hex on Nostr: Some years back a friend of mine related a conversation about the game Prison ...

Some years back a friend of mine related a conversation about the game Prison Architect. Basically someone had figured out a way to maximize profits by creating an area with bad wiring so that prisoners would end up being elected. My friend pointed out, "uh, dude, you just built a death camp."

It's actually surprisingly realistic that the most profitable prison would be a death camp. In fact, Monowitz was a concentration camp (an extension of Auschwitz) run by the conglomerate IG Farben. It was one of the most brutal Nazi camps that regularly worked people to death. It was also very profitable.

After the end of the civil war, US slavery transitioned from chattel to prison slavery. The convict leasing system was similar to the arrangement between IG Farben and the Nazi government in that prisoners were leased for labor with no concern for safety. American prisoners were used for dangerous labor like coal mining. It's no coincidence that these slaves were explicitly used to break strikes by free miners.

It won't surprise anyone that almost all of these slave prisoners were black, but not *all.* That was part of why it became less popular. Convict leasing *mostly* stopped after a white guy was whipped to death while being leased.

But it never really went away and the private prison industry, who funded Trump and Republicans are heavily invested in, has been bringing back prison slavery bit by bit.

It would be really profitable if they could have a really large supply of labor that they could make money off of and then dispose of, before they had to spend money on things like basic healthcare. It turns out that keeping people alive really eats into those profits, you can make way more money if you just work people to death.

Turns out, that the most profitable prison is a death camp. Monowitz wasn't run by Nazis trying to kill as many "undesirables" as possible. It was run by business people trying to maximize profit. It doesn't take an evil or hateful ideology to drive people to commit atrocities. It just takes perverse incentives.

Take some time to think about the fact that there is a tremendous financial incentive to build death camps in the US, that the people who would regulate them are all invested in the industry, and then take another look at what's happening in the US right now. What's going to happen next?

Take some time to process this and think about this question. It's worth thinking through carefully.

#USPol