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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

Prison provides food, water, clothing and shelter. We send people there to punish them.

You will notice 'being locked in cages' is not in my original list.

My point is that subsistence allocations of food, water, shelter, and clothing is not enough, and such are part of the punishment of prison.

I wouldn't even consider prison to offer "shelter" since you're locked in there with violent people.

Words work because we agree what they mean in advance. You can't redefine "shelter" to suit your argument. Just make it with the standard definitions of words.

Would you consider that a non-standard usage of "shelter"? I had a quick look online and I'm seeing definitions like:

a position or the state of being covered and protected

a shielded or safe condition; protection

a place giving temporary protection from bad weather or danger

They're certainly enough to survive, which is why they're provided in prison. The argument wasn't that these are the only things you should ever have in life, but rather that these are the only things you need in life, and everything else is a luxury.

The punishment of prison isn't free food and shelter, it's a lack of luxuries. And people survive for decades in prison, so obviously what they're getting is, by definition, enough.

The things that make prison an undesirable place are lack of autonomy and separation from friends and family. You don’t need advertising or corporations to provide these.

Or to put that differently, we provide those essentials to prisoners because they'd die without them?

> food, water, clothing and shelter

Add love to that list and it sounds like a good life.

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