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Comment by scarecrowbob | Hacker News Reader

US prisons are liberating in a certain sense...

I don't feel so bad about thinking that the folks who run them are probably the bad guys and are literally evil. Kind of like reading histories of the CIA.

And the more evil they create the less I feel bad about not being okay with the larger governmental entities that operate them.

For a long, long time, I felt like a whiny teenager, being pissed at my parents. As I get older (I'm 45 ish), the more I feel like my disgust at the folks who run these things is an actual ethical stance.

The people who run prisons in the US are literally evil.

There may be literally nothing to be done about that.

But that fact doesn't make the people running those prisons less evil.

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> For a long, long time, I felt like a whiny teenager, being pissed at my parents. As I get older (I'm 45 ish), the more I feel like my disgust at the folks who run these things is an actual ethical stance.

Same. They say that you get more conservative with age, but instead I've found that it has only got easier to hold the same principles I think I've always held.

Lately it seems like people have stopped trying to sugar coat their shitty immoral ideas, and now it's really easy to see when someone is motivated by greed or hatred or is just an all around bad person. They used to dress these ideas up as "pragmatism" or "fiscal responsibility" and then you'd have to debate them and second guess yourself. But now they pretty much just tell you that they have no principles.

It doesn't even have to be political... You wouldn't believe how casually people will suggest doing immoral things at work: cutting corners (and lying about it), lying to customers, lying to coworkers, hiding things that make the company look bad (even if people could get hurt as a result), or even committing outright fraud. It boggles the mind.

> The people who run prisons in the US are literally evil.

> There may be literally nothing to be done about that.

That isn't true, you can limit their influence. Prison owners and operators can be evil and do evil things because of legislation that gives them power and wealth. That legislation can be changed.

What a naive and cynical perspective.

yes, it's just pseudo-ethical garbage to justify doing nothing politically

Why naive ? Never heard of CIA experiments on inmates ?

What a lackadaisical comfortist non-effort.

You are capable of more productive discussion than this.

Huh?

3 daily calls is evil?

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