How can one imagine a socialist state without prisons? I mean, I can understand the tactical benefit of emptying out the prisons during a revolutionary period, the way that, say, the Bolsheviks released criminals from Tsarist prisons about a century ago to advance their communist coup.

Once a socialist state is up and running, though, some sort of prison system is necessary. How else to enforce the confiscatory taxation necessary to pay for a vast welfare state in an economy with the inefficiency of socialism? Liens, payroll withholding, fines, and asset forfeiture can only get a government so far.

Socialist wage and price controls often spawn a black market. How is the government supposed to prevent smuggling of goods, bartering, or off-the-books labor without being able to punish violators with prison?

Socialist state-owned enterprises are so poorly run that the only way they can survive is by using the power of the state to outlaw competition. How would a state-owned enterprise be able to preserve its monopoly without being able to throw would-be competitors in prison?

Ira Stoll
April 23, 2018
The Irony of Socialists Calling for Abolishing Prisons
Prisons are a staple of socialist political and economic systems, and always have been.
[True socialists, as opposed to those that use socialism as a tool to gain power, have never been that well connected to reality.

It’s possible these people figure that “”reeducation camps”, mental hospitals, and executions will work just fine without traditional prisons. You just never know which path a particular flavor of socialism will go down. You know that the direction will be down.—Joe]

A government is a body of people, usually, notably ungoverned.

Shepard Book
December 6, 2002
Firefly: War Stories
[Jaime and I were watching Firefly for about the third time and this kind of jumped out at me and we had a little chat about the series. Josh Whedon created this series and it is, or at least Jaime and I she it as, filled with libertarian ideas. Yet Whedon is somewhat outspoken political with very non-libertarian ideas. We were unable to resolve this in the minute or so we devoted to it.

Now I wonder if perhaps Whedon views libertarians as idealist losers or some such thing. They have appealing principles but are totally impractical and will always lose when they face reality.

This would make them a great set of characters in the series. They are easy to be sympathetic with because they are basically good people. But they have a lot of conflict and stress because they are inherently unsuited for the reality of the situation they find themselves in.—Joe]