America - The Freest Country?

[HoreTore]

Americans tend to conflate the terms anarchy and chaos. That too goes pretty far back in our "national myth" since we view the early Confederation days as having been too problematic.

But.... Doesn't relatively many americans define themselves as libertarians?

Anarchy, as a political term, simply means not having a government. What you put in place of it defines your brand of anarchism, it could be unions, extended family units, militias, etc.

But then again, american libertarians seems to enjoy putting people in prison, while a true anarchist would have an extreme hatred against putting anyone in prison....

[LittleGrizzly]

On the point about Prisons in America they do have privately operated prisons which (not sure about this bit) have thier value based on the amount of prisnors they have... (as the goverment pays per prisnor)

So privately owned prisons certainly want more prisnors then all you need is a corrupt officail (or campaign contributions as thier called) and all of a sudden a crack down starts and thier rolling in money....

I watched an intresting documentary called the drug war the last white hope and it talks about alot of this stuff...

[Ironside]

On the point about Prisons in America they do have privately operated prisons which (not sure about this bit) have thier value based on the amount of prisnors they have... (as the goverment pays per prisnor)

So privately owned prisons certainly want more prisnors then all you need is a corrupt officail (or campaign contributions as thier called) and all of a sudden a crack down starts and thier rolling in money....

I watched an intresting documentary called the drug war the last white hope and it talks about alot of this stuff...

Private prisons are only a few % of the total US prison population. While propably not helping (due to the reasons you described) it has more to do with the war one drugs combined with "tough on crimes"= long prison sentances, "personal responsibillity"=there's no such thing as structural societal problems that causes crimes and "prisons a rehability centers"= what kind of whacky lefty ideas is this? Prisons should be punishment centers that you fear not some freaking R&R.


As I hinted about in the other thread, as there's such a thing as too much freedom, how does good freedom look like?