Today I Learned

According to the article, some of the companies who sell products that are made with slave labor include:

Willie Ingram picked everything from cotton to okra during his 51 years in the state penitentiary, better known as Angola.

During his time in the fields, he was overseen by armed guards on horseback and recalled seeing men, working with little or no water, passing out in triple-digit heat. Some days, he said, workers would throw their tools in the air to protest, despite knowing the potential consequences.

“They’d come, maybe four in the truck, shields over their face, billy clubs, and they’d beat you right there in the field. They beat you, handcuff you and beat you again,” said Ingram, who received a life sentence after pleading guilty to a crime he said he didn’t commit. He was told he would serve 10 ½ years and avoid a possible death penalty, but it wasn’t until 2021 that a sympathetic judge finally released him. He was 73.

This is horrifying in all regards

Once a nation built on slavery, always a nation built on slavery.

Slavery is even explicitly allowed as punishment.

Yeah. 13th ammendment. Slavery never ended.

"Except as punishment for a crime"

“Made in USA” = prison labour.

https://www.prisonpolicy.org/blog/2023/09/27/updated_race_data/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_ethnicity_in_the_United_States

this is the data that racists (like Kirk) use to justify white supremacy. But the wrongful conviction rate is proven to be nearly the same.

https://eji.org/news/study-shows-race-is-substantial-factor-in-wrongful-convictions/

The report, Race and Wrongful Convictions in the United States 2022, reviewed the cases of 3,200 innocent defendants exonerated in the U.S. since 1989 and found that Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to be falsely convicted of serious crimes. This is true across all major crime categories except for white collar crime, the report said.

We didn't end slavery, just made it palatable to the masses by labeling it "punishment for a crime". They just need people to feel superior to those being exploited. Claiming it's because whites were superior stopped being effective for the majority, so they made it so it seems they do more crime instead.

Additionally, there is more crime in predominantly black areas, but it's not because "black people are more violent" or whatever the hell, it's because racism has made it crazy difficult for black individuals that aren't born rich to progress. They were only sold houses or given apartments in certain areas, forced into poverty by lack of given opportunity, and while (I hope) that's less today, there has been a lasting effect on the general population. When you have to do crime to keep you and your family safe and fed, you do crime.

Economics of Everyday Things : Prison Labor

Barnes is one of around 800,000 incarcerated people with jobs in America's prison system. They grow crops, repair roads, fight wildfires, and manufacture a surprising number of the products we encounter in daily life, from office furniture to reading glasses. It's estimated that more than $11 billion worth of goods and services every year can be traced back to workers who are mostly paid pennies per hour for their labor, or even nothing at all.

You may remember this by its legacy name: slavery!

Between "freeing" the slaves, only to aggressively rebrand them as criminals (eg, guilty of (verb) while black), and the wage slavery many of these companies are happy to engage in, everything has been pretty well cooked for a while.

If they brand you as a criminal and force you into a position of working as a slave, then your food, accommodations, and everything is provided for you. This is "classic" slavery where the slave owns nothing and the slaver provides everything, controlling what is, or isn't allowed, provided, acceptable, etc.

If they don't (or can't) brand you as a criminal, unless you're from a rich family, you end up as a wage slave, where you make just enough to scrape by, often sharing accommodations with others to afford the landlord's rent, never owning property of your own or building any level of wealth through property ownership.... You don't make enough to have a vehicle worth anything, nor anything else of any significant value. You're "free" to choose your slaver, and they let you pick which landlord you pay homage to... The main difference here is that you get to "pick" your oppressors, and now instead of the slaver providing everything for you (food, clothing, accommodation), you have to figure that out for yourself.

The difference is honestly quite small IMO. And when you look at it objectively, you find that a large majority of people are still in slavery in some form or another.

Look around you and realize that "middle class" is pretty much no longer a thing. You're either poor and a wage slave, very poor and/or criminal and a literal slave, or you have enough money to be "independently wealthy" being a landlord or one of the slavers.

They've built a system that can only sustain most people at a level of poverty that affords then no ability to escape from that poverty, while the owners and shareholders, landlords, and bosses of the world, sit on their asses and collect the fruits of our labor.

I think all of the Fortune 500 companies have divisions that exploit prison labor.

They also get tax breaks for hiring felons they can pay less and even get reoffended on a whim.

The states get next to nothing either for this prison labor oftentimes, but if we looked at the deciders we would find kickbacks. Sweetheart property deals through proxies, sneaky kickbacks but nothing that could not be recognized as such.

Prison contracts are a big graft source too. A truly captive market.

Slavery. The word you're looking for is slavery.

Slavery.

What a shithole country.

The 13th amendment says that slavery's abolished. Look at all these slave master posing on your dollar.

Fuck the prison system.

Literally written into the constitution

In Canada, large companies that make or sell goods have to submit an S-211 modern slavery report. Here's the 2025 version from Costco: https://scalca.blob.core.windows.net/2025/Costco_Wholesale_Canada_Ltd_2025_gp5j65.pdf

The catalogue: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/rsrcs/lbrr/ctlg/index-en.aspx?l=7

The US constitution expressly and explicitly allows slavery if it's punishment for a crime. Read the 13th amendment if you don't believe me.

The most unrealistic thing in Shawshank Redemption was that anyone gave a fuck about those letters at the end. I'm pretty sure that nothing would've come out of it, and the ~~jailer~~ warden would've become a republican senator in a few years.

Slavery was never made fully illegal in the US. And if you vaguely define some crimes like “loitering” you can easily arrest people you disagree with.

While most critics don’t believe all jobs should be eliminated, they say incarcerated people should be paid fairly, treated humanely and that all work should be voluntary. Some note that even when people get specialized training, like firefighting, their criminal records can make it almost impossible to get hired on the outside.

“They are largely uncompensated, they are being forced to work, and it’s unsafe. They also aren’t learning skills that will help them when they are released,” said law professor Andrea Armstrong, an expert on prison labor at Loyola University New Orleans. “It raises the question of why we are still forcing people to work in the fields.”

JFC

The AP sifted through thousands of pages of documents and spoke to more than 80 current or formerly incarcerated people, including men and women convicted of crimes that ranged from murder to shoplifting, writing bad checks, theft or other illegal acts linked to drug use. Some were given long sentences for nonviolent offenses because they had previous convictions, while others were released after proving their innocence.

Reporters found people who were hurt or maimed on the job, and also interviewed women who were sexually harassed or abused, sometimes by their civilian supervisors or the correctional officers overseeing them. While it’s often nearly impossible for those involved in workplace accidents to sue, the AP examined dozens of cases that managed to make their way into the court system. Reporters also spoke to family members of prisoners who were killed.

They're trying to build a prison

They're trying to build a prison

They're trying to build a prison