What are prisons for?

[DrZoidberg]

Glad you came out a better person. I've been felony free since 2003, so apparently for some people the system does work in a screwed up way. I never had a Zen moment but I got better at drawing and reading. I finished a few books all the way to the end. They would let us order books if they were sent directly from the publisher. In my experience, prisons are for breaking the hearts of Mothers. That is ultimately the worst part of the punishment in my opinion. I'm not a criminal and I'm not proud of having done what I did, which btw was nonviolent.

interesting. i'm a stone cold criminal. while also being a reasonably devout buddhist. not, mind you, that criminal activities make up a significant portion of my life, but that it's always there. looking for ways to benefit by breaking rules and getting away with it. like bagging up avocados at mal-wart, going to self checkout and entering '4011' - avocadoes, $.65/lb!. there is no guilt associated with this - corporations are not people and they do not have the right to own anything. i'd never steal from a person, except as counting coup. when i see mal-wart, i see my class enemy. consumer capitaiism is a disease. taking thing from corporations is fine, like harvesting fruit, so long as greed isn't the motivation. oh, and the war on drugs is a war of terror and oppression conducted by the government against its own citizens. i'm diabetic, so i can buy needles and i hand them out to iv drug users.

see, in the 90s i was a raverat. i got tired of my friends getting bum pills, so i set up an MDMA lab and gave away the results. i got caught redhanded and got off on an invalid search warrant. six years ago i dropped out of a phd program in epidemiology - i lost hope. i tried to kill myself with a rifle, and accidentally frightened a cop in the process. for this, i spent two years in a maximum security prison.

i learned my lesson - so long as you keep fighting, it's all good. it's when you give up that the jackals get you

Do you think prison was necessary for you to mend your ways? Was there some other method that might have been just as effective? Also, setting up a MDMA lab and giving away the results is only a crime in the legal sense. It certainly isn't an ethical breach. You say you learned your lesson. What lesson was that exactly?

 

[Bomb#20]

No, he did not. The point you are repeatedly missing is that when somebody says X, and you have forty-seven other premises that when combined with X let you derive Y, that does not mean the guy said Y. It is a reasoning error on your part to conclude that he did so, no matter how strongly you believe your forty-seven other premises, and even if all those premises are correct! To know whether skepticalbip was saying Y, you need to reason from his beliefs, not from yours. This is elementary logic. You are being irrational.

What other forty-seven other premises? Name one.

Good god, where to even begin. At the beginning, I guess. One of your premises is that

"laws are designed around protecting rich white people's property and the laws are designed around redefining their stealing so that it's legal, while poor people crime is judged as harshly as possible. What is known as security theatre. The goal isn't to protect people, it's to make people feel safe, in spite of not being protected at all"​

is equivalent to

"the system is stacked against poor people. That's why there are more poor people in jail than rich people"​

It is painfully obvious that we could have more poor people in jail due to a system being stacked against them without the system having been designed around doing that at all, let alone designed to legalize stealing by rich people. The notion that your second formulation qualifies as an argument for your first is just retarded. You attribute to malice the results of accidents of history and circumstance.

This is a pattern with you: you offer multiple variations on your contentions, you make believe they're equivalent statements, and then when somebody raises an objection to one of them you make believe he said it in response to a different one. Stop doing that.

Here's another of your forty-seven:

SB: How the hell did you shift from imprisoning people who kill, rob, beat, rape, etc. others (generally of the same wealth and race) to a "class struggle"? The fact that someone in my city has much, much more wealth than I does not grant me the right to rob my neighbor's home, physically assault my neighbor, or rape his daughter.

DZ: Because it's the same subject. You can't separate them.​

No, you can't separate them. skepticalbip very obviously can separate them. The opinion that they're the same subject is your premise, not his. When you rely on your premise rather than his premise to get to "Are you somehow claiming that blacks are somehow inferior to whites? Physically or mentally? That is what you are saying isn't it?" -- i.e. to draw an inference about what he is somehow claiming -- you are not merely being a complete dick. You are also being a complete idiot.

I remind you that the topic is whether or not class differences can explain why poor people are more criminally inclined than rich people.

