your mind, not every protest against the status quo is successful! Therefore, anecdotal evidence pointing to failed protests is easily refuted with anecdotal evidence of successful ones!

Tomorrow, we talk about how sometimes the weather changes from day to day and how just because one loaf of bread is moldy not every loaf of bread that currently exists is moldy.

EDIT: And now your new post makes me wonder if YOU even know what the hell point you're trying to make by complaining about social media and blaming it for making people lazy.

[stefan]

Also, Stefan, the Egypt protests made major use of social media like Twitter and Facebook. They were far more successful, in the short term at least, than comparable US protests.

they also made major use of traditional methods of protest. Or did you forget about when Egypt actively shut down as many social media networks as they could, leaving the protesters to, you know, not rely on the internet to coordinate?



It turns out, and this may blow your mind, not every protest against the status quo is successful!

no shit.

I think you do not understand that my entire point was that people try to use social media as a replacement for action, which is a bit hard to quantify since nobody actively tracts unacted protests in potentia, but there is certainly a massive and unignorable population of people who claim to be activists while quantifiably doing Not A Fucking Thing to justify the label aside from wasting bandwidth with reblogs and making a shitload of noise.

[CABAL49]

Than show the Math. You seen the numbers... you can provide some source for it. Also mind you that changing the current system for a better one is likely to increase those costs regardless....

Private prison companies, however, essentially admit that their business model depends on locking up more and more people. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) stated: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . .” As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits.

And while supporters of private prisons tout the idea that governments can save money through privatization, the evidence that private prisons save taxpayer money is mixed at best – in fact, private prisons may in some instances cost more than governmental ones. Private prisons have also been linked to numerous cases of violence and atrocious conditions.

Quoting ACLU cause I have no idea what I am doing here at two in the morning. http://www.aclu.org/prisoners-rights/private-prisons

[Kim]

they also made major use of traditional methods of protest. Or did you forget about when Egypt actively shut down as many social media networks as they could, leaving the protesters to, you know, not rely on the internet to coordinate?

Wheeee, and this in fact doesn't negate the online action they did! Which was the point Pocheros was making! Which was obvious!

no shit.

I think you do not understand that my entire point was that people try to use social media as a replacement for action, which is a bit hard to quantify since nobody actively tracts unacted protests in potentia, but there is certainly a massive and unignorable population of people who claim to be activists while quantifiably doing Not A Fucking Thing to justify the label aside from wasting bandwidth with reblogs and making a shitload of noise.

And you acted as though there were somehow a meaningful decrease in protests happening as a result of online action and that people were in fact doing less as a result of online action.

Which was a baseless claim you made to start a meaningless argument with Poch.

And I pointed this out already.

Poch made the point they did good. You tried to argue "Nuh-uh!! Cuz Tumblrs are lazy!!"

Her point had evidence.

Yours doesn't.

Move on.

[rpgdemon]

Effectively 98% of tumblr is more or less living proof that you are wrong. It's not stopping action, but its a very real thing that people who might otherwise have done at least some small part in support of a cause are now content to just spend time "signal boosting" and calling themselves a helper.



Dead serious, in the last ten years, how many social movements have received success due to internet awareness raising where they would have otherwise failed? Occupy was a failure, Assange is stuck in an embassy while Wikileaks is rapidly fading into obscurity, countless movements so heavily based in signal boosting have imploded on themselves because of a lack of actual action.

I didn't read the rest of the thread, don't know if I agree with anyone as such, but this is wrong. Look at the Arab spring, seriously. There was a whole book written on it as it was happening, Sandstorm. New media is leading to increased social activism, as people can actually communicate with eachother, see what's going on, and try to change things.

[synkr0nized]

Methinks an attempt to mock Twitter Activists and Facebook Heroes has backfired tremendously.

[CABAL49]

Social activism that is happening in places not the West. Also it would be a gross oversimplification to think that the reason Arab Spring happened was because they had twitter. Did these new medias aid Arab Spring in whatever it is going to end up being? Yes, but it is hardly the example to go by. Arab Spring is too often oversimplified, when it is an extremely complicated and unfinished thing.

[stefan]

Wheeee, and this in fact doesn't negate the online action they did! Which was the point Pocheros was making! Which was obvious!

I don't get if you legitimately think that online action was the catalyst for the Arab Spring and other movements or if you are trying to argue something entirely different, or what. Because twitter et al were tools used by a revolution that was already going to happen because of years of social buildup, not because somebody made an angry post about Mubarak being a shit-eating piece of fuck and a lot of people simultaneously decided they agreed.

Social Media very likely did not have nearly as much of an effect as you seem to think they did, as they effectively functioned as a glorified telegraph system that was cast aside when they became impractical.




And you acted as though there were somehow a meaningful decrease in protests happening as a result of online action and that people were in fact doing less as a result of online action.

its certainly the case that the activism scene in the first world has gone tits up in the worst fucking way, and considering the utter social backslide in all forms civil rights related, there's not a lot you can say to counteract that.

:smug::smug::smug::smug:

Yeah, we're done here.

[Loyal]

I think you do not understand that my entire point was that people try to use social media as a replacement for action, which is a bit hard to quantify since nobody actively tracts unacted protests in potentia, but there is certainly a massive and unignorable population of people who claim to be activists while quantifiably doing Not A Fucking Thing to justify the label aside from wasting bandwidth with reblogs and making a shitload of noise.

KONY 2012

[stefan]

KONY 2012

This one is great because I was looking for info on it for examples of reblog "activism" to see if it ever went anywhere, and as far as the internet is concerned it seems to have ceased to exist after march 2012. No articles, no time stamped mockery, no diehard rebloggers updating, nothing.

Truly, a champion effort from the social media progress engine.

[Osterbaum]

What we need to do is organize and for that the internet is fucking amazing.

[Marelo]

Like, Stefan, I see your point, really I (think I) do. But I don't think it's a problem with the nature of the internet. People who are reblog activists were probably not going to do anything about these causes even without the internet on which to reblog.

You have examples of people doing that kind of shit, yeah, but you haven't shown an increase or decrease in actual activism or its rates of success related to said kind of shit.

I find it really hard to swallow that activism is somehow stifled by there being more and freer means for activists (real ones) to talk to each other.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

People have been trying to shut prisons down through campaigns pretty solidly for the last 30 or so years. They have achieved negative results. Because a bunch of random academics and ne'er-do-wells ain't as good at cultural brainwashing as an entire socio-economic system.
Same with every other issue related to wealth/power disparity which have gotten demonstrably worse over the last 30 years despite massive protests, attempts at systematic change. It'll work the next time we try it though cause this time we're going to kidnap the confidence fairy from the republican camp.

[Kim]

This is why I said to burn them down.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Prisons are usually made of concrete and things which are hard to burn. You'd need some explosives or something probably. And you gotta get the prisoners out first.
It's a good principle though. Just got to hammer out the logistics.

My plan is I'm going to steal all the dictionaries and replace the word "criminal" with "go-getter" and I think that will solve 90% of the problem.

[Kim]

while you're at it replace the word rich with hitlerking

[Locke cole]

"I would order dessert, but my entree was just too hitlerking."

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I'm going to replace money with cancerpaper because it gives you cancer.

[Osterbaum]

Basically everything gives you cancer.

[Jagos]

How much does it cost to the taxpayer per month to sustain a federal or state non-profitable prison on the current structure? How much it would cost if you took out the for-profit inmates and inject them into the federal system?

It costs a shit ton to have a for profit prison. And there's a requirement that these prisons maintain 90% capacity. So the incentive is to put in as many people as possible. Guess who happens to be the majority of people in prison? Yeah... (http://www.npr.org/2012/06/05/154352977/how-louisiana-became-the-worlds-prison-capital)

Find out those numbers and you'll learn why For-Profit is seen as a positive thing in some states.

No it isn't. Those prisons cost more than education in practically every state. It's literally an attempt to lock up everyone that isn't rich enough to be on the outside.

You wanna make them work their cost? Where will you set the line that defines them as working slaves for the government? How about civil rights and human rights? How can you uphold the costs of a non-profit system that si better than the current one without putting more money out of your pocket for it? And if you are Ok with paying more to have a better system... how are you going to convince the other millions of people on your country that don't like to pay more taxes?

They are literally slaves in these institutions. We have 2.2 million felons because of the drug war. We create an environment to keep them locked up and put away to work on whatever the government has them do. Solitary is torture (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/10/solitary-confinement-shane-bauer) used in prisons. A strong incentive (http://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/Guns,_Prisons,_Crime,_and_Immigration) to deprive people of the right to vote is installed in such a plutocratic state. The prisoners make ~.44 an hour. And when they get out, they are never allowed to work for their communities again. The government will not help you if you are a felon. No public housing, no public education, and no way to get out of a lifetime of indentured servitude. The servitude comes from being a parolee who has to pay for their own jailor to check up on them.

That's a system you want to support?

You wanna impose those extra taxes only on really rich people? Watch the economy and job growth take a nose dive...

Not true. Link (http://news.yahoo.com/eisenhower-obama-wealthiest-americans-pay-taxes-193734550--abc-news.html) and Link (http://www.google.com/imgres?hl=en&sa=X&tbo=d&biw=1366&bih=643&tbm=isch&tbnid=5C7MLjEwTb1VjM:&imgrefurl=http://www.examiner.com/article/where-we-stand-today-march-16-2009&docid=1UWKugIsTcgRGM&imgurl=http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/wysiwyg/image/tax_rate-chart550.gif&w=550&h=413&ei=GBbzUK2NJbP02wXQtoDIDA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=573&vpy=98&dur=1125&hovh=194&hovw=259&tx=117&ty=101&sig=116663136316399115784&page=1&tbnh=142&tbnw=187&start=0&ndsp=28&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0,i:93)

"no for-profit prisons" sounds Altruistic as fuck.. but the practicality will be put in question within seconds after the idea gets mentioned.

If you want to know what the CCIA is doing, just look here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxp1t1tp8Z8). We are literally controlled in these facilities by a corporation. And the results are horrendous. Link (http://www.alternet.org/story/155544/did_a_private_prison_corporation's_abuse_of_inmate s_spark_a_deadly_riot_in_mississippi), Link (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/private-prisons-buying-state-prisons_n_1272143.html), and Link (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/azadeh-shahshahani/detained-immigrants-exploited-profit_b_2422599.html).

"For profit" prisons runs counter to the state taking care of individuals and ensuring their safety. They have less staff, less experience, and smaller places to maximize profit. I wouldn't be surprised of we started calling these places a modern Auschwitz.



You say every prison, but not every city has the structure to prepare and invest in those professionals. Just there you already have about 30 other serious problems with Logistics and local education priorities, funding and structure.

No, the problem is the incentive for people to screw over people for money. If the prisons are run by the state, it's a far better alternative than one run by a private market. That should be the lesson here. A state prison can ensure the safety of individuals far more than these prisons that pursue maximum profit.



No it's not... it's just an easy caricature to make. So very very easy... i know quite a few here like to think of anybody "in power" (whatever the fuck that means...) as a member of the league of doom, but that's just a Fogged Delusion... Not to got the other way around, because there ARE in fact evil people in power who want to subdue those weaker and easy to prey on.... but to think that those with Autority can just snap their fingers and make it happen sounds like you are getting your facts about the world more from movies than from any other source.

The government does one of two things: It listens to everyone or the richest among us. What you're seeing is the slow descent of America into fascism which started with Reagan. The culprit here is a ton... Corporations controlling the lives of people and using them as capital is a VERY bad notion that is what is currently happening. But the government isn't powerless. It's just listening to the rich here, nothing less. Could Obama do something in a position of power? Indeed. Will he? No. That should be evident. His political ideology allows for certain reforms of the system but he doesn't see the system as a problem. Unless a lot of people made a stink about issues, expect those in power to maintain the status quo until otherwise noted.



Talk about conjecture....

Actually, I agree that the system (capitalism) has lead to this eventual inequality. Capitalism itself is an unstable economic system that has lead to great booms and busts.

Same thing with Capitalism, i can find tons of examples of shitty companies running slave factories or even worst, big companies hiring slave factories overseas to work for them... but on the overall view, for a serious company, a really big player in the capitalist world, there is nothing better than a well trained, well payed employee doing his job and refusing offers from competitors... and as much as you might desire to consider that every rich guy on the US (or the world) has a secret clubhouse where they meet to scheme and plan everything together.... that's just not real. It's the same flavor of nut you see on 9/11 conspiracies and Fox News.

