The US is becoming a hollow state in which oligarchic factions wield the machinery of government to funnel money into their coffers via bloated military projects, mass incarceration in private prisons, regulatory capture, etc. Politics is pure kayfabe, team oligarch vs team state
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The mandatory sentencing stuff has many causes, but IMO it was a general feeling of lawlessness and people getting slaps on the wrist for serious crimes that motivated a lot of it.
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Then after that, toughen up the drug laws and boom, a felony's a felony and drug convictions are SO easy to get and so, so common. Violent crime has always been relatively rare, but trying to deal with it caught the drug dealers as well.
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a radical legal theory: you can't actually prevent violent crime through ANY legislative intervention at all. it's a fool's errand and causes extreme harm to impoverished communities. real remedies include improvements to economic opportunity especially internal migration.
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s/radical/silly FTFY In all seriousness, I see your point. I disagree with it as a core principle. People who really are violent need to be kept away from the rest of us. If we do that, they will not be able to commit violent crimes. Violent crime is therefore prevented.
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they've already committed at least one violent crime by that point. talking about prevention here.
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You don't think keeping people who are violent away from everybody would prevent violence? Man, tough crowd. I'm not talking about FutureCrime. You're right. We can't stop that, and the very idea of trying is terrifying.
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there is definitely some small group of people who are unable to control their own violent urges. many possible reasons for this but yes, absolutely, there are some people who are not able to live in normal society at all. that's what prison should be for, not what we do now.
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Major issue is not conviction rate but length of sentences. Long ass prison stays as a default are fairly modern
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its both though. the population growth rate does reflect a quadratic (at minimum) growth curve so conviction rate and sentencing policies interact to cause this. the decision to criminalize common small scale drug use is the major factor.
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In overall incarceration rates, yes, but as we've discussed the two are working in tandem. If sentences weren't so harsh tough drug laws wouldn't be so devastating, if drug laws were looser long sentences for small scale drug activity would be much less common.
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Tangent: If we changed the drug laws to decriminalize possession of less than a very large amount of marijuana, are we really just creating a marijuana anti-trust scheme?
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in that small scale operations will be legally barred from merging into a large scale company? yeah, I guess. otoh why not legalize it and create an export industry (like with wine and spirits)?
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I'm okay with that. The thought just struck me funny. The idea that drug cartels are accidentally created government monopolies is not a new one. I just turned it around. :)
End of conversation
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