
The Expanding World of Poverty Capitalism - smacktoward
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/27/opinion/thomas-edsall-the-expanding-world-of-poverty-capitalism.html
======
wahsd
I know some will balk out of fear and comfort, but we are approaching a
boundary that will force these schemes to expand into the socio-economic
strata that you also belong to. Sure it's easy to ignore the brewing storm
because it's at the horizon, but what happens when the government and the
corrupt officials find that they have sucked the poor and down-trodden dry and
their revenue streams are atrophying. Let's see, you speed, well we need to
make sure that you are not a serial speeder and need to monitor you for an
increasing number of months at a cost of $100 per month for equipment and
services. Let's see...what else? You drink.... you've been drunk in public.
Well we need to make sure you are not doing illegal things while you are drunk
so we need to monitor you for an ever expanding number of months.

~~~
ctdonath
The alternative is incarceration; would you rather that be mandatory? Crimes
were committed (whether what was committed _should_ be a crime is a different
discussion), incarceration is the normal punishment and means of ensuring the
crime (nor others) is not repeated within a given period of time. Thanks to
technology & private services, we _can_ give the convicted an option which
prevents/discourages recidivism within that period, but otherwise lets them
largely return to freedom. Being costs above and beyond what the jurisdiction
has budgeted (on the represented will of the people), either let the convicted
opt for paying for the means for that freedom, or take the free route of being
locked in a box for a prolonged period. Sure there are issues subject to
objection in this, but remember: the alternative is dump these options and
just incarcerate.

BTW, PSA: an out-of-state driver in NY caught speeding can be subjected to an
additional >$300 "safe driving assurance" (or some rot) fee, paid to ensure
said driver is not arrested outright next time discovered (for any reason)
driving in the state. No 3rd-party services/mechanisms involved, just
straight-up legal extortion which, per the lead article's premise, hits the
poor harder than the better-off.

~~~
scarmig
The just alternative is that the State pays for the programs it deems
necessary to force on people for the good of society. It's not a question of
funding: incarceration is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than
surveillance.

If you think that large punitive fines are a useful disincentive to crime
(whether that's true or not depends on several factors, but for people living
paycheck to paycheck and in deep debt, probably not), fine, argue that. But
that's a separate issue. So far as I can tell, there's no policy argument for
making people for their own surveillance, if what you're concerned about is
improving social outcomes.

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snowwrestler
Several comments here are addressing the use of the word "capitalism." It's
being used because this op-ed writer knows his audience.

Writing on the editorial pages of the Times, he knows he is reaching a
primarily liberal audience. He is writing in the context of Democratic
political campaigning against big corporations about the financial meltdown,
growing income inequality, poor job growth coincident with record corporate
profits, and tax shenigans like inversions.

In short, he's speaking to an audience that tends to be suspicious of
businesses larger than the local grocer, and that has already been whippped up
in that direction for several years now.

So: he frames his pet issue in those terms, in order to get the maximum
response from the audience. (It's also why he name-drops several Republicans,
despite the fact that these fees are charged in localities controlled by
either party).

Seen objectively, the issue is not actually with capitalism, since one of the
major examples of fees hitting the poor are municipal court fees--which don't
go to private companies at all. They are directly assessed by the local
government to pay government expenses. But they're still hurting the poor. NPR
had a great story about it recently:

[http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-
fee...](http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-fees-punish-
the-poor)

------
msluyter
Alex Tabarrok has been discussing this passionately on the Marginal Revolution
blog:

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/08/fer...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2014/08/ferguson-
and-the-debtors-prison.html)

[http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/04/deb...](http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/04/debtors-
prison-for-failure-to-pay-for-your-own-trial.html)

------
brohoolio
This seems expensive, inefficient and destined to trap people in a cycle of
poverty.

I'd rather my taxes cover the true cost of the court system and the courts
focus on reforming individuals rather than cost recovery.

~~~
ctdonath
_destined to trap people in a cycle of poverty._

Only if those people persist in committing crimes.