If you really want to look at it, look into Marxism and how it came out as a critique of capitalism. Out of the 300 year history of capitalism and laissez-faire markets, it is not a system that allows for egalitarian democracy. It creates tensions between workers and employers. While there are better alternatives, my point is merely that your idea that pulling out a sliver of history to say it was a great system is not factually accurate. Every president in recent modern history has had downturns that affect everyday people who, through no fault of their own, lost their jobs from employers(masters) while the workers (slaves) gain nothing from their productivity and have to lose their skills and labor to find another employer. Can you honestly point to a good time in US history that didn't have one economic downturn attached to it?


Capitalists like to make money. Any industrialist will tell you that it's ten times easier to make money by paying people the necessary for them to be happy than to keep holding them down forever on TRUE slavery... and by the way... if you even consider calling up some bullshit like "modern slavery" or "walmart employes slaves" or whatever the hell thing like that... don't bother. Slavery is one thing and one thing only... it's terrible, it actually still exists in many places in the world and it's not "making just barely enough"... it's WAY worst than that.

Bells, you do not understand that minimum wage laws here in the US are not a living wage.

The reforms you want in the system were tried and the system was reformed since 1932 when FDR was elected. We tried reforming the system... And in 1946, the conservatives in this country stopped all that progress cold. They limited the power of the president. They passed anti union laws such as Taft-Hartley. And then, they made sure that workers were just a little better than serfs by ensuring they got a paycheck instead of working for the clothes on their back.

But now, people have new ways to go into indentured servitude and that's a problem. I go to a "for profit" school to get a degree for a job that won't be there when I graduate because no one is hiring. Do you understand what that means? I might as well begin my own company and pave my own way instead of relying on a public debt that will not be paid.

Shitty jobs are not Slavery, they are shitty jobs on shitty companies. Be in for profit prisons or out of them. Even comparing that to people who actually suffer real slavery in the world is insensitive and quite frankly repulsive.

BS, Bells. They are. Working at McDonalds for 20 years with no wage increases while your boss makes millions is an example of a shitty job and a plutocratic state. You might have a very real notion that most Americans are rich but that's not accurate at all. The Six Walton heirs (http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2012/07/17/534591/walmart-heirs-wealth-combined/) make more than the bottom 40% of Americans and are looking into making more. They have a monopoly on Wal-marts (http://i.imgur.com/p93fN.gif) and retail which gives them a lot of power as capitalists. So much so that they can't afford to give their own people healthcare, which is then subsidized by the taxpayer anyway? That's the problem that I have with capitalism.

To say Capitalism is a revenge scheme to create slaves in prison is as warped as anyone can get from making opinions without educating themselves...

Bells, I agree with you most times, but you are dead wrong about the system. I'll merely say that the most powerful word in the English language is "incentive". Capitalism incentivizes a small group of people to exploit the masses to their own individual profit.

Whether you look into the reforms of prison, the capitalist gaming industry as shown by Activision and EA versus Valve, or how the rich control our Congress and buy the laws through lobbying, the entire system is rigged against those that don't have the money to access markets.


So hire better people to run your country. Whose fault is that? No matter how much money gets injected in the system, money is not mind control. And the small tactics to keep away certain groups of voters are largely noneffective to the end game. You simply cannot pull a scheme that big these days and make it successful in countries like the US.

Are you serious? Do you not know about our electoral college and our first past the post which prevents third parties from being viable in elections? Historically, here's why we can't really have viable candidates:

[youtube=XPZFMgeGtCU]

[youtube=s7tWHJfhiyo]

[youtube=OUS9mM8Xbbw]

[youtube=7wC42HgLA4k]

When we change our electoral system, it's a start. When we eliminate capitalism for a better alternative, then we've won.

[Osterbaum]

I didn't even read Bells' post before. Seriously Bells, I'm making a tremendous effort here not to get all hostile and name calling about your obvious ignorance of what goes on in the world, but fucking hell like millions of people keep on dying from starvation while up to half of the food produced is thrown away, capitalist run western goverments wage wars to secure their own interests of profit and support brutal governments elsewhere just because they provide us with what we need. Meanwhile people have no control what so ever on the ecconomic sphere of society anywhere in the world, something which voting some other (rich white) guy into office isn't going to fucking fix. Political (and other) dissidents are marginalized, hunted down and silenced one way or another EVERYWHERE in the world. The wealth gap keeps on widening, fucking fascism is on the rise again in countries such as Greece, the latest global economic crisis shows no real signs of halting any time soon and those responsable get a slap on the wrist while the rest of us foot the bill.

Things aren't going well for an overwhelming majority of the population in the world. And yet, no change is in sight because once you're in control of a system it's a lot easier to keep people believing in your way of doing things rather than look for any altenatives. Ideological hegemony is difficult as fuck to overthrow, much more difficult than the overthrow of any one government. And it's not a conspiracy. It's the way the system is biased to work.

So hire better people to run your country. Whose fault is that? No matter how much money gets injected in the system, money is not mind control. And the small tactics to keep away certain groups of voters are largely noneffective to the end game. You simply cannot pull a scheme that big these days and make it successful in countries like the US.
Yeah because my vote certainly counts as much as billions of dollars. This shit is fucking insulting; so instead of being victims of a global elite interested in maintaining a system that befits them just well, we just voted the wrong rich white men into power! Man, aren't we all just fucking dumb assholes for doing that. Should've voted for someone else, or run for a representative position myself! It's not a god damn scheme! It's the way the system functions, and it is allowed to keep functioning as such because it's easier for those in power to keep that power than it is for the rest of us to take it.

[Kim]

The moral of this story is never, ever read Bells' posts.

[Magus]

Well this is the country whose government (which I mean, let's keep that in mind, it's the government doing this) purposefully giving people in Guatemala syphilis (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12739793).

Whenever people balk at UN oversight of various aspects of this country I'm baffled. We clearly need some kind of shadow New World Order Illuminati government to keep us from doing horrible shit. Or just, like, actual enforcement of international laws, willingly carried out by ourselves. But I mean, when a known war criminal gets to regularly and freely appear on television and spew his right-wing rhetoric, clearly we need help.

As for Kony, we already got Gerard Butler on the case (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eddnloOFjwY), or his real-world non-union equivalent, anyway.

[Sifright]

Well this is the country whose government (which I mean, let's keep that in mind, it's the government doing this) purposefully giving people in Guatemala syphilis (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-12739793).

buuut duuuuuuude, that was like totally the 40's and all the cool kids were doing that kind of shit.

totally doesn't happen now! I mean seriously you are acting like America is constantly drone striking civilian targets of opportunity in the middle east or even their own citizens or something!

[stefan]

This is why I said to burn them down.

This is a sentiment I can get behind!

Prisons are usually made of concrete and things which are hard to burn.

amateur.

[shiney]

The fact that anyone would mount even a passing defense of a prison that exists to make profit for its owners is really a damning judgment on that person. We are talking about a facility that deprives people of their freedom and turns a profit on that. A place that maximizes profit incentives which inherently means cutting costs in areas that relate to taking care of human beings. Just because they are criminals should not make them into chattel for the rich and powerful.

Good christ Bells. You really need to evaluate your life choices if this is a thing you are trying to suggest is okay.

[PyrosNine]

Well, if this was Discussion, and not General Discussion, I'd stay out of it because it was a complicated topic I knew nothing about.

But since it's not just General Discussion, but the STARSHIP General Discussion, I say everyone who commits a crime, ever, should die a flaming death.

And then the people who performed this justice of a flaming death should receive a flaming death.

And then all the people who all made profit from Flaming Death intentionally or not, should also receive a flaming death.

And then all the people who stood idly by while everyone else was suffering a flaming death should also suffer a flaming death.

Then I can guarantee no more crime, and no more prisons. Forever.

100% rate of accuracy for finding criminals and a perfectly exact method of punishment, and no illusions about "reformation." And the best part is, when it's time to foot the bill, no one will have to pay it, because then everyone will be dead and on fire.

At least until some other species develops it's own conception of someone being "criminal," and having to be "punished."

[Sifright]

i've a better solution, every one that has assets totaling more than 2 million is executed for crimes against humanity.

All their assets are seized and liquefied all the money is poured into science, medicine and clean power generation and C02 scrubbing.

[PyrosNine]

Is the execution by flaming death?

[Sifright]

Is the execution by flaming death?

Yes.

some of the science funding from this new law is used to make new space craft and we use those craft to jettison them into the sun.

[RobinStarwing]

Yes.

some of the science funding from this new law is used to make new space craft and we use those craft to jettison them into the sun.

Why waste perfectly good materials on building new spacecraft when we can just stuff them into old Nuclear ICBMs and launch them into the sun?

[Bells]

Good christ Bells. You really need to evaluate your life choices if this is a thing you are trying to suggest is okay.

Telltales signs that you did not understood what i said.

Which i`m getting used to see from the same group of people around here and therefore why i really don`t waste much energy explaining things to people with preconceived notions cast in stone.

I can`t control how you interpret and understand things, i can only vouch for what i think and say, if you didn't understood me cause i wasn't clear i`m sorry for that. But as time goes on, this is has be shown to not really be the reason for the misunderstanding...

I don`t like Backyard activists. People who shout, whine and pout all day long about ten thousand different things and think they know more than what they show they know, but will not actually shove their hands in the dirt to get things done for what they believe in. I don`t like people who only say "X sucks because nobody does Y" but can`t give you a cohesive explanation on how Y should be done in the first place... complaining is easy, pointing problems from above is very easy, casting the world in a grey shadow and saying everything is shit around our own bellybuttons is just too fucking easy... understanding the world around you and actually knowing the real reasons why certain things are the way they are and not some malformed cartoon villain plot... that`s complicated. Requires effort. And the only real way you can possibly make the world better.

I would love to give you all the answers for the shitty problems of this world, i really would. The huge differences in equality and liberty that go beyond the borders of each little individual universe that for some never goes beyond their neighborhood.

Shit is complicated. I wish it was better than it is. I would not be ok with trading a bad system for a worst system, as i`m not stupid to want to trade a bad system for a unknown one. That`s why i don`t get behind pipe dreams... that`s why i question and press every good idea for it`s flaws, to see if they crumble... cause then, when a real idea comes along that is doable and viable, i can get behind it 130% and go after more people to make it happen with the same enthusiasm and fortitude that requires to make any large scale change.

And getting rid of Prisons, federal, state or private is a fucking stupid idea cause nobody has a better system to exchange for right now. The problem is wider and deeper and saying "this sucks, it should be better" will not make a lick of difference for each life that is in that hell suffering today and their families that suffer as much if not more on the same note.

"making money out of prisoners" sounds bad, and i`m sure you can find real examples of it being bad... likewise, i can find you examples of being good, where the money and investment in the facility went into rehabilitation and qualification of those convicted felons so that once they served their time, they were able to re-entry society as human beings with dignity.

It`s not a general thing. Nothing fucking is! The same tree can give good and rotten fruit, but it`s still a fucking moronic idea to burn it`s roots... you can`t generalize... and we can trade back and forth studies and examples all year long if you or anybody wants... but that also accomplishes nothing.

Try to learn, understand, get informed... what is this profit? where is it coming from today? Where is it going? Who is controlling? Who is auditing this system? How is it being used? Does it get re-invested in the system? is it used to help inmates? Does it work better than government controlled facilities? What are it`s positives that can be used and brought to the people who could actually use the help and support? To actually make a prison a place of corrective actions instead of what it is today, of punitive actions.

Sorry, no easy answer... "Free all the drug users! End the Drug War!" may be a fantastic T-Shirt slogan, but it`s laughable as working platform for betterment of society as a whole. At least if that`s all the idea is composed of...

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Did you know that geologists draw their seismograph patterns with time on the Y-axis. Does this mean that seismographs control time? I think yes. Having met some seismologists I am very worried. Little did we know that the Italian government was trying to save us all from the notorious aquila six.

[RobinStarwing]

Did you know that geologists draw their seismograph patterns with time on the Y-axis. Does this mean that seismographs control time? I think yes. Having met some seismologists I am very worried. Little did we know that the Italian government was trying to save us all from the notorious aquila six.