Another premise you appear to be assuming is that "explain why poor people are more criminally inclined than rich people" means the same thing to SB as it means to you. Neither of you really appear to mean "class differences are one of the elements in a web of indirect cause and effect that led to the outcome". You talk as though it means something along the lines of "Crime by poor people is rich people's fault"; SB talks as though it means "Poor people commit crimes because poverty makes it their best option."

(Incidentally, "the" topic? There are a lot of topics under discussion here. You deciding one of them is "the" topic doesn't make the other topics go away and doesn't magically mean somebody else's statement was intended as a comment on whichever topic you label "the".)

Incidentally, where the devil do you think you saw him deny class differences being the cause of continued black impoverishment? That looks like yet another thing you made up and imputed to him based on combining something he said with some more of your unstated and probably poorly thought out premises. I don't see anywhere where he offered an opinion on causes of black poverty.

Here he did:

http://talkfreethought.org/showthread.php?7777-What-are-prisons-for&p=270608&viewfull=1#post270608

What planet are you on? He didn't say a single thing in that post about causes of black poverty, or about causes of poverty, or about black people.

Here's another post where he demonstrates his lack of understanding of how class theory works. Yes, I'm aware this is an attempt at sarcasm but the fact that he attributes these things to me shows that he doesn't understand even the most fundamental aspect of it.

If he doesn't understand how class theory works, then when you make inferences about what he means by his replies to you, you should bloody well stop relying on the premise that his answer is a reply to what you meant. It's probably a reply to what his class-theory-misunderstanding mind mistakenly thinks your words mean.

(By the way, what is the most fundamental aspect of class theory? That posts that don't say a bloody word about the subject are actually claims that black poverty is not caused by class differences, provided class theorists say they are?)

Surely in the course of your superb mastery of English you've encountered the phrase "unintended consequences"? ... Rich people do not get lighter punishments than poor people because the laws are designed to be mean to poor people but because rich people can afford better lawyers. Duh!

Let's agree to disagree. Also irrelevant to the OP. So we can drop this.

Suit yourself; but the OP topic is "What are prisons for?", and you appear to be contending that they're for enforcing laws designed to hurt poor people on behalf of the Martha Stewarts of the world. Seems to me pointing out that you are mistaken about what prisons are for is on-topic.

Rich people are more likely to recover from diseases than poor people. Are you denying this? Do you think that makes it okay for me to go around saying "DrZoidberg says the medical profession is designed around killing blacks."?

I'm aware you're trying to be funny.

No, I'm not trying to be funny. I'm trying to bludgeon you into putting yourself in the shoes of the people you insult. My hope is that at some point you'll realize you're being unfair to them, and switch from ad hominem rhetoric to reasoned discussion. Maybe then one of them will be able to get through to you and you'll change your mind about one of your many wrong opinions.

So of course not.

So since it wouldn't be okay for me to do it to you, it's not okay for you to do it to others. See how it works?

But the fact that rich people are healthier than poor people does effect their performance in the market. We're more willing to hire somebody who is healthy than sick. This is an example of how class differences work. Since black people are on average less wealthy than white people the result is that they will be less healthy, on average. This is the way class differences operate. It's a perpetuating cycle. You could argue that this system, or not trying to fix this system, is somehow beneficial for society as a whole. But I think it'll be difficult to argue that this isn't how society functions.

So what the hell is so hard about saying that instead of saying "Are you somehow claiming that blacks are somehow inferior to whites?"?

Class theory is fundamentally the pretty banal observation that it's better to be rich than poor. Which is so obvious that I fail to see how anybody could argue against it?

It is so obvious, actually, that skepticalbip was probably not in fact arguing against the hypothesis that it's better to be rich than poor. So relying on your own premise that whatever you said that he's arguing against really was equivalent to "it's better to be rich than poor" is not a sensible way to try to have a reasoned discussion. If you think that's what what you said means, you need to reread your own statements and apply some critical thought to them.

