alanschu

I've definitely been hit with a degree of nihilism that I'm not sure this will actually be the case. That said, my in-law that works for a small town (centrist Republican) judge in Texas says they have heard people around the courthouse worry that this will be the thing that gets Beto elected.

My wife is from the area and she definitely knows some trans folks to just help turn the anxious worry up to 11 when you factor in their vulnerabilities as well. It's interesting because I think that Texas is a lot closer to being purple than a lot of the die hard would like to think, but 100% think that they'll be doing whatever they can (shady or otherwise) to try to stop that.

I recently became King of Bohemia (starting from Austria in the 867 start)!

Texas GOP has evidently declared the President as illegitimately elected so that's cool I guess. https://www.newsweek.com/texas-gop-declares-biden-illegitimate-demands-end-abortion-1717167 (Not sure the overall quality of Newsweek but given I'm familiar with them I'm assuming it's not just purely conspiratorial stuff)

Hey should help Navarro's team get "up to speed" if they can just read a draft of the book!

Southern states get SO hot is my thought haha. And maybe Finlanders, while miserable, are just less completely miserable? Fair. It was fun taking the trip down memory lane lol. I always had issues with social conservatism but was always willing to turn the other cheek because taxes etc.

Hey man, sometimes we change! I was curious if any of my old political takes could still be found lol. It's funny as I doubt I'd consider those social views "far left" now. One of the biggest differences in my world view since then is that I no longer believe that there's a clear distinction between social and fiscal policies and that the two are more tightly coupled than I once thought. EDIT: Oh man this one is GREAT "Republicans will rethink their platform" after 2012 election. I mean they did, but definitely not in the way I probably would have predicted! One last EDIT: Ahahahahaha

This is an unfortunate sequence of events, and I think it is interesting because Edmonton Police Service ended up using the incident to successfully petition city council to undo a proposed $22m (about 5%) budget cut to the EPS. Part of the justification for this cut is that city revenues are down. This set the stage for the events that ended up leading to a double homicide. https://globalnews.ca/news/8911677/chinatown-killings-justin-bone-conditions/ RCMP services deployed to a small rural town near Edmonton to investigate threats at a home. A domestic violence coordinator concluded that no threshold for arrest was achieved, but police were informed the man, Justin Bone, was no longer welcome at the residence. Bone had a condition on his probation that he was not allowed into Edmonton without being escorted by this home owner, so RCMP reached out to EPS to notify them that they were dropping off a man (Bone) in the area and he has restrictions on his mobility in the Edmonton area. EPS confirmed this call happened, though because he hadn't done anything unlawful there was no need to detain him (An action I am not even unsupportive of, although I'm curious about the details of his parole). He was dropped off on the west end of Edmonton at a social service facility, though (somehow, article is not clear) made his way towards Chinatown, which the article points out is actually a nexus for Edmonton's social service hub. Local residents presume that is why he ended up in the area. Unfortunately it seems like lack of space in any of the facilities may have just left him on the street, where he then murdered two residents in the area. This is a difficult problem to unpack because you definitely can't leave Bone at a place where he is no longer welcome (the home owner that appeared to be tied to some of Bone's parole conditions). Detaining him in a jail may have avoided the murder, although there's certainly valid concerns about police doing that at their own discretion (especially as homeless people already get more than their share of police scrutiny). One of the things I've found frustrating in response is that the EPS used this murder as proof that they should not have their funding reduced; this petition was persuasive towards city council who returned the funding back up to $407m. Alberta's justice minister made a demand on the city to within 2 weeks to have a plan to deal with spiking violent crimes in the area. It should be noted at the start of this year (and the previous 3 years), the UCP government has made increasing cuts towards social services. Given the concentration of social service providers around Edmonton's Chinatown, I do speculate how much of a causal effect that has had with increasing concentrations of people suffering from addictions, homelessness, and so forth and being unable to receive supports. The provincial government has also cut some funding avenues the city had to give to police that were used by police services (mostly around how funds from photo radar get allocated). There's been a lot of drama the EPS has had around these discussions, as well as trucker convoy protests, that also prime me to be skeptical. Some of which include revoking media credentials of a journalist that was critical of convoy responses, and later a "leak" from our police commissioner suggesting that that same journalist is under investigation by the EPS. Also accusations that because one of the city councillors on the police commission (a former police commissioner herself) employs a staffer that has been critical of some of the EPS on their social media that that councillor is biased and should be removed from the police commission so... not super happy with a lot of their actions especially given that they make up about 22% of Edmonton's budget (the highest single entry).