...

What does that have to do with anything being discussed in this thread? Please explain in 1 million words or more Smarty.

EDIT: Also for Kim...your were just born when all this about the prison was going down. Compared to Gitmo, this would be Kindergarten. Find me something current to prove your point beyond shit that can be blamed on social ineptitude/inaction and/or GOP/rich fucks being assholes.

My personal beliefs are to rehab those that can be saved and lock up the ones that can't be for the protection of society. I also support the legalizing at least of substances like marijuana, LSD, and peyote. I consider these harmless. I would still outlaw the likes of meth and stuff that is proven to really really screw up the body and mind bad.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

It has to do with Bell's is dumb and the only way to save all your brains was the direct application of an emergency dissonance derail which I just provided. We should be glad I read it first, I'm trained t odeal with this type of stupidity. Who knows how many lives we could have lost.

[RobinStarwing]

It has to do with Bell's is dumb and the only way to save all your brains was the direct application of an emergency dissonance derail which I just provided. We should be glad I read it first, I'm trained t odeal with this type of stupidity. Who knows how many lives we could have lost.

I said you had to explain it in 1 million words or more...you didn't hence you failed Smartypants.

EDIT: Also, Bell is not dumb. Your just too much of a Homo Habalis to understand his intellect.

[Jagos]

Bells, read my post.

Your comment is horrendous given that you're digging into an extremely bad position.

[Osterbaum]

Constantly it is liberals and capitalism apologists that use ideology instead of facts to justify their arguments and views and at the same time accusing everyone else of idealism and utopianism.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

"making money out of prisoners" sounds bad, and i`m sure you can find real examples of it being bad... likewise, i can find you examples of being good, where the money and investment in the facility went into rehabilitation and qualification of those convicted felons so that once they served their time, they were able to re-entry society as human beings with dignity.



Betcha can't actually do this.
I bet you can't find an example of the money poured into private prisons going into a prison hiring better paid, trained and certified guards. Rather than the low wage, inexperienced, high turnover rate and even understaffed ones that play themselves out over and over across this country.
I bet you can't find an example of a prison having too many guards to contend with the prisons that have so few guards that some find themselves doing the work of three individuals, with none of that work actually getting done right.
I bet you can't find a prison where the quality of life is above par, rather than so dangerously low that some prisons have actually dipped into sub human conditions.

And for who makes money? Mark Ciavelrella made money every single time he used his position as a judge to send children to a private juvenile facility in his state. Innocent kids, kids who didn't even really deserve to go anywhere at all for their crime, and frankly even kids who should have gone somewhere just plain didn't fucking deserve to go to that facility, which was abhorrent and incapable of properly serving the needs of juvenile's who had actually done a crime.
The facilities he was being paid to send kids to made money for every person that they kept, so think about the amount of profit they must have been making on each individual if they not only had the money to run their facility, but bribe Ciavelrella and several other judges while still making a profit.

[Sifright]

Originally Posted by Bells
"making money out of prisoners" sounds bad, and i`m sure you can find real examples of it being bad... likewise, i can find you examples of being good, where the money and investment in the facility went into rehabilitation and qualification of those convicted felons so that once they served their time, they were able to re-entry society as human beings with dignity.

That would be the exception not the rule.

basically if that happened it was by accident.

[Kim]

Also for Kim...your were just born when all this about the prison was going down. Compared to Gitmo, this would be Kindergarten. Find me something current to prove your point beyond shit that can be blamed on social ineptitude/inaction and/or GOP/rich fucks being assholes.

Read my second post on the first page.

My personal beliefs are to rehab those that can be saved and lock up the ones that can't be for the protection of society. I also support the legalizing at least of substances like marijuana, LSD, and peyote. I consider these harmless. I would still outlaw the likes of meth and stuff that is proven to really really screw up the body and mind bad.

This is a bullshit stance.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

GUYS I SAVED YOU. DON'T TURN DOWN YOUR SAVIOUR.

[Kim]

GUYS I SAVED YOU. DON'T TURN DOWN YOUR SAVIOUR.

The moral of this story is never, ever read Bells' posts.

AHEM

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I don't read anybodies posts but my own (or sometimes posts shorter than a line or two). You guys are amateurs.

[Kim]

I don't read anybodies posts but my own (or sometimes posts shorter than a line or two). You guys are amateurs.

:(

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Maybe if you want me to read your posts you guys should stop bullying me :( :( :( :(

[Kim]

Maybe if you want me to read your posts you guys should stop bullying me :( :( :( :(

no

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Smarty poopy head.

[Revising Ocelot]

This thread is probably unsalvagable at this point.



I beg to differ.




http://i.imgur.com/0hjKr.gif

[Professor Smarmiarty]

no

Fuck you too.

[RobinStarwing]

This is a bullshit stance.



Oh really...really? Explain why it's a bullshit stance in a logical and concise manner with actual evidence that is more than anecdotal please. Explain to me that there is no such thing as ireedeemable monsters in this world with this evidence.

And by monster...I am talking someone who isn't crazy or born with a mental issue but knows the difference between right and wrong but just doesn't care and does horrendous vile shit because they can. Find me evidence that there is no such thing as born evil.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Robin, your points are stupid and nobody can be bothered to explain them. It's like coming into a thread and going "2+2=5, prove otherwise, stop just calling me names". You're being st anupidd nobody can be bothered engaging with it on your (stupid) level.

[Sifright]

Robin, your points are stupid and nobody can be bothered to explain them. It's like coming into a thread and going "2+2=5, prove otherwise, stop just calling me names". You're being st anupidd nobody can be bothered engaging with it on your (stupid) level.

Man robin is hardly the only one doing that.

Like at least a few other posts i've been like.

Thats bullshit let me explain why.. I start writing it and then go "oh fuck this every one can see thats patently bull fuck this i'm outa here"

[Kim]

It's a bullshit stance because all drugs should be legal because sending people to prison for the drugs they consume makes no sense in any reality whatsoever.

[RobinStarwing]

It's a bullshit stance because all drugs should be legal because sending people to prison for the drugs they consume makes no sense in any reality whatsoever.

So drugs like methamphetamine and crack...which have proven dangerous side effects on both the mind and body as well as the production of the former requiring a Hazmat Team and evacuation of the surrounding block or two to clean up with a fire department on hand...should be legalized?

[shiney]

And then we can treat the addictions as a health problem instead of a legal one.

Or you know we can perpetuate the cycle indefinitely, sending addicts to prison where the drugs are every bit as accessible, and give no real support system, and then churn out people who are not rehabilitated in the slightest.

Meth and crack are dangerous, but then they are distributed by criminals because they are illegal. Take the bullets out of the gun.

You are approaching the problem from a criminal perspective. This is part of what's wrong.

As for you Bells, evidently you didn't read my post at all. You are trying to find a silver lining on for-profit prisons. There is no silver lining. Someone is making a profit on someone else's incarceration. This isn't a grey area thing at all. There is no ethical purpose for a for-profit prison, at all. None. Zero. But go ahead and continue to argue that there are merits and benefits to turning a profit by imprisoning someone. This is a path that is gong to end well and people will respect your position a whole lot more if you just insist a little harder.

[Kim]

Yes.

Fun fact: People are less likely to make it in their basements if they aren't at risk of going to prison for trying to get it.

People are more likely to pursue help for its addictive properties if they aren't at risk of going to prison for seeking help.

There is nothing good gained by having it be illegal.

[stefan]

So drugs like methamphetamine and crack...which have proven dangerous side effects on both the mind and body

And this will be solved by prison time how?

[RobinStarwing]

Yes.

Fun fact: People are less likely to make it in their basements if they aren't at risk of going to prison for trying to get it.


Still doesn't fix the issue of how dangerous it is to make nor how toxic use of it and exposure to the production is. I am not going to claim if it's safer to make in a lab seeing as I am not a chemist by any means.

People are more likely to pursue help for its addictive properties if they aren't at risk of going to prison for seeking help.

There is nothing good gained by having it be illegal.

Let me ask you a question...is there anyone in your family who has had to deal with addiction either by being an addict or somehow connected to one?

The Addict has to want to change, it is not about fear of going to prison. It's about Insanity...or doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.

Oh and I say this being the child of addicts...alcohol in my family's case. A purely legal drug if I remember right.

Shiney, this also applies to what you said as well.

Will some people want to change? Yes. Will others refuse too? Yes.

Oh and I still support the illegal/controlled nature of Methamphetamines. If you want a reason...let's go over the effects (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Effects) of them.

Oh and yes, I am well aware of Desoxyephedrine being used to treat ADD/ADHD. This is actually a drug in the four used for Adderall (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adderall). Levomethamphetamine being a nasal decongestant

[shiney]

The addict may find it easier to want to change if admitting they have a problem doesn't mean they're GOING TO JAIL.

e: In a prison that seeks recidivism so it can continue making a profit.

[Jagos]

So drugs like methamphetamine and crack...which have proven dangerous side effects on both the mind and body as well as the production of the former requiring a Hazmat Team and evacuation of the surrounding block or two to clean up with a fire department on hand...should be legalized?

Portugal and the Netherlands decriminalized drugs.

They have very low crime rates and less problems than the US.

We have OD deaths, a War on Brown People, and the same drug problem from the past 40 years.

Your anecdotal evidence of drugs ruling the streets if legalized?

One word: Prohibition

-e- Just another thought on this... If you legalized drugs, people wouldn't be taking the more harmful street versions of legalized stuff. Further, it could be regulated for safer levels with treatment as well.

[Ryong]

Portugal and the Netherlands decriminalized drugs.

They have very low crime rates and less problems than the US.

Did the decriminalization of drugs actually lower the rates or were they always that low? Don't forget about that.

The addict may find it easier to want to change if admitting they have a problem doesn't mean they're GOING TO JAIL.

This, however, is crazy valid.

[Jagos]

Did the decriminalization of drugs actually lower the rates or were they always that low? Don't forget about .

It got lower after being high in the 90s. I think it was 1994 when decriminalization was pursued.

[Bells]

Decriminalization is NOT the same thing as LEGALIZATION.

Decriminalization is ok if DONE RIGHT not just some lazy ass excuse of "it's all good now". This is just shallow thinking. And has a lot of risks that not a single soul here seems to even acknowledge...

Legalization is wrong - right now in our time - because it's also lazy, shallow and proper thought form that belongs to people who have no fucking clue what they are actually advocating.

Yeah... Drugs are completely harmless, right? Any harm it causes, it's you doing to your own body... it's the principle of freedom right? Nobody's business...

...sure... they just come out of thin air right? You just wish them into existence... no no no... you are certainly not giving your money to Drug Cartels and funneling cash into other bigger and much more dangerous criminal activities... of course not! That would be silly to even presume... surely all drugs come from hippies that plant and brew on their own happy little backyards. Y'know... drug user are famously known to be industrious and diligent with their production and supply... You would surely break the legs of all the drug lords and gangs that provide as suppliers if you simply let people do it for themselves... overnight! Might even balance the state budget if you tax it! People love diluted shit at high markup prices... that would totally not ever feed an alternative market.

Of course a drug dealer would NEVER exploit the limits of the law around decriminalization to distribute drugs locally without ever being caught. Criminals never exploit the fine print and limits of the law to build their commerce...

Of course you don't have to look beyond your borders... why bother with an Entire country in Africa whose government is completely comprised and run by South American drug cartels?! Silly to even worry about it... if you simply legalize it you will be taking the cash out of these bad people!! Of course!! There is no way the people who already master and control all the supply and logistics of Drugs from light to heavy could ever use that opening to legally laundry their drug money to funnel it to other stuff... that just never happens!

Sure!! let's give the government control and responsibility to oversee this entire system, cause they sure as fuck do a fantastic job on all that other stuff they do.. right?! Sure there won't be any lobbies trying to get their hands in that... and how much money do drug cartels have really? A couple of million? A couple dozen million? per year? Pocket change! it could never influence and distort such a fine system...