~~~
socialist_coder
It doesn't seem like you understand. This privatization is creating a cycle
that is contributing to people being repeat offenders.

So yes, "only if these people persist in committing crimes", but the
government is making it harder on them to get their life back together after
committing the 1st crime.

~~~
ctdonath
The $free alternative of incarceration remains, independent of whether costly
alternatives exist.

Alas, human nature is such that making it easy "to get their life back
together after committing the 1st crime" decreases the incentive to do so. The
main point of sentencing is to discourage recidivism.

I'm concerned about a subculture normalizing crimes, 1st or subsequent.
Objecting to punishment with zero consideration of the cause thereof
facilitates the underlying problem.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
I worry more about subcultures having their normal criminalized e.g. the drugs
_those people do_ need to be punished severely.

This goes back to prohibition and the Ku Klux Klan supporting it to antagonise
Irish Catholics.

~~~
socialist_coder
This is already happening with crack vs coke, but I assume you know that =)

------
vegancap
The very fact this article is talking about government and business in
symbiosis means the author doesn't understand the word 'Capitalism'.

When big business are in cahoots with government, to good or bad effect
(usually bad) it's Corporatism, not Capitalism.

~~~
asgard1024
So what's your definition of capitalism?

I think the original definition originated sometime in the 19th century,
probably from Marx, and it meant the actual, real world system (this is
different from communism, which designated an ideal).

I always understood it as an economic system based on two characteristics:

1\. Private ownership of capital.

2\. Labor as a market commodity.

I think these two aptly describe both 19th century and current economic
systems, and I don't think this implies anything about symbiosis (or lack of
thereof) between government and business.

Addendum: Maybe you mean _free market_ , which, in my view, is a different
thing. At least because it, like communism, describes an ideal, not an
factually existing system (I am not aware of sufficiently closed economic
system which could be considered to be a free market).

~~~
vegancap
"So what's your definition of capitalism?" \- Mutual, voluntary free economic
association of trade in commodity, time and subjective value.

The original definition was prior to that, first used by Anne-Robert-Jacques
Turgot in a positive, anti-feudalist sense.

Those two are components of Capitalism, but by no means is is inclusive of the
concept of central governance. When banks are centralised, they aren't
privately owned.

When the money and currency itself is printed and distributed by a central
regime, it isn't private. So when the value itself isn't private, then
ownership of capital isn't private.

The terminology to best describe this hybrid of centralised ownership of
currency and labor and partial free-markets are better described as
'Corporatism' or to be more brutal an 'Oligarchy'.

~~~
asgard1024
> The original definition was prior to that, first used by Anne-Robert-Jacques
> Turgot in a positive, anti-feudalist sense.

I think you're wrong. I looked around the Internet and it really seems that
the word "capitalism" originated from "capitalist", first used by Marx in
Communist Manifesto.

See e.g.
[https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1005122700456](https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=1005122700456)

(I would be interested to see exact quote from Turgot, that uses the word.)

What you describe was called "economic freedom" or "economic liberalism". And
I already said that, when I mentioned "free market". Markets obviously are
prerequisite for capitalism, but they don't have to be free in this sense.

------
Bsharp
This is all sick in it's own way, but it's not capitalism. Why do people
equate every system in which someone makes a profit with capitalism?

~~~
cpr
It's the evil twin of capitalism, crony capitalism, which is what we have in
this country.

(Technically, it should be called fascism, since it's the binding together
(fasces) of government and business in an unholy union.)

~~~
boomlinde
Crony capitalism, corporatism... Call it whatever you want, but it doesn't
really exist outside the framework of capitalism. I'll keep looking for the
true scotsman just in case I'm wrong, though.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Eh. There's one thing where people are able to purchase, own, and maintain
capital, and make money off its output. There's another thing that's about
using the coercive force of the state to force people to send you resources
that they wouldn't if they were free to do as they pleased. It's meaningful to
refer to the former as "capitalism" and call the latter something more like
"fascism". It's also quite meaningful to discuss the discuss the manner in
which they interact and the impurity of extant capitalist systems.

But the big people in charge (or at least with connections) forcing the little
people to send them resources? That's a pattern far older than the notion of
capital investments, and dates back to our early primate days, before our most
basic notions of investing in the future through things like, say,
agriculture. So I say it's pretty much orthogonal to capitalism.