It has nothing to do with extra training and definitely not pay, and everything to do with the level of harm that comes from things like bias, corruption, and abuse of power given the level of privilege and extraordinary power with a degree of legitimacy granted by the state itself. Some implicit, probably even not deliberately malicious racism by Bungee leads to an offensive skin in a video game. Implicit, and possibly not even deliberately malicious, bias in policing can see people overly incarcerated by the state. IMO the latter is a lot more harmful. You can even find police unions that agree with the concept that "society holds cops to a higher standard, and it should." https://nationalpolice.org/benefit-of-doubt/ (The author believes police are held to a higher standard, but I guess I'll have a better idea if my hypothesis about that not actually being the case a lot of the time since I do not think that they are). You'll find no argument from me that police eye witness testimony is unreliable, because as you say eye witness testimony across all of people is very unreliable - here was a link to a study that I found (just to show I was doing my homework too) https://www.petervankoppen.nl/ewExternalFiles/2016 The thin blue line-up.pdf. I know in Voir Dire this actually is instructed to juries in an attempt to not overly weight police testimony. And again, as you also point out, not even because of maliciousness... but because there's a lot of factors that can impact our recollection. Innocence Project talks about this a lot too. I'll concede the point though as I did say that police officers were lying. I do want to note however that the ringing of the (non existent) door bell was evidently not part of the police report, but was an addition (for some reason) to the RCMP's public explanation for what happened and when called out on that specific fact, the apologized saying there was an error in stating that the doorbell was rung though every other aspect of the report is still "completely accurate." I can't necessarily presume that it was a deliberate case of embellishing a story because (like I'd say most humans) there's an inclination to understate mistakes in self-reporting. But I do recognize that social desirability bias is a thing that undermines self reports and it is not difficult to imagine that a police officer (like most human beings) is either unable to recognize a mistake was made, or reluctant to admit it if that is the case. PSMAG talks about it here. They point out that often it's not even from bad people covering up mistakes but from good people denying new evidence to preserve their belief in being good themselves. People have mechanisms to justify their own actions and see ourselves in the most favorable light. We see examples of this as people justify their own support for things like Jan 6, or why what they or their friend did was or was not some sort of racist/sexist/etc action. And even then, the RCMP still earnestly believe their officer's account of the story, and insist that ultimately nothing wrong was done; or stated differently, the police department has taken the recollections of their police officers as to be the accurate version of events. "Completely accurate," in their words. Are they overlooking that the eyewitness account of their police officers because there's a predisposition to not want to believe that they (and by extension the department) are wrong and in fact being bad? I think it plays a role; after all they too are human beings. But it becomes a challenging prospect when an institution that defends itself and its members (as video game companies do, as unions do, and so forth) is also granted capabilities beyond what you or I have in impacting another person's freedom and rights. I do want to note, though that even in explaining to a jury that police are no more credible eye witnesses, there are still some challenges with that. One is an interesting take on how that may predispose juries to being government leaning and more likely exclude defense leaning individuals from a jury while simultaneously NOT influencing the likelihood of state/prosecution leaning individuals (this was mostly a fascinating read and shows some challenges with how trust in policing can impact juries, but I wanted to include it here: https://grandjurytarget.com/2019/05/15/why-judges-should-stop-asking-jurors-about-police-officer-witnesses-during-voir-dire/ ). Even then, police officers are still often seen as more credible. Combined with the previous point, it's not uncommon to have a jury that represents a demographic that is "about twice as likely to have a positive view of police as African-Americans." https://via.library.depaul.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1167&context=jsj&httpsredir=1&referer= The previous link also cites Justice Warren Burger, writing that "it would be a dismal reflection on society to say that when the guardians of its security are called to testify in court under oath, their testimony must be viewed with suspicion." I would tie this in to the previous point about personal/collective biases to view ourselves in a positive way with reasonable justifications for our views. Much the same way that BioWare would (I hope!) have had a predisposition to defend me if some external party alleged that I was being bad, a police force would want to protect its officers, and a country would be inclined to implicitly have faith in institutions, is that we can justify the actions and resist being critical because it'd involve us being open to accepting that we supported something that caused harm. In fact I'd go as far as to say a lot of hypocrisy, including my own, but also of say anti-abortion activists that have an abortion, is that we're good at telling ourselves that these circumstances present one of the few righteous reasons for doing this thing we're otherwise against. Other people though? They are bad. I don't feel that the idea that people not in police forces have a bias towards trusting police officers in court is an overly controversial position, either. https://scholars.unh.