And of course... pricing. The Market for it!! I'm sure the Tobacco industry who at one point was such an unstoppable legal force that would outweigh local government with legal muscle and has been shrunken and been squeezed over the years would NEVER have any sort of interest in working with other legalized narcotics... i mean, people just walk around all day long prancing about the medical wonders and betterment and how safe and harmless most of them are and can be... it's totally not the same as when the tobacco industry would pour loads of cash to promote Cigarrettes as "good for your throat"... i mean, people are doing it for free for them now! where is the fun in that right?

I mean... regulate it, dillute it, mix with other shit approved by the government, tax it... the price will go up sure. But people will go for it... right?

We don't have to worry about it... just legalize it and it will be fine. No need to think about the fine print... let's just stomp our ground and demand what we want, let those who actually do it worry about the details...

I mean, it's not like you can actually focus your money and willpower into improving the safety nets and regulations and prying the industrial interest out of the control over sick people and provide better and more appealing and plentiful facilities to take care of those who actually suffer from their addiction instead of... you know... legalizing shit and hoping it all fits tetris-style. Probably would improve your tax rate though... but who wouldn't want to pay more for that delicious piece of bureaucracy?

But hey... no need for bureaucracy right? You can just copy another country... surely doing the exact same thing a country with a different legal system, different laws, different culture, different individual values, different commerce, different geo-political standings and situations, different global interests, different budget, different political system, different tax code, surrounded by completely different neighbors is going to wield the exact same results... i just know it.

Seriously... All you guys have are a bunch of T-shirt logos. Or you just really care about your own backyard and refuse to acknowledge that the things you want have real problems that no fix was presented for yet... at least not one that can actually work in the real world where everybody actually lives in...

[Jagos]

Bells, the talk about decriminalization in Portugal is about helping people.

Your entire tirade ignores the Netherlands entirely where its legalized.

I want to make this absolutely clear here.

The United States has criminalized ALL drugs for 40 years. We have locked up 2.2 million people for it. Black people have an unemployment rate of 14% because of the War on Drugs. We have over 4 million people that can't vote to change the system.

WE. AS. A. NATION. CAN. NOT. CONTINUE. THE. DRUG. WAR.

We have not stopped the supply nor the demand. We've given grandmas 50 years in prison for their first offense.

Decriminalization is just one path, but it's had great results for that nation. Legalization would eliminate our OD problem and its a reason that I support LEAP.

But saying that the drug war shouldn't be stopped? Read those statistics, then tell me you still support it.

[shiney]

Bells,

Welp...

Read those statistics

about that...

then tell me you still support it.

:rolleyes:

[Kim]

In this thread, Robin confuses anecdote with data to defend systems of oppression while Bells ignores all data that says we should treat people like human beings.

Such wonderful people.

[Grimpond]

robin is the only creature capable of banding the awful together against the greater foe

[Betty Elms]

Yeah... Drugs are completely harmless, right? Any harm it causes, it's you doing to your own body... it's the principle of freedom right? Nobody's business...
Nobody here thinks that and the implying that they do because you don't feel like engaging in meaningful discussion is insulting. You're losing an argument against somebody who doesn't exist.

...sure... they just come out of thin air right? You just wish them into existence... no no no... you are certainly not giving your money to Drug Cartels and funneling cash into other bigger and much more dangerous criminal activities... of course not! That would be silly to even presume... surely all drugs come from hippies that plant and brew on their own happy little backyards. Y'know... drug user are famously known to be industrious and diligent with their production and supply... You would surely break the legs of all the drug lords and gangs that provide as suppliers if you simply let people do it for themselves... overnight! Might even balance the state budget if you tax it! People love diluted shit at high markup prices... that would totally not ever feed an alternative market.
Why the hell would legalized drugs be diluted and more expensive? Everybody knows that you'd have to sell significantly beneath the street price so as to drive criminal dealers out of business. The majority of your hypothetical you engage in after making this point depends on a nonsensical understanding of the economics of legalization and how preexisting gangs would be dealt with, with an overestimation of the stupidity of US senators and representatives (which is apparently a thing that can be done!) tossed in for good measure. But I dunno you seem to pretty strongly believe I don't know what I'm talking about so maybe I should leave this discussion and head on over to the speakeasy.

And of course... pricing. The Market for it!! I'm sure the Tobacco industry who at one point was such an unstoppable legal force that would outweigh local government with legal muscle and has been shrunken and been squeezed over the years would NEVER have any sort of interest in working with other legalized narcotics... i mean, people just walk around all day long prancing about the medical wonders and betterment and how safe and harmless most of them are and can be... it's totally not the same as when the tobacco industry would pour loads of cash to promote Cigarrettes as "good for your throat"...
See, what you're doing here is not quiiiite a straw man argument, since you seem to sincerely believe that arguments in favor of drug legalization are actually a proposal for how exactly in every little minutia drug legalization should work. This is a recurring element to your post, a sort of giddy and overzealous "aha here's something i bet you didn't think of, a great big hole in your argument!" like when I was eight and I thought "wait, why don't we just make one gigantic subway train that has no walls and never stops and you have to jump on, that way nobody would have to wait for the train!"

No shit there would be stringent measures regarding advertising. Do you think drug legalization would get through congress without that? There probably wouldn't even be any traditional wide platform advertising. The reason nobody has really brought this up is because people tend to assume it goes without saying.

edit- some advertising, mostly in the form of pro-drug rhetoric would admittedly get through, 'cause money. It should however be noted that tobacco advertising has very consistently declined since we came to an understanding of the medical effects of the product. To think that entering a host of products we understand very well into the market would be like tobacco in the 1950s would be absurd. Besides, more addiction is absolutely worth the extraordinary increase in efficiency we would have in treatment and the general decrease in the risks of drug use.

I mean, it's not like you can actually focus your money and willpower into improving the safety nets and regulations and prying the industrial interest out of the control over sick people and provide better and more appealing and plentiful facilities to take care of those who actually suffer from their addiction instead of... you know... legalizing shit and hoping it all fits tetris-style. Probably would improve your tax rate though... but who wouldn't want to pay more for that delicious piece of bureaucracy?
The criminalization of drugs results in those suffering from addiction being treated as criminals, and accordingly they do not receive proper rehabilitation. More money should be spent on the facilities and services you refer to, but the amount of good that can be done for addicts is inherently and severely restricted by prohibition.

But hey... no need for bureaucracy right? You can just copy another country... surely doing the exact same thing a country with a different legal system, different laws, different culture, different individual values, different commerce, different geo-political standings and situations, different global interests, different budget, different political system, different tax code, surrounded by completely different neighbors is going to wield the exact same results... i just know it.
See what's most immediately amusing there is that our "neighbors" make drug legalization an even more pressing. Support for prohibition is support for the Mexican Drug War. This is not debatable, the United States is the primary market for Mexican cartels, a market that depends entirely and absolutely upon the prohibition. Our drug laws are the source of their money, their weapons, all of their power, every means by which they were able to cause the deaths of well over 60,000 people in the past six years.

That aside all the "well we can't do that because we're a different country" arguments are just every lazy arbitrary argument ever used to claim that a country shouldn't adopt policies that have been repeatedly proven to work.

But really the fact that you seem to think this is a matter of personal liberty and not a matter of helping addicts in a meaningful way, closing down a violent and tragic route that our society has reserved almost exclusively for the underprivileged, stopping the system that's turned our law enforcement into a tool used primarily to crush lower class communities, and taking responsibility to the destruction the United States has brought to Mexico... really speaks... to the fact... that you.. kind of... sort of... have no idea what you're talking about.

[Betty Elms]

i'm gonna admit right now before it bites me in the ass that i read nothing of this thread other than this page. i'm just presuming that bells hasn't posted before in this thread because i can not possibly fathom how he would be able to maintain his perception of the reasonings behind legalization if he was engaging in an actual back and forth. that would demand a tremendous and embarrassing failure on either his part or the part of everybody he might have argued with, so i'll maintain my respect for all of you by just figuring he popped in here right now having read literally nothing anybody's said.

this is called faith. i learned how to do it by watching life of pi which is just magical guys there's a tiger and its in 3D so its like the tiger jumps out and its all whooosh like im really there in the boat!!

[Sifright]

I'd just like to say, I am Portuguese and can talk about the effects of how decriminalization effected a distant member of my family directly.

He had been suffering from heroin addiction most of life from his teenage years on, there was literally no legal avenue he could get help with out being thrown in jail for a long ass time so he didn't try to. Given that most of my family are also dirt poor we couldn't afford to help him go to any rehab centers that did exist either. Once the Laws were changed portugal started pumping money into rehab centers for people who are *not* just rich millionaires and can get away with breaking the law with out any problems any way.

I'm not going to say it was all sunshine and rainbows for my family member afterwards because it wasn't but he's been clean for over a few years now and before hand he was a pretty heavy user.


See before decriminalization took place in Portugal drugs were a pretty huge problem,Heroin usage and addiction was massive part of this is due to proximity to morocco where the stuff is grown and because of how cheap it was get from there this lead to all kinds of horrible shit like a massive spread in AIDS from used needles.

Since decriminalization has taken place the drug problem has been reduced very significantly in Portugal.

All this is of course anecdotal. On the other hand the stats also favor the position that decriminalization is the best way to deal with the drug problem.

Prohibition doesn't work well sadly, heavy handed regulation would be a better way to go about it.

Edit: fucked up my post, fixed it.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

I hate Betty because she likes terrible films (ironically?) like life of pi but I'm glad people are willing to write shit out to take down the dicks posting. Cause I can only think 2 sentences at a time.

[Osterbaum]

And I just don't even know where to start with countering this stuff.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

That's because you are stupid though.

[Osterbaum]

And you're selectively lazy. I mean, if you spent half the time arguing this shit that you spend arguin The Force and Jedis, you'd have presented plenty of points already.

[Jagos]

Also, just to show my work and my context for the drug war, here's the stats:

http://blackagendareport.com/content/%E2%80%9Cfelony-new-%E2%80%98n-word%E2%80%9D-michelle-alexander-mass-incarceration-%E2%80%9C-new-jim-crow%E2%80%9D-age-obama

[Professor Smarmiarty]

And you're selectively lazy. I mean, if you spent half the time arguing this shit that you spend arguin The Force and Jedis, you'd have presented plenty of points already.

Some things are important.

[Bells]

Nobody here thinks that and the implying that they do because you don't feel like engaging in meaningful discussion is insulting. You're losing an argument against somebody who doesn't exist.

Case in point... "here" .

Although, admittedly, my speaking was towards broader terms than that... i would still argue that is a very, very common view here too... divergent views though.


Why the hell would legalized drugs be diluted and more expensive? Everybody knows that you'd have to sell significantly beneath the street price so as to drive criminal dealers out of business. The majority of your hypothetical you engage in after making this point depends on a nonsensical understanding of the economics of legalization and how preexisting gangs would be dealt with, with an overestimation of the stupidity of US senators and representatives (which is apparently a thing that can be done!) tossed in for good measure. But I dunno you seem to pretty strongly believe I don't know what I'm talking about so maybe I should leave this discussion and head on over to the speakeasy. [quote]

Once you Tax it, create regulations around it, agencies to control it, take into account the Agriculture of cultivating the product, the selling and the commercialization of it all... it`s all cost. It gets shuffled around somewhere. And it ends up with the consumer. And if you really think the only thing that will reach the markets is "100% pure stuff" then you really have not been paying attention to commercialism in the last 100 years man...


[quote]See, what you're doing here is not quiiiite a straw man argument, since you seem to sincerely believe that arguments in favor of drug legalization are actually a proposal for how exactly in every little minutia drug legalization should work. This is a recurring element to your post, a sort of giddy and overzealous "aha here's something i bet you didn't think of, a great big hole in your argument!" like when I was eight and I thought "wait, why don't we just make one gigantic subway train that has no walls and never stops and you have to jump on, that way nobody would have to wait for the train!"

My point is a little unfair on purpose, but not for that reason. There is always more to it than what we can talk about it... there are always details somebody will not think of... in a Web forum dedicated to comics and games nobody is going to expect an in depth thesis on how to solve such big issues... but i also don`t see these issues being acknowledge. QUite often i see them being dismissed without a counterpoint though... as it everything was locked tightly under the head of a pen in the hand of "generic lex luthor" all the time... and it simply does not bring a good conversation forward.

No shit there would be stringent measures regarding advertising. Do you think drug legalization would get through congress without that? There probably wouldn't even be any traditional wide platform advertising. The reason nobody has really brought this up is because people tend to assume it goes without saying.

