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Comment by pizza | Hacker News Reader

They're called prisons over here (the US), and we have privatized some of them to generate profit, too. We have the largest incarcerated population in the world -- not even by per capita. Additionally, the 13th amendment makes slavery legal for the incarcerated, and many states take away the right for the incarcerated/felons/ex-felons to vote.

There is actually a huge nation-wide prison strike currently going on (of course, not even mentioned in popular news) right now that you might find interesting -- check out their list of demands. California only just recently abolished the ability to buy yourself out of jail - cash bail.

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If US prisons are equivalent to Chinese re-education camps, what is the equivalent of Chinese prisons in the US?

Are you saying US prisons are "re-education" camps or are you just taking the opportunity to bring up some popular social issues in a weakly relevant "what-about-ism".

His point is obvious, clear, and inarguable. If you can’t grasp it that’s on you.

> His point is obvious, clear, and inarguable. If you can’t grasp it that’s on you.

His point is definitely arguable and not at all obvious or clear: it rests on conflating prisons with political re-education camps. The two things obviously have similarities, but they also have important differences.

how important are the differences really?

whether you are in a Chinese prison or a US prison does it really matter which injust, ridiculous, hypocritical system put you there? does it really matter what kind of grandiose intellectual contortions your captors use to justify their behavior towards you? if you are being raped or beaten or worked until you bleed do you really care what language they are using to scream at you while they do it? does your family, who doesnt know where you are, and wont see you for years, care what flag is flown over the walls that enclose you?

> how important are the differences really?

The differences are very important. In one, the prisoners are ideally a threat to the members of their society in some way: rapists, con artists, thieves. In the other, the prisoners are only a threat to or a scapegoat for the already-powerful rulers: intellectuals, dissidents, minorities.

> whether you are in a Chinese prison or a US prison does it really matter which injust, ridiculous, hypocritical system put you there?

Yes it does, because they're not "injust, ridiculous, hypocritical" to anywhere near the same degree.

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