Very well said. And here is that description of scale [1]:

As of 2009 "The United States has the highest documented incarceration rate in the world."

"The United States' incarceration rate is, according to 2009 figures, 743 persons imprisoned per 100,000 (as of 2009). The United States has 5% of the world's population and 25% of the world's incarcerated population."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_Sta...

Keep in mind that for all practical purposes, prisoners are in a position of involuntary servitude for the private gain of others (what is perhaps the simplest definition of slavery one can construct).

Too add to what you are saying, here is the section 1 of the 13th amendment:

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."

Slavery is straight up legal in America if you first secure a conviction. Anyone who pretends to themselves that we are not still openly using slave labor is absolutely delusional.

Read "The Servile State" by Hilaire Belloc for where this is leading ;-)

For lower classes, prison (and prison servitude) is becoming the safety net.

And if you don't believe this or think its hyperbole, just remember that it's precisely why the 13th amendment contains the phrase "except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted"

Also note that for a segment of the population, that is the safety net too, just as Hilaire Belloc predicted in "The Servile State" (which he wrote in 1914).

I don't know what to say here. I agree that our prison-industrial complex is reprehensible. And I was born too many years after slavery to say that a society that enslaved a race, legally, is conclusively worse than a society with harsh sentencing laws. But...I dunno, I'll just reaffirm tptacek's assertion that we should strive to be less ahistorical when assessing the current status quo.

> that enslaved a race, legally, is conclusively worse than a society with harsh sentencing laws.

True that.

> tptacek's assertion that we should strive to be less ahistorical when assessing the current status quo.

We != people. We = Government, I believe. The Government should be less ahistorical in their workings and policy-making. Prevention of terror attacks, cold war logic is exactly the kind of argument that is outdated.

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The text of the 13th Amendment is particularly telling.

Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.