People tend to assume that it goes without saying that you should have no red tape and pending issues on providing first aid and medical security for 9/11 respondents and Hurricane relief workers... you would think it goes withotu saying that here in Brazil we wouldn`t have to expect young army cadets would steal donations that were provided for families of a huge landslide that killed nearly a thousand people, and that those families would not have to be homeless 2 years later because the local governmental is too incompetent to even clean the rumble yet... but here we are! Sorry, but i`m skeptical.

edit- some advertising, mostly in the form of pro-drug rhetoric would admittedly get through, 'cause money. It should however be noted that tobacco advertising has very consistently declined since we came to an understanding of the medical effects of the product. To think that entering a host of products we understand very well into the market would be like tobacco in the 1950s would be absurd. Besides, more addiction is absolutely worth the extraordinary increase in efficiency we would have in treatment and the general decrease in the risks of drug use.

Except... the general public really does not understand all that well, doesn`t it? Maybe the smaller groups... but this is not a decision that aims at small groups. It`s for everybody! And still, we have studies pro and con going head to head because quite frankly, both sides of the debate are not honest...

The criminalization of drugs results in those suffering from addiction being treated as criminals, and accordingly they do not receive proper rehabilitation. More money should be spent on the facilities and services you refer to, but the amount of good that can be done for addicts is inherently and severely restricted by prohibition.

On that i can just say we probably disagree... i don`t really think you NEED to end prohibition to only then improve the Rehabilitation network.

See what's most immediately amusing there is that our "neighbors" make drug legalization an even more pressing. Support for prohibition is support for the Mexican Drug War. This is not debatable, the United States is the primary market for Mexican cartels, a market that depends entirely and absolutely upon the prohibition. Our drug laws are the source of their money, their weapons, all of their power, every means by which they were able to cause the deaths of well over 60,000 people in the past six years.

And you think they can`t adapt to take advantage of the end of prohibition why exactly? Why would this not simply provide a legal way to laundry Cartel money? Why you think cartels don`t have invested interest in Decriminalization?

That aside all the "well we can't do that because we're a different country" arguments are just every lazy arbitrary argument ever used to claim that a country shouldn't adopt policies that have been repeatedly proven to work.

Not "we can`t do it" but rather that you can`t do the exact same thing and expect the exact same result as a natural conclusion.

But really the fact that you seem to think this is a matter of personal liberty and not a matter of helping addicts in a meaningful way, closing down a violent and tragic route that our society has reserved almost exclusively for the underprivileged, stopping the system that's turned our law enforcement into a tool used primarily to crush lower class communities, and taking responsibility to the destruction the United States has brought to Mexico... really speaks... to the fact... that you.. kind of... sort of... have no idea what you're talking about.

Personal liberty is important. But society is more. In my mind, the collective takes precedent over the individual. And something that has ANY slight possibility to harm many to satisfy a few needs to pass a LOT of scrutiny.

Things right now are not perfect, for many they are not even decent... that does not mean we toss everything out the wind and start anew. That means we locate the problem and improve upon it. That`s why you usually to simply cut stuff off... you replace it with something different and better, and i don`t see right now a better replacement, regardless of how much i would like to support one.

[shiney]

You don't see a better replacement over people being imprisoned unjustly because they got addicted to a substance exclusively provided by criminals?

Do you think that legalization is going to mean that people are just going to be like "Huh, crack? Never tried it, well it's legal now, may as well ignore everything I've ever heard and go get me some addiction!"

Or that, because it's legal, crazies are going to go on crack-fueled shooting rampages or something? What is this nonsense about hurt the many to help the few? Way, way, way more people have been hurt by the prohibition than would be hurt under a legal controlled society. Do you think legalization would result in criminals murdering 60,000+ in six years? Do you think we're going to have millions put in for-profit prisons if drugs are legal or decriminalized? (Fun point: decriminalization doesn't take power away from the cartels because there still is no engine for the legal production of the substances.)

You ignored Betty's points about the effects of the drug war. You ignored Sifright's points about how legalization/decriminalization helped Portugal. I'm sick of this circular argument shit you bring to every discussion where you thoroughly, seemingly purposefully ignore the very salient points made by everyone arguing against you, in seemingly single-minded pursuit of furthering your own agenda, and then when someone provides you with real-world evidence, you then move the goalposts. If this was an american football game it would take in excess of six miles to score a touchdown with the way you play.

At this point I don't know what can be gained from your further continuance of ignoring reality. It's beyond frustrating. In yet another thread, you are literally alone fighting a mountain of evidence. I used to sympathize - I am the person who almost always sides with the underdog, or feels like they need to be shielded to some degree when things get too rough. I felt bad for you in times past when everyone would gang up on you, feeling like maybe you were just misunderstood or that they were being too harsh. This time, I am firmly in support of the viewpoint of you're being a fucking idiot. Absolutely, unequivocally, pants-on-head stupid. And the worst part is it appears you aren't doing it out of ignorance, but literally out of choice.

I don't understand you, and I don't really want to. Personally I think it's best if you avoid serious discussions around here because you've made an ass of yourself one time too many. This isn't a mod statement, because I'm not a mod (I just can't de-admin myself because the damn software won't let me, even after I removed all the founder and super admin flags from the conf file, dammit vB)...this is becoming a very specific, pointed, personal ad-hominem for which realistically I should be punished but I'm beyond the point of giving a damn.

Quit fucking around on this forum and quit being a dick. And quit ignoring reality so you can promote your own insane version of events that has no basis in the same. And quit ignoring empiral evidence that doesn't support your extremely narrow worldview. And while we're on the subject quit implicitly supporting despotic policies that result in the death of thousands for the enrichment of hundreds. You want to talk about the needs of the many vs the few, how about we quit following a path that continues to concentrate money and freedom in the hands of a very few wealthy assholes at the expense of the greater population of the actual world.

Or, you know, insist that everyone else is wrong. That's been working great thus far.

[Sifright]

You know I wouldn't be surprised if bells just flat out doesn't understand the conversation that sparked this topic.

like he was trying to argue for profit prisons would be cheaper which is just logically impossible.

If some one is making money out of the prisoners then logically that money that could be saved using the same methods and stripping out the final person at the end of the chain who makes money from the process.

So you could improve the quality of the prisons by stripping that person out and reinjecting the money into services and quality of living.

Post script: This is one of those posts where I normally go "Bahhhhhhhhh fuck it every one probably already thinks this" and then delete it and don't post.

[RobinStarwing]

Bells, the talk about decriminalization in Portugal is about helping people.

Your entire tirade ignores the Netherlands entirely where its legalized.

I want to make this absolutely clear here.

The United States has criminalized ALL drugs for 40 years. We have locked up 2.2 million people for it. Black people have an unemployment rate of 14% because of the War on Drugs. We have over 4 million people that can't vote to change the system.

WE. AS. A. NATION. CAN. NOT. CONTINUE. THE. DRUG. WAR.

We have not stopped the supply nor the demand. We've given grandmas 50 years in prison for their first offense.

Decriminalization is just one path, but it's had great results for that nation. Legalization would eliminate our OD problem and its a reason that I support LEAP.

But saying that the drug war shouldn't be stopped? Read those statistics, then tell me you still support it.

I'd just like to say, I am Portuguese and can talk about the effects of how decriminalization effected a distant member of my family directly.

He had been suffering from heroin addiction most of life from his teenage years on, there was literally no legal avenue he could get help with out being thrown in jail for a long ass time so he didn't try to. Given that most of my family are also dirt poor we couldn't afford to help him go to any rehab centers that did exist either. Once the Laws were changed portugal started pumping money into rehab centers for people who are *not* just rich millionaires and can get away with breaking the law with out any problems any way.

I'm not going to say it was all sunshine and rainbows for my family member afterwards because it wasn't but he's been clean for over a few years now and before hand he was a pretty heavy user.


See before decriminalization took place in Portugal drugs were a pretty huge problem,Heroin usage and addiction was massive part of this is due to proximity to morocco where the stuff is grown and because of how cheap it was get from there this lead to all kinds of horrible shit like a massive spread in AIDS from used needles.

Since decriminalization has taken place the drug problem has been reduced very significantly in Portugal.

All this is of course anecdotal. On the other hand the stats also favor the position that decriminalization is the best way to deal with the drug problem.

Prohibition doesn't work well sadly, heavy handed regulation would be a better way to go about it.

Edit: fucked up my post, fixed it.

Also, just to show my work and my context for the drug war, here's the stats:

http://blackagendareport.com/content/%E2%80%9Cfelony-new-%E2%80%98n-word%E2%80%9D-michelle-alexander-mass-incarceration-%E2%80%9C-new-jim-crow%E2%80%9D-age-obama

And this is what I wanted to see. Glad someone posted stuff I can back actually. I am actually for at least making it not a crime and even regulating a good portion of drugs as many of these have medicinal value when used correctly and are harmless when used in a more spiritual fashion (Tobacco and Peyote come to mind) to be honest. Would I do it myself? No but I also would rather see people not be forced into jail because someone else decided something was bad...case in point...."Reefer Madness" and the fact that if pot was legalized...the Cigarette Companies would be out of business practically overnight I believe.

robin is the only creature capable of banding the awful together against the greater foe

Yes, especially when Robin was trying to get something for evidence he can back and stop the common sense derailment that has permeated this thread thus far for TWELVE freaking pages.

[Sifright]

All of this ignores the biggest problem with the drug laws.

it's incredibly easy avenue to get people thrown in jail if they are political dissidents because all you have to do is plant some weed on them as you frisk them or search their car.

And before any one argues this wouldn't happen it's already happened multiple times in the US in the last decade.

So yea.. thats also another good reason to abolish those drug laws.

[Bells]

the only person here that needs to take a walk around the block and relax a bit is you... as always it`s the same shit "you don`t accept my views and yours are clearly wrong for reasons beyond time and space so GTFO" yet... no response beyond "this is terrible and you are terrible for it" ever comes... if it does it`s always the fantastic "i wont even dignify that with an answer". High horses all around...

It`s always the same shit... from the exact same people... something is said, never gets an answer, just gets shot down and ignored and then people complain that the answer "was there all along" when in fact... it wasn`t.

And yet, others, come and take own things i`ve said, some prove me wrong and i`m ok with that... others not really, some we just disagree... except with the very specific same people as always that would ban and remove people from discussion the moment they could, for not bending to their "clearly superior knowledge" with your "piles of evidence" that are so livid and vivid you would rather insult someone instead of simply redirecting them to something previously said... a "tactic" by the way, others around here use some times...

The first two lines you wrote Shiney, they show clear as crystal that you didn`t pay attention to a single damn thing i said... as i said earlier, preconceived notions cast in stone... and yet, you are the one to loose your cool. Not unlike the exact same group of people who always loose their cool when a discussion does not go their way cause they don`t ever have to properly explain their points or respond the points of others.... it`s always bend or be terrible.

So, you know what? Out of the two of us? You lost your cool completely and yet haven`t managed to answer back properly a single thing i said... it`s always the same lame ass excuse that "the answer is there... ! Back there!! In the past!!!" and even when there is a direct response to a point made you go around claiming that the same point was "ignored"

It`s dance and the routine is already well know... that`s why i really don`t even bother...

Your frustration is your own fault and i`m not here to moderate you or anybody. But you also have no ground to stand on to moderate or even reprimand me.

You wanna talk? You wanna understand? I never shot down a conversation with anyone... you have. Just now. and in the past. Multiple times. with the same excuses for reasons.

Maybe THAT`S a much more interesting trend to look into than whatever you claim i`m "thinking of" this time...

And i`m not going to hold your blatantly disrespectful and offensive post against you, i would just rather see you argue the point not the person... but they, maybe then you would start complaining about the Tone of my argument....

You need to calm the fuck down, that`s first. And if you want to talk about this or anything else later, i`m not going to turn away... if you don`t want to, then that`s your problem, not mine.

[Sifright]

bells you are blind.

like crazy ass blind.

You are so certain of your ignorance you are refusing to even contemplate others data points or thought constructs.

Talking with you about this is completely impossible until you accept your certainty is not fact.

