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raziel365 Anka Aquila from South of the Far West (Veteran) Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
Anka Aquila
#266951: Jan 13th 2019 at 5:48:46 PM

@ Ultimatum

Honestly, China is a worrisome player in the world that shouldn't have come as far as it did with their abysmal track record, at least the US can correct itself (sooner or later), but I doubt that Xi Jinping is going to abandon his project of repositioning China as the prime power to which all other countries bow to, like in the old days.

On the other hand, despite being harming to the US, it could be a way for them to regain some of the lost confidence of the international community if they handle it from the humanitarian perspective; at the very least, it would come off as more even than the current embargo against Cuba.

Finally, is there really any other way to send a message with meaningful impact on China that wouldn't hurt the US as well? So far, the reason nobody does anything is because the economy of the world has become so interconnected that making a move will have repercussions on your country, but that still doesn't mean that something can't to be done.

Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.
fruitpork Since: Oct, 2010
#266952: Jan 13th 2019 at 5:49:18 PM

Isn’t China constantly teetering on economic disaster?

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#266953: Jan 13th 2019 at 5:52:04 PM

[up]A state-run economy can be surprisingly effective when it comes to slapping on bandaids. Until it suddenly isn't.

That's the real issue China's economy is facing. It can plug up or hush up its problems, but it's struggling to figure out a way to fix the root of the problems and actually progress. And of course it's complicated further by the fact that a lot of China's bigshots are corrupt grifter shitbags who don't want more regulations and reforms that might deprive them of a few precious renminbi.

Edited by M84 on Jan 13th 2019 at 9:54:12 PM

Disgusted, but not surprised
raziel365 Anka Aquila from South of the Far West (Veteran) Relationship Status: I've been dreaming of True Love's Kiss
Anka Aquila
#266954: Jan 13th 2019 at 5:56:03 PM

I remember reading that, indeed, their position is actually precarious, but the current economical model of Fiat currency can allow them to maintain their position so long as they can project a solid image to the world.

Instead of focusing on relatives that divide us, we should find the absolutes that tie us.
BlueNinja0 The Mod with the Migraine from Taking a left at Albuquerque Since: Dec, 2010 Relationship Status: Showing feelings of an almost human nature
The Mod with the Migraine
#266955: Jan 13th 2019 at 5:59:01 PM

I unapologetically would say I'd love for Sanders to win but that's not the face of the Democratic Party now.
Why?? Aside from his gaffes and reduction of racism issues to economic ones, he also had virtually no experience in foreign policy IIRC. Now I don't think he would have made a bad President, but I hardly think he'd make a great one; I think he'd squeak by as mediocre.

Re: Warren's speech, that sounds really good. Personally I've love to see more push from the President to, say, have the IRS audit every single billionaire in the country, but maybe I'm just being vindictive.

That’s the epitome of privilege right there, not considering armed nazis a threat to your life. - Silasw
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#266956: Jan 13th 2019 at 6:07:11 PM

Bernie Sanders absolutely needs to do more for minorities and change his views on that but he absolutely is correct that poverty relief as well as an elimination of the massive wealth disparity in America should be a major priority.

Very few politicians are talking radical economic change and Bernie is.

There's a lot holes in the American boat and Bernie is talking about a big one with plans on fixing it.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 13th 2019 at 6:07:49 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
DeathorCake Since: Mar, 2016
#266957: Jan 13th 2019 at 6:22:04 PM

[up]x3

China has a pretty major capital flight problem. They have capital controls in place but thanks to corruption they aren't very effective, and there's a massive private debt bubble that's well into the "oh dear god run" stage of debt/GDP. Their insulated fiat currency allows them to do demand management and public works like nobody's business, which helps.

They obviously know all of that, IIRC they're trying to switch from exports to domestic consumption-led growth and implementing various welfare-statish things to allow their worker's wages to go further, and their weird frankenstein system is very good at making problems just go away with application of fiscal muscle. Can't really trust their published data either, so you know, things are stable till they're not.

Hylarn (Don’t ask)
#266958: Jan 13th 2019 at 6:31:49 PM

Very few politicians are talking radical economic change and Bernie is.