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3196&context=dissertation https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/perceived-expertness-and-credibility-police-officers-eyewitnesses#additional-details-0 Even when the NY Times reported that Confidence in police is at a record low, it was still at 48% and this was in the summer of 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/12/us/gallup-poll-police.html Moving to 2022 Pew Research have 26% of US adults have "a great deal of confidence" in police officers acting in the public's best interests. 74% have at least a fair amount of confidence https://www.pewresearch.org/2022/01/05/trust-in-america-do-americans-trust-the-police/ https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2022/02/15/americans-trust-in-scientists-other-groups-declines/ Canada reports that almost half of the population has "strong confidence" in police, and almost 90% have at least some confidence. https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/85-002-x/2020001/article/00014-eng.htm I feel even in light of pretty recent media spotlights on police abuse, in general our society is not particularly critical towards police officers. On this point I definitely agree. I'm not suggesting that the presence of liars in police departments shows police departments are bad. The issue is the institutionalized defense that often materializes in ways such as the Blue Wall of Silence. There's no shortage of examples of whistle blowers facing more aggressive punishments than those they are whistle blowing against. Sometimes there are even weird examples of a police officer demonstrating deescalation getting reprimanded for not shooting a suspect after another officer did come in and shoot like https://features.propublica.org/weirton/police-shooting-lethal-force-cop-fired-west-virginia/. The department concluded that Mader's acts represented inaction and viewed it more harshly than taking any action (including shooting someone). Not only do incidents like these paint police in a bad light, but they are expensive and paid for by citizens. In Mader's case he also secured a pledge that his former employer would not actively prevent him from working in law enforcement elsewhere. There's also things like Garcetti v. Ceballos which had an attorney being allegedly denied a promotion as a reprimand for being critical of a warrant was a violation of his First Amendment rights... but was ruled that because he too was acting as a public figure and not a private citizen in making those statements, there was no First Amendment protections. As a result, the state was protected for taking retaliation against someone being critical of decisions it made. (aside but IMO the state can be particularly good at protecting itself from criticism which I feel often isn't leveraged in appropriate ways) Granted these are juicy stories and I'm sure you'll find that there's a bias in journalism to report sensational stories that would attract attention. But to assume that media would be biased to want to highlight police misconduct would overlook research that shows how frequently media employs things like passive voice ("officer involved shootings") when describing police violence. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3705521. Stuff like this fuels my belief that police definitely are not held to a higher standard, and in incidents like these arguably held to a lesser standard. And I can understand why some media members would go along with stuff like this as there'd be a degree of quid pro quo where police departments would be more cooperative in interacting with the media. I'm starting to get tired so I'm going to wrap up there. Other things I haven't gone into that I consider serious are inequitable ways police target people especially based on class, and how even in light of data showing otherwise the NYPD still insisted on continuing stop and frisk and the real material costs that can impact communities even if specific arrests aren't being made. Other things such as police being allowed to lie during interviews in order to help coerce/persuade results during an estimate. I did want to conclude that while researching, I did find an interesting point that actually runs contrary to some of my skepticism towards the criminal justice system as a whole. http://www.cjcj.org/uploads/cjcj/documents/Race-based_decisions.pdf points out that police officers are more likely to cite black americans for some things like failure to produce a license or insurance, "analyses showed that African Americans were more likely than other racial groups to have their traffic tickets dismissed in court for lack of evidence or probable cause." I was looking for this one because I was trying to support the general notion that police officers have an assumed trust and we can see evidence of this in effectively "he said-she said" cases such as traffic violation. I wasn't really able to find that (I did find a quora page that had a lot of cops answer that it was 75-90% chance that your ticket won't get overturned, but that's less concrete) information, but I find it interesting that evidence of excessive citations against the black community can be inferred by the reality that increasingly the tickets are dismissed relative to other demographics. Anyhoo I'm going to play some Crusader Kings now.

