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Comment by beat | Hacker News Reader

"If you get jammed up, you can become a convicted felon and that damns you to do it for the rest of your life, because you won’t get anything but a $7.50 an hour job—if that. You give somebody a felony record for life, what did you accomplish? You’ve just created a lower-class idiot that has to commit more crimes to survive.”

That's the problem right there. We can spend tens, hundreds of thousands of dollars incarcerating a simple marijuana dealer, and then remove most of them from the chance of ever having a productive life.

There are exceptions. I have an old friend who spent a few years in prison for LSD traffic back in college. He's one of the smartest people I ever met. Eventually he got out, finished his PhD in chemistry, and now is the co-founder of a startup doing new chemotherapy drugs. But like I said, one of the smartest people I've ever met.

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And the same conviction that means regular employers not trust the person mean that potential partners in crime know he's actually a criminal and therefore more trustworthy for their purposes.

"Criminal" as in the label. Was there not a statistic recently that the average American commits 3 felonies every day? Being a criminal just means you got caught.

That's a quip, not a statistic.

Aren't they already entrepreneurs? Who says they have to have a job? LOL

The idea that anybody you'd label an "entrepreneur" can pull money out of thin air legally, without any capital, without any connections and without working for anyone else is rather peculiar.

Is the American dream not based on that?

...no? To my understanding the American Dream is based on the idea that anybody from any background can come to America, build something, and become successful; the freedom and opportunity to start small and build up. It's not about pulling money from nowhere, it's about turning sweat into capital.

Actually the American Dream includes folks that don't need to "come to America"...i.e. Americans.

They can come from anywhere in the world, including their mother's uterus.

Pretty much.

straw man much?

I said that they are entrepreneurial, perhaps you would prefer that I said they're self employed?

The point is, they have skills and mindset that make them not just want a job anyway

I would prefer that you explain what you think they are supposed to do other than turn back to crime when they get out. The comment you were replying to was talking about how difficult it is for ex-cons to become productive members of society, and you just replied, "Aren't they already entrepreneurs?" This seems to imply that you believe the problem he was describing is not real because of their inclusion in the category of "entrepreneurs."

They may not want a job, but we definitely want them to have options other than crime.

While I am against the lack of learning and internet usage that inmates get (missing chances to prepare them for the real world and raising rates of recidivism), my point is that drug dealers in particular have the skills to be self-employed and run their own business. They already engaged in sales and formed customer relationships, etc. They can do that in other fields.

You know, Adam Smith talked about being self-employed so that people wouldn't turn into mindless employees of companies, and the productivity of man could be unleashed. I really doubt that the only options for people with such a mindset are to turn to crime or get a job. There are plenty of enterprises they could embark on that are legal.

Not without any resources. Approximately nobody is going to fund a guy whose only demonstrable skill is getting himself arrested for selling pot. They may have what it takes to run a business, but they're going to need to live until that business hits a relatively high level of profitability — which means they need a job.

Additionally, not everyone who sells drugs necessarily "doesn't want a job." Many are simply attracted to the easy money, which is not a trait drug dealing shares with most legal businesses.

Either way, ex-cons by and large do need jobs.

So you don't think that it would be far better for inmates to be taught, say, to become programmers or translators or do some other business that is in demand, allows them to be self-employed and requires low start-up costs?

Why?

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