This would be great if the president actually set economic policy

CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#266959: Jan 13th 2019 at 6:34:19 PM

That would be a argument if they didn't consistently. See Hillary having the same sort of plans (albeit less radical).

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
Izeinsummer Since: Jun, 2013
#266960: Jan 13th 2019 at 7:03:17 PM

the president has a great deal of ability to define the Overton window - If they advocate something, and they then get elected, then it is obviously a thing congress might want to do, and how seriously anyone took it as an option before then does not matter a jot.

AzurePaladin She/Her Pronouns from Forest of Magic Since: Apr, 2018 Relationship Status: Mu
She/Her Pronouns
#266961: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:06:38 PM

Incidental note, on a new topic: DC statehood is going into the house. While it seems unlikely DC will become a full state without Democratic control over the Presidency and Senate, its another thing to look out for with the small yet growing discussions around Puerto Rican statehood (Puerto Rican Nationhood is not terribly popular there, from what I know).

Edited by AzurePaladin on Jan 13th 2019 at 12:07:07 PM

The awful things he says and does are burned into our cultural consciousness like a CRT display left on the same picture too long. -Fighteer
Ramidel Since: Jan, 2001
#266962: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:22:33 PM

The main problem with prison labor, as has been touched on, is that it creates perverse incentives for whoever controls the prison system. This does not change whether it's private prisons or public prisons - a government can become just as reliant on a flow of income as a corrections corporation.

I'm not saying that prison labor is inherently bad (though I am saying that private prisons are absolutely bad and need to be busted, and preferably their owners given a place on the inside), but this is a factor that needs to be taken into account and weighed against the benefits.

RainehDaze Nero Fangirl (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
Nero Fangirl
#266963: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:25:25 PM

Prison labour is inherently bad, because by its very existence it creates an incentive to maximise the prison population to have a captive labour pool that can be applied to any desired task for just enough sustenance.

As opposed to anything that would prevent reoffending or otherwise reduce the crime rate.

M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#266964: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:26:07 PM

It's extra perverse when said prisons outsource prison labor to other private companies as opposed to stuff like cleaning up streets.

Imagine if the Trump administration "solves" the shortage of immigrant workers that results from their xenophobic policies by having more private prisons outsource prison laborers to farmers. While also cracking down extra hard on minority offenders to ensure they go to prison and stay there. Actually we don't have to imagine — I'm pretty sure they are already planning to do this if they haven't already taken steps to begin it.

Edited by M84 on Jan 14th 2019 at 1:26:52 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#266965: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:38:27 PM

The unfairness of the situation can be talked about at great length. The criminalizing of trivial actions, the racism involved, the system based around keeping prisons occupied as factories, expanded sentencing, the corporate exploitation of the system, and pretty much everything that makes it a walking nightmare that has been building since the Civil War. Half the prisons in America should be dismantled at the least and the vast majority of their residents let free. The system is corrupt beyond belief.

I mean, everyone should just watch 13th.

The idea that there's a fundamental moral difference between sitting a man in a cell for stealing millions of dollars from the pensions of his employees versus making him pick up trash on a highway is iffier to me. I think Community Service is an inherently important part of relating that the actions of crime are ones which need to be made up for.

But again, reforming America's absurdly racist justice system would require tearing it down. Which isn't happening anytime soon, sadly. This is really asking about how punishment as a whole would change if we could rebuild it now.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 13th 2019 at 9:41:08 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#266966: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:41:52 PM

Imagine if the Trump administration "solves" the shortage of immigrant workers that results from their xenophobic policies by having more private prisons outsource prison laborers to farmers. While also cracking down extra hard on minority offenders to ensure they go to prison and stay there. Actually we don't have to imagine — I'm pretty sure they are already planning to do this if they haven't already taken steps to begin it.

I'm pretty sorry to say that's actually true already. It was in 13th.

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#266967: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:41:54 PM

[up]The issue is that the same loophole that allows for the guy you want to see reduced to cleaning up the streets is the same one that allows for the horrific exploitations that have people call prison labour modern day slavery.