~~~
nickff
> _" But the big people in charge (or at least with connections) forcing the
> little people to send them resources?"_

This sounds like feudalism to me, though I know the word has negative
connotations, and is now associated only with the distant past.

------
watwut
"in Washington state, N.P.R. found, offenders even get charged a fee for a
jury trial — with a 12-person jury costing $250, twice the fee for a six-
person jury."

Is that legal/constitutional?

~~~
bostik
No idea about legality (not being in or from US I have an excuse for my
ignorance); however the idea of charging the defendants for administering
justice can be traced back to _at least_ the inquisition. They had a price
list for "interrogation" operations, which were payable by the subject being
tortu^Winterrogated.

Because a good number of their subjects failed to survive the administrations,
these costs were often extracted from their family and relatives,
retroactively.

On the director's commentary track for Brazil, Terry Gilliam notes that the
inquisition's practice of charging fees for their (in)justice was one of the
major ideas when honing the script and the storyboard.

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williadc
I'd like to see the data behind this quote:

"This new system of offender-funded law enforcement creates a vicious circle:
The poorer the defendants are, the longer it will take them to pay off the
fines, fees and charges; the more debt they accumulate, the longer they will
remain on probation or in jail; and the more likely they are to be
unemployable and to become recidivists."

~~~
maxerickson
It isn't deeply empirical, but this article provides some exposition on it:

[http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-
fee...](http://www.npr.org/2014/05/19/312158516/increasing-court-fees-punish-
the-poor)

------
grecy
It seems more and more every day the government of the United States is not
there to serve or help it's citizens - it's purely there to serve and help big
business.

Sooner or later this has to end. I just hope it's not too violent when it
does.

~~~
hgsigala
Why does it have to be violent at all? Many people on this site are a fan of
Larry Lessig. Check out his alternative to the "violent end" of big business
Mayday.us

~~~
grecy
I don't think it _has_ to be violent, but I think the way things are going it
will be.

Tens of millions of people are without healthcare, getting their homes taken
away and are unable to provide for their families.

To put it bluntly, they're desperate.

Also, America has a history of violence, an armed populace and a "I'll take
what's mine" foundational attitude.

Combine desperate people with a history of violence, and you get Ferguson, New
Orleans, etc. etc.

------
cardamomo
This is surprisingly reminiscent of a particular scene from a Terry Gilliam's
_Brazil_ : [http://youtu.be/nSQ5EsbT4cE](http://youtu.be/nSQ5EsbT4cE)

No doubt other science fiction authors and directors have tacked this topic as
well.

------
zackmorris
Tax the rich.

~~~
innguest
And the right to steal from, or "tax", the rich, comes from where? In other
words, I'm curious how you think this is moral.

~~~
gress
I'm curious how you think it's moral to deny justice to, or steal from the
poor.

~~~
innguest
I don't think those are moral things to do. But if you vote you do, because
you are funding a group of people (the government) that does exactly that:
denies justice to the poor (e.g. the war on drugs), and steals from them (e.g.
the poor have fewer tax-evading strategies at their disposal).

~~~
gress
This is obviously false. Voting is a way of interacting with the state.
Neither voting nor not-voting implies support for any particular state policy
any more than using a state issued currency or holding a passport does.

------
known
To Curb Global Poverty Every 3rd World Currency Should Be Pegged To OPEC Oil
For 4 Years Till
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triffin_dilemma)
Is Resolved.

------
lasermike026
No good can come from this.

------
netcan
Sounds like a good idea.

