this post was submitted on 22 Sep 2025
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Necessary public services should not be for profit. Yes, I know that framing prisons as "necessary public services" is a bit weird, but ideally, that's what it is.
Agreed. Running government as if it’s a business is, was, and always will be a horrible position. Government services (including prisons) are not meant to be profitable. They are there to make sure basic needs are met. What’s worse is that despite any government services being funded with taxpayer money, any profit made rarely ever makes its way back into taxpayer pockets.
My state government has been running hundreds of millions of dollars in budget surpluses more often than not, and yet salaries for state employees keep stagnating and our health insurance is going up (sometimes up to 3x) for many employees.
If they're businesses, then our tax dollars ought to be seen as investment money that pays us dividends rather then getting siphoned to the corporations. (This is an intentionally bad take - I fully believe public services need to be non-corporate and non-profit)
Three things that should always be ran by government: healthcare, education and prisons.
They must exist, and privately owned ones will always have wrong base incentive.
With prisons especially, it is not the interest of private to rehabilitate, but to get people in prison loop. It just cannot work. It is just easy to sell to people because people want prison to be punishment facility.
There's a lot more than three, but those are definitely on the list.
Critical infrastructure (water/electricity/internet) are of course things were government needs to be atleast heavily involved and controlling. And predatorial industries like gambling should be controlled.
Right up there with power plants/wind farms.
healthcare, education and prisons - You mean Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness? Where have I heard that before?
Honestly I think we should have at least some FOODS that are not for profit. If I need it to survive then the free market arguments don’t work,
I mean ... yeah. If it's a thing you must have, then it should not be for profit. Staple foods definitely qualify.
To be perfectly clear, when I say "not for profit" I mean that the costs of plant and equipment, administration, materials, logistics, labor, etc. are all paid for out of revenue - and a small fixed percentage to go into a fund to ward against variations in revenue, so that the business and its employees can continue to provide the public good and earn a living even in lean times.
I’m guessing we agree whole heartedly on this issue we are just using different language to say the same thing.
Oh I wasn’t trying to be argumentative with you at all. Just talking.
:D
Some form of law enforcement needs to exist, and compared to the alternatives we tried before, prison isn't that bad.
The main problem with American prisons is their overuse for non-violent crimes. People don’t need to be separated from society because of a marijuana possession charge.
No, American prison is absolutely that bad. Those of us in other countries often look on in horror at the system you have created, and you personally are now defending.
I didn't talk about american prisons nor am I american. I'm kinda astonished at your leaps of imagination. Don't make up things when discussing.
Pretty much every country has prisons and in most countries they are an institution of reform that often actually works.
And seriously, compared what we did here in Europe just 100-300 years ago, even american prisons aren't all that bad.
Already 400 years ago we had the "house of correction" system ("Zuchthaus" in German), which were for-profit labour camps that anyone could be sent to, even for things like being depressed or if your employer judges that you didn't work hard enough.
There everyone was doing forced labour (usually the hardest physical work they could find) and if you didn't do it, they'd whip you.
In most European countries that system was in active use until WW2, in some even into the 70s.
This was seen as a merciful system, since it was the alternative to the wide-spread corporal and capital punishments even for minor crimes.
In the 17th century you could be publically flogged or get a finger cut off for something as petty as theft. In some regions you could even get the death penalty for similarly small crimes.
So while the US prison system is quite horrible by the standards of civilized countries, it's not when compared to prior systems.
They did those work systems into the 90’s actually in Ireland for sure, probably some other European countries as well but I don’t know about that. Interesting fact, if you’re over the age of 30 you almost certainly played board games made by interned Irish women and children.
There's a reason I used the word "ideally". While there are absolutely worse prison systems in the world, the US prison system cannot be described as "ideal".
This really seems like an attempt at minimizing the glaring issue that private prisons present.
I mean ideally we wouldn't need prisons at all.
But, yeah, on a scale of "Magic utopia where no one commits felonies" to "Real life dystopia where the law is corrupted and crime is fabricated to fill prisons for profit" I guess I'll take "government run prisons (try not to compare it to how they fund and run public education for children)"