Just because the person being enslaved is someone you don't like doesn't make it not slavery.

Edited by M84 on Jan 14th 2019 at 1:43:13 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#266968: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:49:04 PM

Corruption and misuse of laws are always to be guarded against.

But I'm fairly of the mind that this is the same logic which is used by libertarians to call imprisonment "kidnapping."

It actually diverts the issue from the racism. But I'd be interested in being proven wrong. Do we have non-labor and labor models to compare from Europe?

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#266969: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:51:51 PM

Except Libertarians are full of it because kidnapping is specifically unlawful taking away and confinment of people. Being convicted and sentenced to prison time is not the same thing.

Prison labor is slavery. It is a specific exception to the Amendment that outlaws slavery in the USA. There's no sugarcoating that. Don't try to sugarcoat it just because you like the image of Bernie Madoff picking up trash.

Edited by M84 on Jan 14th 2019 at 1:53:35 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#266970: Jan 13th 2019 at 9:59:19 PM

I am curious if you do note that the actual amendment flat out doesn't just refer to slavery, right. You even posted it.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

It's like this part is FNORDed by your brain.

One can be forced into involuntary servitude without being a slave.

Edit:

But honestly, I'm not a big fan of the whole concept either way and this is quibbling over definition.

Edited by CharlesPhipps on Jan 13th 2019 at 10:02:53 AM

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
M84 Oh, bother. from Our little blue planet Since: Jun, 2010 Relationship Status: Chocolate!
Oh, bother.
#266971: Jan 13th 2019 at 10:06:21 PM

[up]Note that the Amendment doesn't specify which prison labor falls under.

Also, you were the one who started quibbling over this. This started with you objecting to prison labor being called slavery for some reason.

Then you went off on about how you like the idea of Bernie Madoff picking up trash on the streets, indicating that the reason you don't want to call prison labor slavery is because you don't want to feel bad about taking schaudenfreude in people you hate doing hard labor.

Also, if you're going to insult my intelligence, don't use words like "fnord" which requires one to be familiar with the Principia Discordia or Illuminatus!. Not all of us have knowledge of Discordianism.

Edited by M84 on Jan 14th 2019 at 2:20:41 AM

Disgusted, but not surprised
CharlesPhipps Since: Jan, 2001
#266972: Jan 13th 2019 at 11:31:06 PM

Not trying to insult your intelligence. This is just the board of media crap on the great collection of media crap (the internet).

Author of The Rules of Supervillainy, Cthulhu Armageddon, and United States of Monsters.
wisewillow She/her Since: May, 2011
She/her
#266973: Jan 14th 2019 at 3:14:39 AM

Community service is not the same thing as prison labor. Community service is when (mostly white) people are told to do X hours of something helpful to the public, like pick up trash etc. They can still work and live at home, and have a decent amount of control over when/how they do those hours.

Prison labor is when people are either forced or “encouraged” to do labor while being incarcerated. Prison labor is inherently dehumanizing- you’re not a free person who gets minimum wage; you get zero cents an hour in some states, twenty or thirty cents an hour in others. And then you can buy prison ramen for $5 a packet, or pay $10 to send emails to your family.

It’s inherently evil and disgusting and dismissing this paradigm as just an issue with abuse of the system misses that the SYSTEM ITSELF is morally reprehensible.

Swanpride Since: Jun, 2013
#266974: Jan 14th 2019 at 3:35:27 AM

Also, Community Service is in principle working off a damage you caused. See it as the equivaled to a fee you have to pay, but you have to work it off.

Silasw A procrastination in of itself from A handcart to hell (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: And they all lived happily ever after <3
A procrastination in of itself
#266975: Jan 14th 2019 at 3:46:27 AM

I’d note that there’s a big difference between mandatory unpaid prison labour and giving prisoners a chance to earn money and learn skills that they can use to reintegrate into society when their sentence ends.

As for community service, the big difference there is that it’s a very temporary loss of liberty for the offender, as they are doing the community service instead of a custodial sentence and not in addition to it.

“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran

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