[Bells]

And this is what I wanted to see. Glad someone posted stuff I can back actually. I am actually for at least making it not a crime and even regulating a good portion of drugs as many of these have medicinal value when used correctly and are harmless when used in a more spiritual fashion (Tobacco and Peyote come to mind) to be honest. Would I do it myself? No but I also would rather see people not be forced into jail because someone else decided something was bad...case in point...."Reefer Madness" and the fact that if pot was legalized...the Cigarette Companies would be out of business practically overnight I believe.

Dude, seriously... "in a more spiritual fashion" what the hell does that even mean? Again, it`s not WHAT you do that will make an impact, but HOW it will be done.. that`s the only line of thought that actually matters, because it's the one that actually generate consequences...

the fact that if pot was legalized...the Cigarette Companies would be out of business practically overnight I believe.

...how? Have you actually thought this through?

All of this ignores the biggest problem with the drug laws.

it's incredibly easy avenue to get people thrown in jail if they are political dissidents because all you have to do is plant some weed on them as you frisk them or search their car.

And before any one argues this wouldn't happen it's already happened multiple times in the US in the last decade.

So yea.. thats also another good reason to abolish those drug laws.

If you simply abolish, you will remove a problem to insert another in it's place... if you REPLACE them with something better, modern, more intelligent, than you might have a point... but this is not the case being presented here at all.


You are so certain of your ignorance you are refusing to even contemplate others data points or thought constructs.

Talking with you about this is completely impossible until you accept your certainty is not fact.

But other`s certainty assumed and unproved beyond "i now it" is completely fine?

I never claimed certainty, i exposed a possibility based on real things and facts... did you noticed that many were posed as questions not as affirmations? Do you think there is only one single-minded way to look at everything and anything and that you can never talk about an issue with more than one perspective? I don`t mind being wrong... better for me knowing i`m wrong, means i learn how to be right... but that doesn`t happen when people go angrily around shouting and stomping and calling names and throwing tantrums with anything more than a "you are wrong cause you are wrong because you dont even know how wrong you are" to back them up.

Do you need it in drawing? Must i spell it out to make it clear that i want to see the other side? No problem... no problem at all. This is me asking over a 12 Page thread... was something i said properly proved wrong with factual evidence posetd in this thread? Could you please point me to where i may see it?

[Sifright]

Decriminalization works. Portugal's culture is very heavily westernized at this point.

It solves a lot of problems and removes a lot factors that foster crimes of all kinds.

So far all you've done is rant about how solutions to currents problems would introduce new problems with out showing how those new problems come about.

Seriously you think cartels would want decriminalization? It would utterly destroy their ability to make money.

also replying to robins posts as if they are indicative of the quality of thought every one else is providing is just Wooooooooooooooooow

Double edit:

are you consciously avoiding looks at the stats people like Jagos provide? because he's doing an awful lot more than you are in regards to actually showing evidence.

[Osterbaum]

Here's a though: maybe when the overwhelming response to your arguments is "that's stupid", it might just be that your arguments were stupid. And maybe these sorts of arguments pop up in our lives so often, that we're tired of it and can't be bothered to lay out a detailed counter argument every time. Maybe we're not experts, but have a firm enough grasp of the topic to have plenty of reasons to suggest why you're wrong. And maybe once people get tired of ignoring the argument or someone else who does feel like posting a lengthier response comes in and provides coherent counter arguments and evidence backing up their claim, and you still keep on moving up the goalpost and inisting on some hypothetical worst case scenarios as valid arguments, then maybe, just maybe it's you who should re-evaluate their position.

e: did you noticed that many were posed as questions not as affirmations?
Right, you're just asking questions man, what's wrong with that?!

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Bells.

5hfYJsQAhl0

People have argued, logically. They have systemically provided responses to your assertions and justified those responses through real world, statistical evidence. Empirical evidence, even. Your responses have been incoherent, they have contained no evidence, no basis, nothing remotely close to a fact. I would go so far as to say they completely lack all fundamental features of an actual argument. Your posts are the rhythmic repetition of an assertion that goes against all logic, reason, data and sheer dumb common goddamn sense.

You are wrong, Bells. This isn't a matter of opinion, there is no subjectivity to the discussion or nuance in the data anymore. You are arguing against the empirical, and apparently doing it because you just don't have anything better to do. The passion and involvement that Sif, Betty, Jagos and many others have for this subject is shown in their posts, in their meticulous attempts to tell you something that should be completely obvious. Yet you reject that, you reject the numbers, you reject the anecdotal, the historical precedent, the circumstance and details that time and time again have been pointed out and completely refute every damn thing you are saying.

Why you are doing that, I don't really know. But it's plain to see that you geniunely don't give a shit about what is actually true. All that matters is that you get to be devil's advocate.

[shiney]

What do you propose to replace with then?

Let's assume you're right. Let's throw aside empirical evidence and offsite links that people have already provided in this thread. Let's live in fantasy land where Bells is right.

What is going to work then? What is going to be something that can be done that isn't just kicking the can down the road? People in this thread have presented workable options that begin to tackle the problems. You are just sitting there with your fingers in your ears saying "It won't work" because "I know it".

If you want to get into the "tone" business, I would gladly take you to task on that. I finally understand everyone who gets pissed at you. You sit there and spout mountains of bullshit and hide behind the thinnest veneer of "I'm not being rude" as if that's some sort of justification toward being wilfully obtuse and refusing to budge even an inch. This isn't a case of people believing their opinions are sacrosanct and that you are just foolish for not agreeing in lockstep. Too often people have admitted their faults and shifted their opinions. But through this thread all you've done is come back with increasingly asinine concern-troll questions and insist that because something won't solve a problem in its entirety, that it's worthless and we need to find a different route.

I never claimed certainty, i exposed a possibility based on real things and facts... did you noticed that many were posed as questions not as affirmations?

Really? The "we're just asking questions" defense? You exposed a possibility based on your interpretation of events, not real things and facts. You exposed that there is a health crisis existing in regards to drugs, but you refused in any sense to propose even in passing, some method to begin tackling the health crisis. People provided proof that decriminalizing it, treating addicts as needing health case instead of imprisonment, and you came back with "Yes! They need health care and we should work on that but not decriminalize." These things are not compatible. You can't go into a hospital and say I'm addicted to crack for two reasons.

1) You will probably get reported to the police

2) It is prohibitively expensive to go to rehab

What's your master plan? What's your master plan for tackling the problem of for-profit prisons? They encourage recidivism because they make more money for each prisoner they hold. Therefore, it is not in their interest to re-habilitate.

What's your master plan for tackling drug addiction in society and in the world? Thus far you've been happy to tell everyone else that everything else won't work. What's your plan? No stupid questions, no hypotheticals. No circular arguments. Start proposing concrete ideas like everyone else.

As for me losing my cool versus you, Mr. Ice in the freezer over here, I'm not about to let you get away with making this an argument about person vs. person. Yes I lost my cool because you are amazingly frustrating. But fine, let's debate the merits.

Decriminalization and legalization has proven net positives, and would cripple the criminal industry that relies on prohibition.

For-profit prisons encourage the unethical treatment of human beings, many of whom suffer because of the aforementioned prohibition.

Quit threadshitting and start proposing concrete alternatives to what has already been stated. Otherwise, I will have to assume the only reason you are in the thread is to contradict what has already been stated by other members.

[Sifright]

In this thread, Robin confuses anecdote with data to defend systems of oppression while Bells ignores all data that says we should treat people like human beings.

Such wonderful people.

I wouldn't treat a dog how some of the US prisons treat their inmates.

like seriously some of the prisoners die from heat stroke in a cell that has six people in it with out access to running water that is 3x5 SQ foot . Like holy shit that can never possibly ever be justified..

[RobinStarwing]

Strangely enough...I was trying to get stuff like Jagos, Betty, and Sifright wrote as aside from Smarty's humorous and short posts (believe it or not I do like the guy)...everything else was just frustrating me trying to read...especially Kim and Bells. Their posts reminded me too much of my soapbox writings about social issues back in 8th Grade that I had to do for my Lang. Arts classes once a week. Only difference between Kim and Bells is that Bells at least tries to argue why you are wrong while ignoring what was said. Kim just lam blasts you as being wrong without anything to show to back her point of view.

Sifs, Jagos, Shiney, and Betty wrote clear and concise arguments based on either empirical data or both anecdotal backed by hard data. Now I do buy into the saying "There are three kinds of lies. Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics" but I can at least use numbers and data like that to form an opinion on something like this.

My Opinion: Rather than making it a criminal offense to do most drugs, regulate them so they can be used for medicinal purposes or make them legal for recreational use like in the case of what Colorado and Washington state did with Marijuana. This alone would take a good portion of the profit out of the cartels and other groups as well as Opium farming that the Taliban use to fund themselves in Afghanistan.

[Jagos]

I don't even know Bells' point anymore...

There are so many tangents that he's blowing away his own argument and pointing fingers at every one else.

I thought he wanted a debate. So I presented why it was wrong to support the drug war. Hell, there's even a moral basis for my argument that it supports torture in prisons.

Yet he's ignoring that just to broad brush anyone arguing against him.

[Bells]

Decriminalization works. Portugal's culture is very heavily westernized at this point.

It solves a lot of problems and removes a lot factors that foster crimes of all kinds.

So far all you've done is rant about how solutions to currents problems would introduce new problems with out showing how those new problems come about.

Seriously you think cartels would want decriminalization? It would utterly destroy their ability to make money.

Decriminalization CAN work i`ve said this myself before. But it depends on HOW it's done. And it must be made clear that Decriminalization is not the same as legalization.

I dont recal right now, but the system is span is somewhat similar to portugal (i don`t recall if it`s spain though) where some good things are done, but the thing that was done there was NOT removal of the law, it was a complete overhaul... a lot of stuff is illegal still, to consumption to cultivation to selling in Portugal. But they created a safety network adequate to take care of the people, squeezed the more problematic parts and then turned potential criminals into potential patients to rehabilitation and treatment. That`s fine! I have no problem with that... if it works and it`s done right!

But where you go about confirming that drug cartels could not adapt to this system? They control the supply, they have the demand... surely the best away to make drug lords get out of your country ti to hurt their profits... that`s a no brainer. But having a strong public policy that helps the people is not the same as negating a strong crime syndicate with legislature... you see? The system is better, but you didn`t remove the problem... maybe you cornered them a bit, bit of you stop there, they will simply go around the fence...

[shiney]

Cartels control almost 100% of the market share because they are criminals, and it is illegal. Do you really think cartels are going to adapt when even bigger players like Phillip-Morris or whomever are in the game? Or people who legally grow their own product without fear of police door-busting? Cartels are going to get crushed right out of town by higher quality, lower-cost, legal alternatives.

The problem isn't the cartels anyway. They are a symptom. This is where you are going wrong. The problem is the drugs are illegal. The cartels exist to fill the void of demand that is created because of the prohibition. Remove the problem, prohibition, and you remove the cartels as a significant problem. Only remove the cartels, while leaving drugs illegal, and you only create new cartels.

Robin: Kim got sick of defending her points to people. She did it for months upon months, and for her troubles only earned moderator ire and a bad reputation, while being detrimental to her mental and physical health. She never should have had to mount a credible argument to say, in short, "treat everyone ethically". That she was pushed so hard to have to PROVE that you are supposed to be nice to people and not discriminate, well I for one can't blame her if she just shows up and says "You're wrong and an idiot" because, the alternative is to get to the point I did a few posts ago, in every argument, because of people who continuously demand more and provide less.

[RobinStarwing]

Robin: Kim got sick of defending her points to people. She did it for months upon months, and for her troubles only earned moderator ire and a bad reputation, while being detrimental to her mental and physical health. She never should have had to mount a credible argument to say, in short, "treat everyone ethically". That she was pushed so hard to have to PROVE that you are supposed to be nice to people and not discriminate, well I for one can't blame her if she just shows up and says "You're wrong and an idiot" because, the alternative is to get to the point I did a few posts ago, in every argument, because of people who continuously demand more and provide less.

That is a good point.

[Bells]

Or you could not snap at everyone all the time and actually take some time to understand that not a single soul here thinks it`s A-OK to discriminate, while Kim herself was making some very toxic non-productive arguments of her own...

But let`s not unfairly discuss people here, let`s try to have a conversation over a point...

Cartels are going to get crushed right out of town by higher quality, lower-cost, legal alternatives.

