> I apologize if I was rude. But let's bury this line of
> discussion. US imperialism sucks. Stalinist
> totalitarism sucked. The Gulag was a terrible crime.
> So is Gitmo, but they're not very close. End of story,
> jks
Yep. But the high US incarceration rate deserves discussion. My own view isn't particularly interesting: the vast majority of prisoners are criminals, they belong in prisons (though the prisons ought to be a lot more humane), but we would probably have far fewer criminals (and hence far fewer crimes and inmates) if we had a more robust welfare state. Which is yet another reason the US should experiment with the following the lead of its European peers.
(If you take a look at Posner's excellent blog, it appears that he may accept that the traditional bleeding heart approach of alleviating poverty to prevent crime would work--but he thinks alleviating poverty is too costly. Seems to me that our present approach is plenty costly.)
-- Luke