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Comment by murat131 | Hacker News Reader

As long as slavery is still legal and well and alive and kicking in US prison system (thanks to 13th amendment) gestures like this won't mean much.

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> Penal labor in the United States is explicitly allowed by the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "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."

What are most prisoners forced to do?

If you're sincerely interested, I found the documentary "13th" to be informative and thought-provoking.

https://www.netflix.com/title/80091741

Last Week Tonight on Prison Labor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjqaNQ018zU

They are "forced" to work at below minimum wage rates both for the government and individual firms in public-private partnerships.

I use "forced" in quotation marks, because although prisoners are no longer forced chain-gang style, these jobs can be a prisoner's only source of money, which is required to purchase communication with the outside world.

In some states (e.g. Texas) prisoners aren't even paid any wages--they're just punished if they refuse to work.

An article about this: https://truthout.org/articles/unpaid-labor-in-texas-prisons-...

Is this work economically valuable/worthwhile to whoever is employing them? What are the profit margins that their employers make from their prison labor?

Near where I grew up there's a state prison called Angola, built in 1880 on the site of an old plantation called Angola. The slave quarters were repurposed as the original prisoner quarters. Mostly-black prisoners raise cotton and other crops for pennies on the hour, overseen by mostly-white officers called "freemen."

https://ccnmtl.columbia.edu/projects/caseconsortium/casestud...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louisiana_State_Penitentiary

> thanks to 13th amendment

Same with housing segregation and the Equal Credit Opportunity Act's exceptions: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/1691

Just like the 13th still allows slavery for prisoners, the ECOA still allows discrimination if the person can't afford the home, incentivizing the system to make housing as expensive as possible: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/OEHRENWBSHNO

What are you talking about? Are you saying housing is expensive is a discrimination?

When it's coupled with an economy that disenfranchises certain groups over others, yes, exactly. Like how America offshored all the manufacturing jobs that used to provide for the middle class.

Is it the housing being expensive per se that's discriminatory, or any laws that stand in the way of increasing housing supply? I'd say the latter.

> the ECOA still allows discrimination if the person can't afford the home, incentivizing the system to make housing as expensive as possible

I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Are you saying that you will sell your house to someone who can't afford it, possibly for a much reduced price?

Obviously not. That's why it's such an insidious and esoteric way of pulling up the ladder behind the chosen groups.

What is your point then? What you are trying to say? Your words give the impression that you believe when a person cannot afford a house, that is discrimination.

I don't get what's so difficult to understand here. It used to be straight-up illegal for certain people to live certain places. The system shifted to covert discrimination once that overt discrimination was outlawed. Housing became an investment so the people with equity would never want to dismantle the system, and all the accessible jobs went away. Now the people who used to be overtly discriminated against have no ladder to climb.

Since each of the people who responded to you, responded similarly, then perhaps the obstacle was your original wording and not with the people who replied.

What you wrote in this post is entirely different from what you wrote in your prior post.

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