Alex Libre

I want to answer this, because the dark abundance stuff leaves me cold even though I agree with some of the policy prescriptions. Our prisons are terrible, terrible places where there is immense and unnecessary human suffering. In prison people are subject to random violence and the constant threat of violence, including gang violence and racial violence. They are subject to sexual assault. They often don't get adequate healthcare. They are often badly mistreated and have few avenues of recourse. Some of them are innocent; most of them are guilty, and still, they did not deserve to spend decades under the constant threat of violence and sexual assault because no human being deserves that. When you sentence someone to prison, by some estimates you take away from them twice as many years as prison sentenced them to, because that's how much incarceration decreases life expectancy. The system is capricious. The system is remarkably dumb. A lot of judges openly ignore laws they don't like and they often get away with it. A lot of the people in our prisons are to varying degrees intellectually disabled or severely mentally ill and do not even understand all of the things that our system is implacably doing to them because they broke rules they didn't actually understand how to follow. And institutionalization! Christ, people on here call for institutionalization as if it's where they cure you rather than where, with even less due process than is offered by the justice system, a differently chaotic and sometimes well-meaning and always incomprehensible system can force people to take medications that change their bodies and minds often in ways that make life a living hell (and of course prevent anyone from killing themselves over it). People are also constantly subject to violence and rape in mental institutions. They may be less bad than the alternatives, sometimes, but they are an awful awful solution and whenever I propose that anyone be sent there I remember that I have heard friends who know what it's like testify they would rather be dead. I think that we should have more police, solve more crimes, and send people who repeatedly commit crimes to prison for much longer. But I believe this while believing that all of this suffering is real, and horrifying, and destroying an enormous number of lives. I don't feel cool and based about saying we should send some people to prison for longer. I feel sick. I do not believe that we can have any of the other goods of a free, safe society if we repeatedly release people who cannot safely participate in society and have been duly convicted of acts of severe violence onto our streets. But I am not proud of this system. I do not think it is cool or good. I find the mindset of the prison abolitionists basically comprehensible - it is a refusal to participate in any state-sanctioned decades of torture, hang the consequences - and the mindset of the people who meme about how many jails we should build is one which I have not the slightest interest in cultivating. Of course I see why people cultivate it. If it must be done, then it is much easier to believe it's not that bad, and if the people standing in the way are weepy scolds, then one can differentiate oneself from the weepy scolds by being based. But I guess I think it's a road to Hell. We have to do hard things, but we don't have to hide from our eyes what they really are, or pretend they're all right, and it's not actually a virtue not to blink at them. I want to build a ton of prisons. My understanding of the research is that small prisons where inmates know each other by name are less violent than large prisoners where they go off visual identifiers (predominantly race), and that prisons close to peoples' homes make their families more likely to visit and help with reintegration. I want cash transfers for newly-released prisoners to help them get on their feet and get a job and have a real shot at not breaking a parole condition and ending up right where they started. I want it to be possible to order anything on a large whitelist from Amazon and Walmart to prison at cost, instead of commissaries that can charge much higher rates. I want prisoners to have internet access and lots of contact with their loved ones. I want prisoners to have xboxes, honestly, because it'll reduce violence in prison if they're less miserably bored. I want to hire more cops. I want to solve more crimes. I want to hold people without bail if they are a safety risk or a flight risk. And I want to send people who have repeatedly committing crimes to prison for much much longer, because I think the alternatives are even worse. But God help me I am never going to think this is cool, or funny, or anything other than awful. Dark abundance? No. This is the aching absence of abundance, this is the horrifically painful triage of a society that does not have enough resources to do what is good and can only scrape by blundering towards what is least bad. May our children do better, and struggle to comprehend us.