 

[tantric]

interesting. i'm a stone cold criminal. while also being a reasonably devout buddhist. not, mind you, that criminal activities make up a significant portion of my life, but that it's always there. looking for ways to benefit by breaking rules and getting away with it. like bagging up avocados at mal-wart, going to self checkout and entering '4011' - avocadoes, $.65/lb!. there is no guilt associated with this - corporations are not people and they do not have the right to own anything. i'd never steal from a person, except as counting coup. when i see mal-wart, i see my class enemy. consumer capitaiism is a disease. taking thing from corporations is fine, like harvesting fruit, so long as greed isn't the motivation. oh, and the war on drugs is a war of terror and oppression conducted by the government against its own citizens. i'm diabetic, so i can buy needles and i hand them out to iv drug users.

see, in the 90s i was a raverat. i got tired of my friends getting bum pills, so i set up an MDMA lab and gave away the results. i got caught redhanded and got off on an invalid search warrant. six years ago i dropped out of a phd program in epidemiology - i lost hope. i tried to kill myself with a rifle, and accidentally frightened a cop in the process. for this, i spent two years in a maximum security prison.

i learned my lesson - so long as you keep fighting, it's all good. it's when you give up that the jackals get you

Do you think prison was necessary for you to mend your ways? Was there some other method that might have been just as effective? Also, setting up a MDMA lab and giving away the results is only a crime in the legal sense. It certainly isn't an ethical breach. You say you learned your lesson. What lesson was that exactly?

mend my ways? i went into prison as a phd candidate in epidemiology with a bright future at the cdc. now, i'm a criminal. playing by the rules didn't work, so i'm trying something else. my major crime now is growing and selling high end veggies on the gray market (unreported income) but i accept that for the rest of my life i'll survive by hustle, ghetto style. prison taught me discipline and loyalty - it was intended to destroy me. i did it with zen instead. 'a crime only in the legal sense' - what's it like on your planet? ;-) i'm always ethical - i'm an engaged buddhist. karma is the #1 thing that got me through prison - i just did the right thing, and shit worked out.

my lesson: if you fight the good fight, be bold and true, karma takes care of you, even if what you get isn't what you expected (see Cosmic Love #9). when you quit fighting, just lay down and die, that's when the shit hits you.

for another1 - my alternative to prison is beating the smack out of people, or public humiliation. either would be more humane.

 

[DrZoidberg]

What other forty-seven other premises? Name one.

Good god, where to even begin. At the beginning, I guess. One of your premises is that

"laws are designed around protecting rich white people's property and the laws are designed around redefining their stealing so that it's legal, while poor people crime is judged as harshly as possible. What is known as security theatre. The goal isn't to protect people, it's to make people feel safe, in spite of not being protected at all"​

is equivalent to

"the system is stacked against poor people. That's why there are more poor people in jail than rich people"​

The first is tongue-in-cheek. I've already explained this once. I personally think it's an obvious exaggeration. So no they're not equivalent. The second is a factually correct statement.

It is painfully obvious that we could have more poor people in jail due to a system being stacked against them without the system having been designed around doing that at all, let alone designed to legalize stealing by rich people. The notion that your second formulation qualifies as an argument for your first is just retarded. You attribute to malice the results of accidents of history and circumstance.

Let's agree to disagree. As far as I'm concerned, the disparity of numbers is evidence of a systems failure. Could be in any part of the civic system. But that is evidence that we (society) don't care as much about poor people than rich people. I believe the old adage, we judge the merits of society on how it treats it's weakest members. I also challenge the core of your argument. I'd argue we treat crime of poor people more harshly simply because they are poor (ie have low social status). Somebody with low social status will have a harder time getting sympathy for anything (compared to more well off people).

This is a pattern with you: you offer multiple variations on your contentions, you make believe they're equivalent statements, and then when somebody raises an objection to one of them you make believe he said it in response to a different one. Stop doing that.

Interesting. Thanks for pointing it out. I'm not sure if you're correct. I'll keep that in mind in the future and if I catch myself I'll stop.

Here's another of your forty-seven:

SB: How the hell did you shift from imprisoning people who kill, rob, beat, rape, etc. others (generally of the same wealth and race) to a "class struggle"? The fact that someone in my city has much, much more wealth than I does not grant me the right to rob my neighbor's home, physically assault my neighbor, or rape his daughter.

DZ: Because it's the same subject. You can't separate them.​

No, you can't separate them. skepticalbip very obviously can separate them. The opinion that they're the same subject is your premise, not his. When you rely on your premise rather than his premise to get to "Are you somehow claiming that blacks are somehow inferior to whites? Physically or mentally? That is what you are saying isn't it?" -- i.e. to draw an inference about what he is somehow claiming -- you are not merely being a complete dick. You are also being a complete idiot.

