Living in a developing country like India, I'm sometimes half-thankful that our police is inept, woefully ill-equipped with weapons and government-controlled.
Isn't it great to be a man?
[edit: I realize this flippant remark probably makes little sense for those who don't live in India. Ineffective policing is a very serious problem here, primarily for women. If I stay out late with a girl, it's almost automatic that I will escort her home regardless of the inconvenience to me. Black women often wear a keffiyeh at night to avoid racially motivated attacks. Physical security is a significant electoral issue.]
I think you make an important (if biting) point for putting the parent in some context.
That works for those holding on to even the lowermost rungs of the middle class. Below that the condition of women, oppressed by caste and class(not direct but still a strong co-relation), their plight is hellish to even think of.
Also, while the school to prison pipeline is a dire issue in parts of the country, private prisons are still a fraction of total US prisons.
Humanity is barely keeping itself in check in a complex system that has developed over time, with multiple forms of organization, and multiple levels of checks and balances. Most attempts at massive restructuring has failed horribly, either if it's been in the direction of socialized organization, or private organization. Both were supposed to lead to flatter structures and less abuse, but in fact lead to the polar opposite.
But at the quip of an internet comment we're expected to realize in a flash of insight that "oh! it's so simple! if we just do it like this it will all be perfect."
Aren't the both bad? One for the lack of agreed upon standards , regulations and criminal, civil consequences, and the other for manipulating the playing field in favor of the few, and the power, removing from the the expectations of standards, regulations and criminal, civil consequences.
Unfair, unjust markets are terrible either way. Or am I mistake about one vs the other?
If you're talking about private prisons only something like 2% of inmates are in private prisons.
I don't disagree, that's basically the core conclusion of public choice theory, but I suspect that's not what you meant?
I probably agree with your comment about unions, but that's a much broader statement than I was shooting for. I specifically think that the prison and anti-drug lobbies are vile, because they use their power to create and increase enforcement of laws[1] that enslave arguably innocent people (drug users and people that fell afoul of three strikes laws), purely for the benefit of their members. It's not just unions siphoning off tax dollars here, it's perpetuating war ("the war on drugs") against the US citizenry (and unwittingly or not giving power to organized crime, and causing worldwide violence and unrest, etc. etc. you've heard this story before).
I bring up construction workers etc. because it's not hard to imagine a web connecting the companies that build the prisons to the police chiefs mandating arrest quotas to the "tough on crime" politicians and so on, along with their pocketbooks.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Correctional_Peace_...