Comment by croes
20 hours ago
Capitalism neither prevents gulags nor famines.
And you can bet (pun intended) someone will create them on purpose if they can make profit from it
20 hours ago
Capitalism neither prevents gulags nor famines.
And you can bet (pun intended) someone will create them on purpose if they can make profit from it
Doesn't the US already have an above average incarceration rate and private prisons? Maybe, just maybe, there's some relation?
"Above average" is underselling it: the US has by far the the highest incarceration rates of the rich world [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...
The concept of private prisons basically proves why people who don't understand capitalism shouldn't engage in it.
The entire advantage of capitalism over socialism is that customer choice forces you to make better products, and everything else stems from that. If you only have one grocery store, one school system, one health insurer, one employer in town, it doesn't matter how bad they get, you'll be their slave forever. This is particularly true if the person making the decisions at those institutions doesn't profit from them doing well.
In a private prison system, there's no choice, you can't just switch prisons if you don't like the one you're in. This is the worst system of all, as there's still the profit incentive, without competition keeping it in check.
I think you could do a private prison system well. Maybe let the prisoners choose their prison, with major disincentives for prison owners if prisoners escape. Maybe pay them for every day their newly-released inmates stay out of jail, encouraging rehab programs that actually work. Those would align what's good for the owner with what's good for society, which is all that capitalism is ultimately all about.
It actually did prevent lots of famines.
Except it does? Capitalist countries don’t seem to have any famines. You could argue that for profit prisons are similar to gulags in some ways but the important differences are so vast it’s hard to compare them honestly.
Capitalist countries don't have famines at home. That's different from "capitalism prevents famines". Capitalism is happy to cause hunger, inflict death, or imprison people if it's profitable for capitalists, that's baked into the structure of the structure of the system. There's no systemic feature of capitalism that directs capital generating activity unless it violates natural and human rights.
Please do share what capitalist country had a famine in the past century.
Give it a bit!
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/26/g-s1-115240/iran-war-strait-h...
(I'm being snarky here, but COVID definitely exposed some supply chain vulnerabilities.)
Lots of African countries have market economies and also poverty and hunger.
Poverty and hunger are not famine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bengal_famine_of_1943
Niger springs to mind, massively capitalist with a lot of oil and mining
Massively capitalist in what way? They have a long history of price controls and nationalization and their current military junta is trying to nationalize the uranium industry. How could you even imagine a free market operating in a country that has a revolving door government that alternates between military dictatorships and transitional officials?