Volume 9 No. 2 - Adask's law

‘em pay! Better yet – make ‘em suffer!!”
And so, forced prison labor (slavery)
increases.
But not all of life turns on vengeance.
There’s also reason and rational
self-interest. And reason indicates
that folks on the “outside” are not truly
separate from the prisoners on the “inside”.
What we allow to happen to our
prisoners, will launch a chain of events
that may cause something similar to
happen to us.
What happens when your neighbor
(the aircraft machinist) loses his
$30/hr job? His standard of living will
probably fall by at least half. He may
slide into depression, alcoholism,
drugs, domestic violence, or even suicide.
Government studies indicate 75%
of all divorces are caused by financial
stress, so his wife may divorce him.
Government studies also indicate that
over half of all fathers lose complete
contact with their kids within two years
after a divorce. Therefore, your unemployed
neighbor’s children are more
likely to grow up fatherless, illiterate,
impoverished, and more inclined to
self-destructive, violent, or criminal behavior.
And they’re already in your
neighborhood. Should you really be
surprised if your unemployed
neighbor’s teenage son breaks into
your garage and steals your tools or
shares a venereal disease with your
teenage daughter? All of this can flow
from your own gleeful determination
to “git tuff” and turn a blind eye to slavery
in American prisons.
This causal chain of events is not
farfetched. Our newspapers routinely
report that economic conditions in Indonesia
or China can have a significant
impact on our own standard of living.
If we can see the “ripple effect” of
Jakarta’s economy on our own, there’s
little doubt that a similar “ripple effect”
can also emanate from our prisons. We
live in a society that’s so highly integrated
and interdependent, that even
economic policies in seemingly remote
prisons can cause a cascade of
consequences that flow right into your
own backyard.
Forced prison labor can trash the
lives of employers as well as employees.
Sooner or later, the economic pressures
of cheap prison labor will force
free market employers to either close
their businesses, move overseas, or
hire prison labor. If a desk manufacturer
quits due to competition from
cheap prison labor, what will happen
to the other businesses that supplied
the sheet metal for his desks, order
forms for his customers, and computers
for his office staff? Won’t those businesses
also be indirectly diminished
by forced prison labor? What will happen
to property values and tax revenues
from the desk manufacturer’s
plant that helped pay to educate your
kids? And what about property values
and tax revenues for the land adjacent
to the abandoned desk factory? Isn’t
all of this likely to decline?
Further, if the prison machinist
pays half his $7/hr income for his
prison room and board – that only
amounts to about $7,000 a year against
the $20-$25,000 it costs to house each
prisoner. That means the state (i.e., we
taxpayers) is effectively subsidizing
cheap prison laborers (and their corporate
employers) to the tune of $13 -
$18,000 per year per prison worker. As
a result, many of the same poor blacks,
browns and whites who once collected
$500 a month in welfare on the “outside”
will, on the “inside,” cost taxpayers
two or three times that much in sub-
sidies that help enrich their corporate
employers while driving other free
world businesses toward bankruptcy.
(And you thought welfare was dead,
hmm?)
There’s no escape from the consequences
of slave labor. America
tried it once before and wound up with
a Civil War and social consequences
that afflict us still. The Nazi’s tried slavery
and were not only defeated but
watched their nation split in two. The
Soviet Union tried slavery and perished.
The Red Chinese use it and have
not yet perished but deserve to – and
even if they don’t, who wants to live in
Red China? Forced prison labor (slavery)
may temporarily boost corporate
profits but, over the long run, is dangerous
and self-destructive to all Americans.
Do the corporate beneficiaries of
prison labor care? No. Their only issues
are quarterly profits and executive
bonuses. Thus, they push to build
more prisons and expand prison industries.
But sooner or later, your slaves
come home to roost. While the precise
causal relationship between slavery,
government oppression, and social collapse
is unclear, there’s little doubt that
where you see slaves, you’ll also see
government oppression, poverty, political
instability, violence, or even social
collapse.
12 ANTISHYSTER Volume 9 (1999 A.D.) www.antishyster.com adask@gte.net 972-418-8993