Entirely fair that I didn't provide citations, and I'll dig some up (though I'm about to cook dinner so it'll be later today). To be clear, there are indeed 100% good police officers. Anecdotally (which is feels again, but in this case is at least contrary to my general skepticism towards police forces) I know some, and I know people that know some, and so forth. I consider the issue to be one that is more institutional, where even if you have attempts to be more transparent and critical from within police forces can be difficult. I liken it to critiques towards the Catholic Church. There are many, many good people within the Catholic Church that do good things and help people. I have a cousin that is a Catholic Priest. But issues arise because it too is an institution that is afforded a lot of benefit of the doubt and often resistant to criticism both internally and externally and so forth. And definitely not just these two. You can see it within health care, education (especially post-secondary), or even things like unions as well. But I do think it's important to hold many of these organizations (especially ones that in some way represent the state) to a standard that is higher than one I would hold you, Bruce, some Marxist blogger, or some QAnon supporter to. Especially because a group like police forces have particularly unique powers that often are not available to us (and exercising said powers can have very impactful consequences).

Are you referring to drawing conclusions of a few bad examples and then summarily generalizing it towards police forces? I just need to better understand where you're coming from before I can respond.

It really does seem to be the case I find. It's interesting because I used to be more naturally supportive and inferred that it was typically a difficult job, with the aggravating circumstance that even if you're a victim no one is happy to see the police (i.e. they have some external event in their life that will make them feel primed to already be agitated). But then I learned that sometimes police officers indeed make mistakes, and our default state is that they are seen as more trustworthy than you or I and it became trivial to recognize how that can lead to abuse. And it's extra bad because it's abuse by an organization that is granted extraordinary powers, including often lethal force. It's funny because I "get it." I feel that there is the implicit belief in trustworthiness because if you step back and say "we're giving these people, who are as (un)trustworthy as anyone else in society, extra privileges and protections" then I feel the natural response would be "whoa wait... why!?" Although maybe I'm just being extra optimistic on that last point...

Police Officers entered a house at 5:30am looking for a missing teen. Claim that they tried knocking and ringing the doorbell but there was no answer, so they opted to enter. Questioned a kiddo in her bed. Unsurprisingly the RCMP supports the officers suggesting they did nothing wrong. Even after being informed that the house didn't have a doorbell to ring, and that somehow the police did all these declarations and knocking that somehow woke no one up, including the family dog. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/rcmp-statement-mount-moriah-1.6483828 I understand that this could very well be benign (nothing irreversibly bad happened), but IMO it's a continuing trend of police forces not being up front about realities, misleading/lying about what happened presumably in a way to mitigate how bad it looks. Even if the police officers were not trying to cover their butts, it should serve as a reminder that police officers, like all human beings, are often have unreliable memories and are not particularly exceptional at recalling events even over regular citizens. Yet we continue to afford this institution a layer of trust that I feel is unearned, often times even culminating in media acting as stenographers of police accounts and the trust being implicitly evident and deserved. IMO if an institution is seen as inherently trustworthy, yet also seen as beyond reproach and resistant to external evaluations, it's inevitable that it will be vulnerable to having people become a part of it (and promoted within) which undermines its efficacy and trustworthiness.

I did get a kick out of this one piece of news lol. I saw some people share that they are a bit sad that it happened as they enjoyed the updates hahahaha. I remember when people were pointing out that Disney supported pedophiles in response to pushing back on Florida government suppressing speech in the classroom because there were a handful of people that used to work for Disney that had been convicted, while just handwaving away that Disney employes over 190,000 people. It shouldn't be particularly shocking if some of them ended up being trash bags. It's funny given that in the last thread I was once accused of judging an entire population because of a subset when I suggested that a society's culture both influences, and is influenced by, the people within the society hahaha.