Ehe... what? How did you not just argue against yourself here and defeat your own argument? Black people ARE more often in jail than white people. That's just a fact. There's no arguing that can make that fact go away.

I remind you that the topic is whether or not class differences can explain why poor people are more criminally inclined than rich people.

Another premise you appear to be assuming is that "explain why poor people are more criminally inclined than rich people" means the same thing to SB as it means to you. Neither of you really appear to mean "class differences are one of the elements in a web of indirect cause and effect that led to the outcome". You talk as though it means something along the lines of "Crime by poor people is rich people's fault"; SB talks as though it means "Poor people commit crimes because poverty makes it their best option."

Exactly. Another word for that is class differences. The fact that people of different social classes face different types of struggles mean that they will behave differently. For reasons (we disagree about) lower class people are more likely to end up in jail. But the fact that they do, is evidence of social class being a factor.

you appear to be contending that they're for enforcing laws designed to hurt poor people on behalf of the Martha Stewarts of the world. Seems to me pointing out that you are mistaken about what prisons are for is on-topic.

Systems do what systems do. Put shit in one end some other shit comes out the other end. The fact that poor people are more likely to end up in jail means that this is the intent of the system. That intent may be explicit or implicit. But if there's a systematic bias toward something and we're not fixing it then it's by design. You can argue that we're better off with this system somehow, but reality is reality.

No, I'm not trying to be funny. I'm trying to bludgeon you into putting yourself in the shoes of the people you insult. My hope is that at some point you'll realize you're being unfair to them, and switch from ad hominem rhetoric to reasoned discussion. Maybe then one of them will be able to get through to you and you'll change your mind about one of your many wrong opinions.

I'm sorry, but SB did it to himself. He said something he hadn't thought through and I made him aware of his logical blunder. Pointing out someone's logical fuck-up isn't Ad Hominem. Ad Hominim is a logical fallacy. You're not using the word correctly. Pointing out someone's flawed logic may be insulting. I'm sorry about that. But the implication of what he said was so severe (ie racist) that I felt I couldn't just let it slide. I don't think SB is racist. But he did say something with a racist implication. I chose to assume it was by mistake. Therefore the question of his racism rather than a statement of it.

So what the hell is so hard about saying that instead of saying "Are you somehow claiming that blacks are somehow inferior to whites?"?

I could have. The one I wrote is more pithy.

Class theory is fundamentally the pretty banal observation that it's better to be rich than poor. Which is so obvious that I fail to see how anybody could argue against it?

It is so obvious, actually, that skepticalbip was probably not in fact arguing against the hypothesis that it's better to be rich than poor. So relying on your own premise that whatever you said that he's arguing against really was equivalent to "it's better to be rich than poor" is not a sensible way to try to have a reasoned discussion. If you think that's what what you said means, you need to reread your own statements and apply some critical thought to them.

I'm trying to simplify class theory more and more for you to understand what I'm saying. A problem with simplification that details gets lost. Taking an extreme simplification and point out that it has less nuances than a more fleshed out explanation and say that I'm wrong.... well... duh. Of course the simplification has less nuances. Yet sometimes it's necessary for pedagogical reasons.

 

[tantric]

it has come to my attention that every revolutionary starts as a criminal - and that america is a nation of the lumpenproletariat.

 

[iolo]

it has come to my attention that every revolutionary starts as a criminal - and that america is a nation of the lumpenproletariat.

Depends on the law current, I suppose - and America is a plutocracy building up to a civil war, as far as appearances go.

 

[DrZoidberg]

Do you think prison was necessary for you to mend your ways? Was there some other method that might have been just as effective? Also, setting up a MDMA lab and giving away the results is only a crime in the legal sense. It certainly isn't an ethical breach. You say you learned your lesson. What lesson was that exactly?

mend my ways? i went into prison as a phd candidate in epidemiology with a bright future at the cdc. now, i'm a criminal. playing by the rules didn't work, so i'm trying something else. my major crime now is growing and selling high end veggies on the gray market (unreported income) but i accept that for the rest of my life i'll survive by hustle, ghetto style. prison taught me discipline and loyalty - it was intended to destroy me. i did it with zen instead. 'a crime only in the legal sense' - what's it like on your planet? ;-) i'm always ethical - i'm an engaged buddhist. karma is the #1 thing that got me through prison - i just did the right thing, and shit worked out.

my lesson: if you fight the good fight, be bold and true, karma takes care of you, even if what you get isn't what you expected (see Cosmic Love #9). when you quit fighting, just lay down and die, that's when the shit hits you.