This is one thing i really don`t understand. Honestly. How can you present this as Empirical fact? This to me is a pipe Dream, i see exactly the opposite coming your way... lower quality, higher price... you honestly believe just because it`s legal that a couple of people will out do in their backyard the Criminal bodies that owns countries and islands? That ship TONS (literally) of supply across the world and that owns entire entire fields to produce the stuff, that use the money to purchase guns and finance criminal actives world wide... you actually think they can be CRUSHED simply because timmy and bobby can now grown pot in their backyard or make legal ecstasy in their kitchen sink?

Seriously, i`m not trying to be facetious about this, can you go in a bit deeper about this one?

You argue for Legalization from what i can see... i'm saying that right now Decriminalization is probably the best we can do... maybe.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

Bells imagine for a second that it's 1933, sometime before December 5th.
You're in North America, specifically the United States of America and you're arguing in favor of keeping prohibition around.

Replace Cartels with Mafia.
Replace drugs with alcohol.
Replace your face with my fist

Other than that, the argument can basically be the same thing. Funny, right?

Imagine, for a second, that you had won that argument. Prohibition stuck around. Or, shit. Alcohol somehow just ended up getting decriminalized instead of legalized.
Would the mafia be any weaker today? Nope. They'd still be selling alcohol because they would still be the only provider of alcohol since decriminalization still precludes the sale of a thing from legal channels.
If you had lost the argument, and history proceeded as we know it, then all of a sudden Mafia influence damn near jumps off the grand canyon because their primary source of income is crushed because the business of the mafia is illegal business, the business where if someone outperforms them the solution isn't to drop prices or cut costs, it's to gun the other motherfucker down! But, funny as it might seem, when it comes to doing stuff legally they get creamed. Their supply chains are inefficient, their costs are ridiculous, purchasing it is risky and most often their product isn't all that good compared to the regular stuff. But they can get away with all that because they're the only ones selling.

But back to prohibition forever world, would people still be getting drunk? Shit yeah. And likely individuals among those getting drunk would be alcoholics, and among them at least a few would probably be looking for some help on that. But Alcoholics Anonymous would have to meet in a goddamn Speakeasy since anywhere the hell else they'd get raided because where the fuck did they get that alcohol they're addicted to hmm?

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Drug cartels are like bored teenagers hitting liquor stores whereas pharmaceutical companies are the mob. I would feel sorry for drug cartels if they became legalised with how hard they would get fucked. This is the proleagues now.

[shiney]

Because their market share is going to be destroyed and they will have to compete in the free market. Because they are criminals, they won't have that option. Their entire supply chain will dry up because I don't know anyone stupid enough to buy from the shady guy on the corner when you can just go to the real actual licensed store and buy your stuff there.

Do you think the cartels are going to suddenly apply for business licenses and try and create a distribution chain through legal avenues that will be competitive against distro chains that already exist for alcohol and tobacco? It's not realistic, even in some of the crazier theories. Yes they exist, yes they would try to do an end-run around this stuff, but ultimately a responsible citizen (which most pot smokers are) would much prefer to buy something from the store, than from DJ Smokesalot.

I mean, out here, when I turned 21 and was able to buy my booze legally, I went to the store and bought booze. I never went back to my "buy booze for me" guy. Don't picture the cartels as these all-powerful conglomerates -- remember that, ultimately, for them to maintain power they need their "buy booze for me" guys at street level, and those guys will lose all of their influence.

[Jagos]

And here's the YouTube where you can find out about the effects of legalization and decriminalization.

LEAP's efforts in stopping prohibition have shown exactly what cartels have done and the first of incarceration on the US:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsk8R_j5zzg

[Ryong]

Just dropping in for:

Do you think the cartels are going to suddenly apply for business licenses and try and create a distribution chain through legal avenues that will be competitive against distro chains that already exist for alcohol and tobacco?

Brazil has a bit of a problem with ( possibly counterfeit ) cigarette contraband. I don't know who expects to buy an already dangerous thing at a tenth of its price and not only expect it to not be terrible, also become a repeat costumer.

[Bells]

Replace your face with my fist


Baby i know deep down inside me you just wanna hug me, stroke my hair and say everything will be alright... what is love? don`t hurt me no more...

As for your parallel with alcohol prohibition on the US, i'm not versed in the subject much beyond movies, so that`s hardly worth shit... but i would suspect that there is a difference in a substance that is created -in- the country against one that mostly come from -outside- the country... i`m not going to say that it totally demolishes your point or anything like that... but why isn't this apples and oranges?

Because their market share is going to be destroyed and they will have to compete in the free market. Because they are criminals, they won't have that option. Their entire supply chain will dry up because I don't know anyone stupid enough to buy from the shady guy on the corner when you can just go to the real actual licensed store and buy your stuff there.

Do you think the cartels are going to suddenly apply for business licenses and try and create a distribution chain through legal avenues that will be competitive against distro chains that already exist for alcohol and tobacco? It's not realistic, even in some of the crazier theories. Yes they exist, yes they would try to do an end-run around this stuff, but ultimately a responsible citizen (which most pot smokers are) would much prefer to buy something from the store, than from DJ Smokesalot.

I mean, out here, when I turned 21 and was able to buy my booze legally, I went to the store and bought booze. I never went back to my "buy booze for me" guy. Don't picture the cartels as these all-powerful conglomerates -- remember that, ultimately, for them to maintain power they need their "buy booze for me" guys at street level, and those guys will lose all of their influence.

I think more in the lines that they would gladly create legal fronts to sell illegal smuggling and contraband of a supply they already have with logistics that are already tailored to go around authorities...

I mean, i wasn't joking around when i mentioned entire countries in Africa run by drug cartels, that`s some real shit that goes on. i`m talking about an entire infrastructure feed in initially by street level selling... this is not some "kony" shit here... you actually have real links between drug smuggling from the 3rd world that ends up supplying parties and street sellers that come back from all sorts of messed up shit... if you want to legalize you actually need some assurance that the money cannot get to those people... that`s one problem. Because right now we don`t have that security.

If you focus on decriminalization, that might not solve that particular problem, but might solve things like super crowded prisons on bogus charges that end up bloating the costs the taxpayer has to invest to keep the system running, when you could use the exact same amount of money to boost your infrastructure to treat with care and dignity the people who WANT help quit the addiction and feel like they are being treated like humans for a change... i get that. But you can`t simply do it... this CAN be done wrong and it would be worst all around.

The Tobacco industry also gave a lesson when they used their legal muscle in their prime to secure their profits, and that was inside a legalized system that was under government control with ever increasing reach and pressure... i just don`t think Drug Cartels are simply going to roll over just cause shit got legalized.

Brazil has a bit of a problem with ( possibly counterfeit ) cigarette contraband. I don't know who expects to buy an already dangerous thing at a tenth of its price and not only expect it to not be terrible, also become a repeat costumer.

And counterfeit Booze... don`t forget the counterfeit booze. And the Beyblade tops...

[Sifright]

bells the current system in USA is so fucked up, reforms at fixing it via decriminilzation CANT make things worse.

USA has the highest incarceration rate of it's population.

That is to say it has put in prison a greater percentage of it's population than any other country in the world.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

As for your parallel with alcohol prohibition on the US, i'm not versed in the subject much beyond movies, so that`s hardly worth shit... but i would suspect that there is a difference in a substance that is created -in- the country against one that mostly come from -outside- the country... i`m not going to say that it totally demolishes your point or anything like that... but why isn't this apples and oranges?


First of all I live in Michigan, our devil's tears came from Canada, we had people crossing the Detroit with fresh stun gravy every damn day.

Second it's not hardly worth shit just because you don't know about it. In fact, you not knowing about it actually kind of speaks to you maybe just stopping right here, because if you don't know jack about the closest parallel in US history then from where do you draw your knowledge? You seem to have little to no perspective on the matters in which you seem to be trying to speak with such authority. So let me educate you. There actually is a difference, in that the problems that the Mafia ran into would be even more extreme. Shipping is phenomenally more complicated for Cartels than it was back then, for sheer distance alone. Then you get into the sophistication the US government now applies to seeking and destroying smuggling operations, and the lack of genuine political influence that cartels can apply.So, everything I'm saying about the mafia getting absolutely crushed applies doubly. Especially given the power and ferocity of the corporate machine in America today.

Yes, things are different. Congratulations! But even the most cursory examination shows that the differences are all applied in ways that directly contradict your point.

[shiney]

Second it's not hardly worth shit just because you don't know about it. In fact, you not knowing about it actually kind of speaks to you maybe just stopping right here, because if you don't know jack about the closest parallel in US history then from where do you draw your knowledge? You seem to have little to no perspective on the matters in which you seem to be trying to speak with such authority.

Second it's not hardly worth shit just because you don't know about it. In fact, you not knowing about it actually kind of speaks to you maybe just stopping right here, because if you don't know jack about the closest parallel in US history then from where do you draw your knowledge? You seem to have little to no perspective on the matters in which you seem to be trying to speak with such authority.

Double QFT with emphasis added because jesus, dude.

[Bells]

i actually meant to say that since the little i know beyond common knowledge and maybe some wikipedia is a couple of movies done about that era, so i would assume that my knowledge wouldn't be much to allow me to see a broader picture beyond what i'm told... not that the actual event and time are meaningless or any thing like that. that being said...

and the lack of genuine political influence that cartels can apply

I'm not sure at all you got a point -there- ... but not be reactionary... apply to what? Where?

...also i`m still waiting on that hug.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

I'm not sure at all you got a point -there- ... but not be reactionary... apply to what? Where?

...Are you kidding me?

[Bells]

or maybe i just didn't understood? honest question, really... "political influence" is a broader term than you might think. And there are multiple areas where you can apply leverage and influence... just trying to follow your train of thought here. Is it just in the US you are talking about? America? North ? South? Globally?

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

What am I talking about?
What would the Cartels ability to apply political pressure in Kazakhstan or basically anywhere else on Earth have to do with legalization of drugs in The United States of America?

[Sifright]

Ughhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

HNNNNNGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Kim]

It is also worth pointing out that the drug war hurts more than people in the US. Drug cartels in Mexico, for example, have the power they do because of US drug policy, and their power makes life worse for people in Mexico.

[Bells]

What am I talking about?
What would the Cartels ability to apply political pressure in Kazakhstan or basically anywhere else on Earth have to do with legalization of drugs in The United States of America?

You mean aside from ways to protect their supply and expand under a international grey umbrella while smuggling to inside the country....?

Dude, Most drugs that circulate in a country are not produce inside that country... i already said this before. The problem is illegal drugs coming in and legal money going out. That`s what you want to prevent. Your country becoming a transit country for illegal drugs and money laundry that use legalization or decriminalization as shields. You might want to think that the government does a pretty good job controlling drug smuggling, and it surely does... just check how much drug gets apprehended on borders and customs... but they are sophisticated too on how they move around.

That`s why i asked regarding the differences between alcohol prohibition in early america and drug prohibition now going forward... because you are no longer dealing with smuggling on the state line, now it's transcontinental. It`s not that i`m ignoring your point or anything. I clearly said that i`m not well versed in the history of alcohol prohibition... but you don't have to to be within borders to operate, most cartels don`t.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

That`s why i asked regarding the differences between alcohol prohibition in early america and drug prohibition now going forward... because you are no longer dealing with smuggling on the state line, now it's transcontinental. It`s not that i`m ignoring your point or anything. I clearly said that i`m not well versed in the history of alcohol prohibition... but you don't have to to be within borders to operate, most cartels don`t.


And how does that support your argument?

[shiney]

Whoa whoa sif.

Whoa.

Elevate your legs.

[Sifright]

Whoa whoa sif.

Whoa.

Elevate your legs.

can't.

to busy dieing in apoplectic fit of incoherent rage and disgust.

also HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGG


Edit:
This conversation totally would have burst another few blood vessels in my eyes if it was done face to face.

Like I can take this pretty chillaxed over the forum i'm mostly joking about my anger but if i had this conversation with some one face to face I dunno man.

[Karrrrrrrrrrrresche]

I thought HNNNNNNNNNNNG was what you did when you saw something so cute it caused you to have a heart attack.

[Bells]

the argument i made on the point you are talking about is that i believe Drug Cartels have much more political influence than you seem to give them credit for...