I think your question is disingenuous since there's a reason why you choose to expressly state "radical leftists go to far" and to highlight the criminality of BLM protesters only to get very defensive about Jan 6 rioters (something literally in present day discourse) and insist that it isn't what you were talking about when that is precisely what Gorth was calling you out on. But perhaps this is a hasty judgment I've made towards someone that thinks that a Conservative Political Party shouldn't even use a parliamentary mechanism that his country also has in light of reflecting on the possibility that their leader lying in the House of Commons might not be a good thing. Oh wait, he's not a liar since he didn't admit to lying... You allegedly read my whole post and it seems the one conclusion I can infer you got from it is "Allan doesn't think some of the BLM protesters were violent??" Yet you get defensive when Gorth makes similar conclusions based on your own posts and what they do and do not explicitly state. And by a similar standard of what is explicitly stated, I guess I can also conclude that you have no issues with a state backed police force abusing their citizens and having no recourse to do anything about it because any attempts to do so often get flagged as criminal by that same state backed police force and the weight of all the misplaced institutionalized trust said forces are afforded. Cheers.

The cynic in me suggests "an infinite amount of times" since they aren't open to the idea. Indeed someone stating "the radical left always goes too far" but never mind that some of Portland's riot training materials concluded their power point presentations with memes about beating lefties. The one "benefit" of police abuses the summer of 2020 was that there was enough video evidence (people being shot in the face with gas canisters for no reason, tear gassing a bunch of Moms in Portland, pinning people on the side of a freeway with no escape and then launching tear gas at them in Philly and then falsely claiming it was because the protesters were a "violent mob"... and this is just the stuff I remember off the top of my head) from people on the street that my parents were "well wait... this seems wrong" about police actions. A big influence in my slide away from Conservatism was seeing some of the reactions, excuses, and justifications for state sanctioned violence that not only literally suppressed people's freedoms, but also cost citizens a lot of money in legal settlements. Not that any individual is immune to being hypocritical, but eventually there was too much cognitive dissonance on my part to comfortably uphold my political affiliations without some degree of reflection.

I do find it weirdly hilarious that the measuring stick for whether or not someone lied appears to be... if they admitted that they indeed lied hahaha.

It's a confidence vote among members of the government though? In fact his own party??? Weird stance to suggest that a politician, and party leader, lying in the House to save his own skin shouldn't face scrutiny from members of his own party who feel it's a sign of poor leadership lol.

I totally missed this. Bitumen is what most of Alberta's oil is. It can usually be upgraded/refined so it's not exclusively asphalt manufacturing, though my understanding is that it can be good for that over other types of oil extraction. As a result it tends to be more difficult/expensive to extract as you often need to remove the additive materials contained within. The extra energy used for this also tends to make it a lot less green. Without upgrading it it is almost impossible to transport via contentional pipelines though. Can read more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_sands

Hockey playoffs, especially Edmonton series, have been pretty bonkers this season. Hopefully Edmonton-Colorado can continue with 9+ goals per game lol.

Maybe I can clarify? The institutions a country upholds are a reflection of the people (will give a nod to those with greater power having more influence), while simultaneously impacting the people that live there. I don't think it'd be surprising to learn that opinions on gun ownership would be different among a group from USA compare to say, a group from the UK. And by the same token, I think it's obvious that if you take me, Allan Schumacher, and have me born and raised in a place like Texas that there's a good chance I'd grow up with a different opinion of fire arms than if I grew up in London, UK? Of course it can still be broken down by states, counties, and what have you. I'm just saying that people have an impact on the society they live in while that society also has an impact on the people that are raised there. This doesn't mean any population is homogeneous or anything either, or that the influences had are the same across different demographics either. Nor am I making a value judgment on whether said influences are good or bad or anything.

The "systems/institutions" that a society are both made up by, and contribute to, the people that live within them. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that I'm making a generalization about the United States people from this though. Perhaps you meant to direct your comment at Gfted? Again, my response is that systems/institutions are made up of the people within the country, and that those in turn feed back onto each other. I'm not even sure what you're asking. My post was in response to a flippant take that seemed keen on assuming that everyone just assumes it's "systems" (whatever he wants to mean by that) that cause issues and that it's never personal responsibility when that isn't true? I don't understand your post at all...