I think you're confirming what they said in the seminar. What is the goal of punishment. It's to give people incentives to take more productive routes with their lives. It clearly didn't work in your case. I'm not knocking what you do for a living. But seem from the perspective of society, the world is better off with a doctor of epidemiology than a veggie salesman. We don't have enough scientists. We do have more low skilled workers than we need. Whatever criminal punishment does, it shouldn't be messing up people's non-criminal careers. That's the mechanic that perpetuates a criminal lifestyle.

I'm happy you made the best of it and made your experiences work for you. But you might have had the same epiphanies as a doctor of epidemiology. And that would have been a win-win for everybody.

for another1 - my alternative to prison is beating the smack out of people, or public humiliation. either would be more humane.

They also talked about that in the seminar. We have an illusion that prison is a humane punishment. All we've done is hide it from the public's eye. They did mention that corporal punishment is a lot less psychologically damaging than prison. Which I think is counter-intuitive. But there's research to back it up.

 

[tantric]

don't get me wrong - i'm pretty bitter about my aborted career in science. i'd love to finish my phd, hell, i'd love to finish my dissertation (multiple parasite infections in deer, modelling the host as an ecosystem). honestly, if i could live in conditions like i did in the workers dorm and do science instead of making street signs, i'd sign up in a minute - assuming freedom, but i mean the room&board instead of pay. but i can't. my religion, and only that, keeps me from becoming some kind of unibomber/terrorist. i deal with it by being a *good* criminal. i steal from mal-wart and give the food to the homeless, etc. i help my people - i buy syringes (i'm diabetic) for IV drug users. little stuff like that. nothing like what i did in the 90s with the lab and giving it away (which nearly got me killed). if you have any suggestions, i'm all ears.

 

[DrZoidberg]

don't get me wrong - i'm pretty bitter about my aborted career in science. i'd love to finish my phd, hell, i'd love to finish my dissertation (multiple parasite infections in deer, modelling the host as an ecosystem). honestly, if i could live in conditions like i did in the workers dorm and do science instead of making street signs, i'd sign up in a minute - assuming freedom, but i mean the room&board instead of pay. but i can't. my religion, and only that, keeps me from becoming some kind of unibomber/terrorist. i deal with it by being a *good* criminal. i steal from mal-wart and give the food to the homeless, etc. i help my people - i buy syringes (i'm diabetic) for IV drug users. little stuff like that. nothing like what i did in the 90s with the lab and giving it away (which nearly got me killed). if you have any suggestions, i'm all ears.

But why are you doing all that? It sounds to me like some sort of compulsive transgressive trait? Maybe something to talk to a therapist about? To me it looks like you're constantly skirting trouble. What does doing that do to you psychologically? What psychological hole is it filling, so-to-speak?

BTW, I also provide heroin addicts with clean needles. It's illegal here. But Sweden is the only country in Europe with a Hep C and HIV epidemic among our needle drug users. Also the only country trying to prevent them getting access to clean needles. That got me so angry that I joined a network of people doing it. I'm just paying money to them. So I'm not doing any actual work. But good on you. I can't imagine how horrible it must be to be that heavily into drugs. I'd at least like to do my part so life isn't worse for them.