You dismissed the possibility of political influence being applied in a foreign country affecting how legalization could affect or happen in the USA... you also said that legalization would break the market and supplier power of drug cartels that operate in borders.

What i'm saying that it's not necessarily a fact, since they don't need to influence the local politics in order to have and protect their drugs and they don't have to use the money acquired from that in the same country they sell.

Shell in and protect your structure in another country with political and financial influence, smuggle and distribute, like they already do, across the world, collect cash, return to country of origin.

People prefer to buy in shops and not in shady street corners? Fine, make a legal shop, supply illegal drugs, sell, collect legal profit... you might think it sounds too easy, but in reality is already a thing that happens... not just in the US, worldwide.

as for local influence in the USA, you see that mostly in lobby form... but i don't think you'll see a big "cocaine lobby" around in broad daylight.

the argument here is that simply making it legal does not automatically stop illegal drugs coming in and hundreds of billions in drug profit coming out... -that's- the problem to tackle.

[shiney]

I thought HNNNNNNNNNNNG was what you did when you saw something so cute it caused you to have a heart attack.

It could be one of those pre-mortem hallucination things where he's revisiting his whole life and saw something cute in the flashback and HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG

[Sifright]

I thought HNNNNNNNNNNNG was what you did when you saw something so cute it caused you to have a heart attack.


I dunno I thought that was AWWWWwwwwwwAAAGHHHHHHHHH.

[Bells]

I thought HNNNNNNNNNNNG was what you did when you saw something so cute it caused you to have a heart attack.

Sifright thinks i'm cute? (http://zeroum.loja2.com.br/img/5758dd91733d6850e83c6a1338ab0c8b.png)


EDIT:

Oh fuck... i forgot to say this earlier. @Jagos, dude, sorry i actually did skipped your earlier posts and i see some interesting stuff there. Sorry to dismiss it like that... i can't watch that video now, but will do.

[shiney]

Wow. "Sorry, I skipped the post(s) that provided the very evidence I accused people of not providing. My bad!"

[Sifright]

man like thats a minor thing.

my problem with his latest posts is that he thinks the drug cartels are larger and more powerful than traditional pharmaceuticals because thats just WOW.

The illegal drug trade isn't going to breach the hundreds of billion mark even if you take the entire world into account bells.

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

Fuckin hell, bells. Seriously, man. Know when to bow out gracefully, or short of that just bowing out.

You're making a complete and total ass of yourself on top of creating reasons for the entire goddamn forum to jump your shit, and for good reason.

Edit: Like, I'm kinda in Shiney's boat right now. I've read all 16 pages of this godawful trainwreck of a thread and I tend like the underdog in most cases (WHEN THEY HAVE A COHERENT POINT), but this time it's tantamount to sticking your fingers in your ears going LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA while making spit bubbles in the process, farting, and hoping the smell drives everyone away leaving you the sole victor or....something.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Why do you people use such terrible post per page setting- this is 2 pages. 2 only.

[Sifright]

ITS THREE NOW YOU LIEING LIAR.

[synkr0nized]

Why do you people use such terrible post per page setting- this is 2 pages. 2 only.

This.

Also maybe considering something right now.

[Flarecobra]

Why do you people use such terrible post per page setting- this is 2 pages. 2 only.

Because I hate scrolling.

[Sifright]

Because I hate scrolling.

how is scrolling more painful than clicking the next button 15 times like some of you people are doing??

I mean if you were running on 56k internet i could understand having low post per page count but this aint 1992 any more peoples.

[Jagos]

Have you been on Comcast internet?

[Sifright]

Have you been on Comcast internet?

Are you crazy? I don't use third world Internet facilities!

[Osterbaum]

I'm so used to the 10 posts per page limit. I switched to 20 posts per page, we'll see how this develops from there.

[Sifright]

I'm so used to the 10 posts per page limit. I switched to 20 posts per page, we'll see how this develops from there.

ughhhhhhhhhhhh, oh god i feel another one comi-HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG

[Loyal]

I like 20 posts per page. I get lost easily at sufficiently high PPP counts.

[Magus]

I've had it at the maximum for years now.

EDIT: Oh, man, I just checked. I had it at 40 which must have been the maximum years ago, now it's 80? Upping the ante people

[Osterbaum]

ughhhhhhhhhhhh, oh god i feel another one comi-HNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNG
I'm a reformist man, I take things slow.

[Krylo]

I mean if you were running on 56k internet i could understand having low post per page count but this aint 1992 any more peoples.

Wouldn't the opposite of this be true?

I mean, on 56k, or less with maximum page size, you just like, click, go grab a drink, come back, entire thread is ready to read, while with 10 per you're waiting for it to load every time you click a link.

Also, I like the lower setting because it's easier to find posts in a thread I'm browsing, because I can just remember which page it was on, and click the proper spot.

[synkr0nized]

There's a reason why it's a range of options instead of forcing one upon everyone. If thread position is a key characteristic for something you want to type in your post, reference by the number of posts / the post in question, assuming just quoting isn't relevant. That's consistent for everyone.

[Kim]

fewer posts per page is great cuz i can just skip to the last page, see that it's still the same ol' terrible argument going on and go NOPE

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Do you have such terrible memory that you have to reread your terrible bullshit to know that indeed you did post terrible bullshit

[stefan]

The best part is that even though we all keep saying these threads are terrible bullshit we still keep posting. We're all locked in a sartre-esque hell of our own making.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

My posts are pretty good.

[Krylo]

Nope.

[Amake]

I thought it was a good time to stop posting about when Bells started criticizing the commitment of everyone who says anything, ever. (Post #33.) Now I'm thinking it was already too late then.

[Jagos]

One last thing on the drug stuff

One hour documentary with Morgan Freeman narrating:

http://breakingthetaboo.info/

And that's even more recent stats than my last video.

Come on, who doesn't like Freeman?

[Locke cole]

Come on, who doesn't like Freeman?

Bruce Nolan.

[Sifright]

Morgan Freeman who was john freemans cousin three times removed was one day in an office. He gotted a email and it said that monsters and aliens were attacking his place.

[Locke cole]

And then he deleted it, because he was too busy studying in his was studying laboratoried.

[Flarecobra]

Come on, who doesn't like Freeman?

http://sadpanda.us/images/1357923-O1ZACMV.png

This guy.

[Professor Smarmiarty]

Morgan Freeman ruined Batman.

[Japan]

Certain aspects of capitalism can be pretty cool for some people. That's a pretty vague statement, but about as concise as I could make with a clear conscience.

There are and have always been professions that should never be capitalistic endeavors. Of course in a society like ours (America) every occupation intersects with the market in some degree or another, given current realities this is unavoidable. We all need to eat, and food costs money.

Taking into account that no one will do much of anything for free in America, there have to be definite limits on the application of capitalism in certain professions. If you're selling ipants or t-shirts with pictures of boobs printed on them or what have you then go ahead, let capitalism's frothy juices flow through your business unmitigated and reap the untold treasures of a million poor decisions.

If you, on the other hand, are responsible for the health and safety of the public in any appreciable capacity then yeah... you really shouldn't be trying to optimize your profit margins. The military is a prime example of this, if you made the military a for profit endeavor (lol Haliburton) you'd probably end up with way more dismembered foreign corpses and a bigger tab than you'd ideally want. This is why ultimate badasses like Navy SEALs and Army rangers are a bunch of misguided idealistic macho-machines. If they weren't so batshit crazy they wouldn't take such low paying jobs.

So basically you need self righteous idealistic jerk offs to do the important shit. Once you let a self interested person in on it you've pretty much opened the flood gates to all sorts of distasteful fucked up horrible things. I don't think most people are wired to actually give a shit about the faceless multitudes of people they don't know. Given half a chance, your average American will probably press the "blend" button on the random innocent victim death machine in hopes a brief case full of cash shoots out the prize slot.

(In other words the only people you can trust are the crazy ones.)

[Osterbaum]

We could try producing for use instead of profit.

[Aerozord]

We could try producing for use instead of profit.
we did, it was called communism, their stuff kinda sucked.

[Sifright]

we did, it was called communism, their stuff kinda sucked.

hahahahahaha.

No.

[Kim]

Do we get to have the conversation about how the communist nations weren't really communist again?

[Sifright]

Do we get to have the conversation about how the communist nations weren't really communist again?

that depends do we have to explain that when you have a ruling class that controls and owns everything that a country isn't communist? I mean objectively speaking there was little difference between the 'communist' countries and the democratic ones now.

Everything is still owned and run by a class of 'elites' with ownership and wealth being hereditary.

Edit: on the other hand I guess 'Communist' countries did have less people starving to death so there is that i guess?

[Jagos]

If you want to eliminate capitalism and move to new forms of Socialism, it's going to come at the hands of co-ops.

What Russia did from 1917 - 1980 was Socialism on a macro level. They forgot about the micro which didn't ensure their continued success in the global markets. Even Lenin acknowledged that before his death, that what they had was state capitalism.

Fact is, after looking at what Valve has done with the co-op model along with other co-ops in other states (and Mondragon in Spain) it seems that the micro level is the most important. Having people out of corporate power struggles, building communities, and bring their own boss helps a lot more to ensure employment than the waste of 12 million people out of work while corporate profits remain high from excess profits on other's labor.

[Osterbaum]

Well there is a debate to be had about the exact nature of a socialist/communist/anarchist economic model, but co-ops are certainly interesting. But I might say that as long as they're still forced to compete in a capitalist "free" market, they can not be true (permanent) forces of reform/revolution.

we did, it was called communism, their stuff kinda sucked.
sigh

Aero, just... No.

Like for one thing Communism(/Socialism) does not automatically or exclusively refer to Marxism-Leninism. Furthermore; China is clearly authoritarian capitalist, the USSR (especially under Stalin) certainly did not achieve even it's own ideals of a socialist economy or the political apparatus of a socialist state (ie. Vanguard Party), North-Korea is just a crazy dictatorship (also poor as shit) and then I don't really know much details about Cuba and Vietnam, but both of them are relatively small and poor countries and basically forced to be part of a capitalist market.

e: Wikipedia actually has a fairly good quote on the failings of Marxism-Leninism in the USSR:
Because Marxism-Leninism has historically only been the state ideology of countries who were economically undeveloped prior to socialist revolution (or whose economies were nearly obliterated by war, such as the German Democratic Republic), the primary goal before achieving full communism was the development of socialism in itself. Such was the case in the Soviet Union, where the economy was largely agrarian and urban industry was in a primitive stage. To develop socialism, the economy went through a period of massive industrialisation, in which much of the peasant population moved into urban areas while those remaining in the rural areas began working in the new collective agricultural system. Since the mid-1930s, Marxism-Leninism has advocated a socialist consumer society based upon egalitarianism, asceticism, and self-sacrifice.[26] Previous attempts to replace the consumer society as derived from capitalism with a non-consumerist society failed and in the mid-1930s permitted a consumer society, a major change from traditional Marxism's anti-market and anti-consumerist theories.[26] These reforms were promoted to encourage materialism and acquisitiveness in order to stimulate economic growth.[26] This pro-consumerist policy has been advanced on the lines of "industrial pragmatism" as it advances economic progress through bolstering industrialization.[27]

And then there are currents that partly or completely reject some or all of the ideas of Leninism, like anarcho-communism and council communism.

[Sifright]

Well there is a debate to be had about the exact nature of a socialist/communist/anarchist economic model, but co-ops are certainly interesting. But I might say that as long as they're still forced to compete in a capitalist "free" market, they can not be true (permanent) forces of reform/revolution.


sigh

Aero, just... No.

Like for one thing Communism(/Socialism) does not automatically or exclusively refer to Marxism-Leninism. Furthermore; China is clearly authoritarian capitalist, the USSR (especially under Stalin) certainly did not achieve even it's own ideals of a socialist economy or the political apparatus of a socialist state (ie. Vanguard Party), North-Korea is just a crazy dictatorship (also poor as shit) and then I don't really know much details about Cuba and Vietnam, but both of them are relatively small and poor countries and basically forced to be part of a capitalist market.


I'm pretty sure

Hahahahaha,

No.

answers aeros post well enough but its always nice to get more :dance:

[Osterbaum]

I was just bored enough generally to actually be bothered with writing a more detailed response.