Nah, there's still plenty of issues with personal decisions. There's a lot of extra fun stuff going into stuff like learned helplessness to boot. Plenty of lack of understanding for even how things like progressive tax work and as such make objectively poor decisions under the incorrect understanding of that system. It's basically the intertwining of macro and micro level models of psychology/sociology. But like some people are sociopaths and want to see the world burn and care not for pesky laws. Some people think that if a husband and wife each pay 25% tax then the household is paying 50% tax. Some of this can be addressed and remedied. Societies are the sum of their individuals, and individuals exist within their societies. It's not trivial to unpack. Overwhelmingly our culture imposes the idea of personal responsibility for one's woes though. It's implicit in reverse, where there's the idea that if someone has a statue of them, or if they're rich, it's probably because they did something worthwhile to do so. In essence, we like to presume an implicit rationality to a system made up of actors that demonstrate repeatedly that they are often very irrational.

I actually had missed this and as someone that thinks Death Penalty is super bad largely because it cannot be undone if/when you **** up and will be abused... https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/supreme-court-prioritizes-expedience-not-justice-wrongful-convictions-2022-05-25/ Admittedly I'm just reading the writer's take on a lot of this so maybe he was misunderstanding something, but I know it's already hard to overturn convictions as it is and additional barriers (or even expediency) is not a good thing IMO.

I'm unaware of anyone suggesting that private prisons are the ones deciding who does or does not go to prison. Of course they do not do that. But your whole posting on this is weird as you initially claimed "AFAIK no state has "private prisons"" and I pointed you to an article that said that that is indeed the case. Privately owned and operated prisons indeed exist, and assorted governments indeed contract out to those companies to use the facilities. On it's face the claim of "it's no different than a state run CP" sounds like when BioWare tried telling us that they decided to layoff a bunch of our admin staff and contract out to some third party to perform those tasks and it should be "no different" than it was. If it's not different, then why do it? The reasoning is usually aligned with any sort of privatization belief: it'll save money either in directly reducing costs or that money would be used more efficiently than if it was being paid by the government. If it was no different than a state run CP, then there'd be no need to do so. As for incentivization, do you think it is purely coincidental that private prisons have recidivism rates almost 20% higher than public prison? Cutting costs for rehabilitation both lowers the operating costs for the prison while also providing conditions that are highly linked with recidivism. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2021.672110/full A quick list of some of the findings when they reviewed literature Many inmates are denied basic needs including food Guards are paid poorly, and receive poor training. They're often told to not intervene in fights This results in private prisons being more violent, which is another strong predictor of recidivism Prisons are often severely understaffed Guards employed at private prisons report unfair discipline and inadequate health care Here is another paper detailing ways that private prisons end up facilitating recidivism with 5 key points (some restated from the above report) Private prisons have higher rates of recidivism Private prisons are more violent, and violence in prison is a strong predictor of recidivism Private prisons seek contracts with out of state justice departments to fill beds, and lack of contact with families is a predictor for recidivism Prison phone companies charge inmates high rates to make phone calls and lobby to ensure this, reinforcing a lack of contact with families (and one that in particular harms poorer families more than richer ones) Prison video call companies can require in person visitation to be banned, requiring inmates to use their services. This increases costs (especially for poor families) and undermines contact with families, which leads to increased recidivism. You might enjoy the last paper in particular, as they detail how Florida once claimed that private prisons lower recidivism rates, but the director of those studies was later "penalized by the Florida Ethics Commission for receiving large consulting fees from the private corrections industry, opening the door for conflicts of interest and calling into question the studies’ conclusions." I'm sure you're not surprised that a government representative was being corrupt. And while a company like GEO Group may not be the one performing convictions, they do indeed lobby the government. They lobbied the Trump administration to overturn Deputy AG Sally Yates' decision to no longer renew contracts with private prisons after finding that it only lead to mistreatment of inmates for no real cost savings. They also lobby governments for harsher punishments and , and are open about how more prisoners is good for shareholders when making forward looking statements in earnings reports and giving executives compensation benefits for financial success. The government lobbying also includes things like mandatory minimums, three strike laws, and encouraging that any new laws that are set to come to pass include incarceration time as well as resisting any sort of decriminalization efforts. Yet in your view, none of that could be seen as "incentivizing." I find it surreal that a (at times very reasonable) skepticism towards government and its involvement in your life seemingly abruptly ends at the idea that people can and will leverage said government for their own benefits surrounding incarceration regardless of the societal benefits AND taking your taxes in order to do so. (And none of this even touches on prison labour)