 

[tantric]

at one point, when i was still in grad school, me and some other hippies where sitting around the break room with some gradstudents. we got to talking about mal-wart, and i said that they were no longer prosecuting people for shoplifting if the value is less than $100. the gradstudent turned on me and said, 'why would you steal from mal-wart, doesn't it just drive down the wages of the employees?'. i thought about it and replied, 'thing about mal-wart is, i ought to burn the MF to the ground. consumer capitalism is an abomination. but that would likely interfere with my personal freedom. so i steal - a nigga gotta do something!'. cue hippie laughter

does that help you to understand? i'm not on the same 'side' as western civilization. how about this - when i was a night cashier at kroger, it was my job to throw all the rotisserie chickens in the dumpster at 1am. instead, i gave them away to customers who used foodstamps or such. one lady, old black lady face full of wrinkles, actually teared up, said, 'you're doing the lord's work'. lord buddha, but why quibble. would you throw them in the dumpster?

we are rats in the walls of the houses of men. we take their garbage and use it to survive and they despise us for it, but it is what it is. when the dominant species on this planet is creating garbage at an exponentially increasing rate, scavenger is a survival strategy. we aren't warriors, we aren't proud, but no one fights like a cornered rat. that's because we only fight when we have nothing left to lose, then it's all or nothing. only difference is that we don't overpopulate - we know that's suicide. so we hide, and we're meek...will we inherit the earth? well, that presupposes that someone currently owns the earth, which is insupportable, and that furthermore someone must die for us to have it. no, we are the meek, and we will salvage this earth, because we have no choice, it's do or die and this is who we are. rats.

- - - Updated - - -

at one point, when i was still in grad school, me and some other hippies where sitting around the break room with some gradstudents. we got to talking about mal-wart, and i said that they were no longer prosecuting people for shoplifting if the value is less than $100. the gradstudent turned on me and said, 'why would you steal from mal-wart, doesn't it just drive down the wages of the employees?'. i thought about it and replied, 'thing about mal-wart is, i ought to burn the MF to the ground. consumer capitalism is an abomination. but that would likely interfere with my personal freedom. so i steal - a nigga gotta do something!'. cue hippie laughter

does that help you to understand? i'm not on the same 'side' as western civilization. how about this - when i was a night cashier at kroger, it was my job to throw all the rotisserie chickens in the dumpster at 1am. instead, i gave them away to customers who used foodstamps or such. one lady, old black lady face full of wrinkles, actually teared up, said, 'you're doing the lord's work'. lord buddha, but why quibble. would you throw them in the dumpster?

we are rats in the walls of the houses of men. we take their garbage and use it to survive and they despise us for it, but it is what it is. when the dominant species on this planet is creating garbage at an exponentially increasing rate, scavenger is a survival strategy. we aren't warriors, we aren't proud, but no one fights like a cornered rat. that's because we only fight when we have nothing left to lose, then it's all or nothing. only difference is that we don't overpopulate - we know that's suicide. so we hide, and we're meek...will we inherit the earth? well, that presupposes that someone currently owns the earth, which is insupportable, and that furthermore someone must die for us to have it. no, we are the meek, and we will salvage this earth, because we have no choice, it's do or die and this is who we are. rats.

 

[DrZoidberg]

at one point, when i was still in grad school, me and some other hippies where sitting around the break room with some gradstudents. we got to talking about mal-wart, and i said that they were no longer prosecuting people for shoplifting if the value is less than $100. the gradstudent turned on me and said, 'why would you steal from mal-wart, doesn't it just drive down the wages of the employees?'. i thought about it and replied, 'thing about mal-wart is, i ought to burn the MF to the ground. consumer capitalism is an abomination. but that would likely interfere with my personal freedom. so i steal - a nigga gotta do something!'. cue hippie laughter

I understand the emotional satsifaction. You're not actually "sticking it to the man". People stealing from shops just goes into the "expenses" column. If they become bankrupt whatever new shop to replace it will try to learn from WM's example and push wages even further down, to avoid the same fate.

I put this in the category of things like recycling paper. Absolutely worthless if your goal is to save the planet. But people still like to recycle paper because it makes them feel better about themselves.

But surely you can separate the emotional satisfaction from the factual result?

does that help you to understand? i'm not on the same 'side' as western civilization. how about this - when i was a night cashier at kroger, it was my job to throw all the rotisserie chickens in the dumpster at 1am. instead, i gave them away to customers who used foodstamps or such. one lady, old black lady face full of wrinkles, actually teared up, said, 'you're doing the lord's work'. lord buddha, but why quibble. would you throw them in the dumpster?

But that really does no harm to the shop. I'm sure your boss wouldn't really care that much. Not really. Most of these rules are just "rules".