Nothing makes people redefine addiction as a crime faster
than the profit motive, largely because there is no better way to maximize profits
than through slave labor. In
fact, maximizing increased returns from the one can only be assured
through a substantial investment in redefining the other. And those who stand to make the most understand
how much their profits hinge on their ability to use, and in many instances
even abuse, both.
Generally speaking, a disease is as much a danger to the
person who has it as it is to the society to which that person belongs. It doesn’t matter if the person is suffering
from sickle cell disease or addiction. Yet one is treated with penicillin and the other
with punishment. Both methods are used
to ‘protect society,’ per se, only one seeks to cure patients in a society
while the other simply removes them. While
the different methods used to treat both diseases were instituted largely out
of an ignorance that mistakenly defined the two as different, advancements in
the understanding of diseases has allowed us to see how both, at least in some
ways, are very much the same.
The difference, however, is that powerful economic interests have
grown too dependent upon the old definitions,
and until as much profit can be made from the new understandings as is being generated from the current system of medieval beliefs, things are unlikely to change. Why is this the case? Because treating addicts like criminals has
become the corner stone for America’s new kind of “supply side economics.” This
kind of economic model is one that conservative economists like Milton Friedman either didn’t see coming, or perhaps
had in mind all along.
Traditional ideas about “supply side economics” were based
on the belief that economic growth could be created by reducing both regulation
and taxes on capital gains and income.[i] With the rise of the PIC, however, a new kind of
‘supply side economics” emerged that, in contrast to the old theory, thrived
off an increase in regulation and taxes. The difference was that the old ideas
applied to corporate persons while the new ideas would apply to real people. As
companies became less regulated in a society, people became more, and as
corporate taxes were reduced to attract and expand new businesses, personal taxes
were increased to build prisons for an expanding number of newly defined
criminals. Eventually, one discovered a sinister
way to increase its profits by feeding off of the other. That discovery would
likewise result in nurturing both systems through an addiction to profits.
One of the greatest ironies of the PIC, therefore, is how
some companies have developed an addiction to a source of cheap labor comprised mostly of addicts. Breaking
the addiction of the former, however, is far more difficult, because it would require not only a great deal of discomfort on the part of
shareholders - a group altogether amoral when it comes to decisions that effect share prices - but also a willingness to break with a religious devotion to
the bottom line. In the religion of
today’s economic theory, such a move would be considered a stock market sin, because
it would require sacrificing profits over people. It just wouldn’t make good
business sense, in other words, or dollars for that matter; dollars that could
be used to pad the bottom line instead of paying a basic minimum wage. And it
is just such “savings” that feeds corporate addiction.
“Many companies have been exploiting prison labor forces at
wages up to 80% or more below the national minimum wage ($5.15/hr). Contractors
who have used this captive labor force include AT&T, U.S. West, Boeing,
Chevron, Starbucks, Eddie Bauer…Microsoft, Dell Computers, and Bank of America.
In Ohio, for example, a Honda supplier
pays its prison workers $2 an hour for the same work for which the UAW has
fought for decades to be paid $20 to $30 an hour. Konica has hired prisoners to repair its
copiers for less than 50 cents an hour, and in Oregon private companies can
lease prisoners for only $3 a day.[ii] Prisoners do data entry, make telephone
reservations, raise hogs, shovel manure, and make circuit boards, limousines,
waterbeds, and lingerie for Victoria Secret, all at a fraction of the cost of
“free labor.”[iii]
Gordon Lafer further notes
that private prisons are not only public service contractors, but the highest margin
temp agencies in the nation. In Oregon, a number of public agencies are using
prisoners for high-skill work that would otherwise be filled by regular public
employees. Such inexpensive help surely
makes prison labor hard to resist. What’s
more, those who have invested in private prisons have found that prison labor
is a pot of gold. After all, prison
employees require no payment of benefits and have almost no rights. Additionally, there are no strikes, no unions,
no unemployment insurance, and no workers compensation costs. Such savings allows corporate firms, under
government contract, to operate as cheaply as possible to insure profit. [iv]
And nothing ensures a corporations
addiction to profit better than claiming that addicts are nothing but
criminals. Considering the financial collapse of 2008, they certainly seem to have a point. In fact, it would be hard to find anyone in the world who knows more about the subject than they do.
(NOTE: Milton Friedman, although a huge supporter of supply side economics, also believed that making drugs illegal not only ensured that criminals would have a monopoly over those drugs, which in turn would only increase their willingness to use violence to protect that monopoly, but that it was also immoral. As such, his ideas on economics did not cause the PIC directly. Instead, the PIC simply utilizes supply side economics to its advantage, and much to the disadvantage of everyone else.)
(NOTE: Milton Friedman, although a huge supporter of supply side economics, also believed that making drugs illegal not only ensured that criminals would have a monopoly over those drugs, which in turn would only increase their willingness to use violence to protect that monopoly, but that it was also immoral. As such, his ideas on economics did not cause the PIC directly. Instead, the PIC simply utilizes supply side economics to its advantage, and much to the disadvantage of everyone else.)
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