penal

I don't for a second believe that the United States penal issue is not 90%+ correlated with the financial incentives associated with having a large penal population.

Civil forfeiture is one of those, as are privatized prisons -- and the general barbarism of our penal system.

There is no useful comparison to be made either to the Soviet penal labor system or to US slavery.

It's also false, and papers over the fact that rape is endemic in the UK penal system as well.

A slave in a Soviet penal colony who refused to work would be shot or starved.

The disciplinary reaction to refusing prison work is also not comparable to the Soviet penal system.

We should be ashamed, a country with this sort of penal system cannot declare itself to be a bastion of civil rights.

The same toxic structure is at work in the US penal system.

In my opinion, you're directionally right about the United States' penal system.

Two people make a financial agreement, hire lawyers, and depend on a powerful police force and and penal system to enforce the terms of their contract.

They should live in a penal colony of some kind.

I never stated anything about the Soviet penal system (nor did I imply it).

Reminds me of a short story written in 1914 by Franz Kafka called "In the Penal Colony"[1].

My guess it that the word "slavery" usually implies chattel slavery, whereas these people were serving sentences of penal servitude.

The "Open Carry" bill would literally strike the following from Texas Penal Code Sec.

I guess if you give them pennies on the dollar, they are not slaves right?" which was specifically in regards to the US penal system.

Penal forced labor (what you'd perfectly reasonably call slave labor) was a fraction of that.