Monday, March 14, 2016

well, the first thing the us would do if it wanted to ban slavery would be to fix the "except as a punishment for crime" part of the thirteenth amendment, which has been used to legally sanction slavery for the last 150 years. there were the jim crow laws for a while; nowadays, we have the supposed drug war. that requires some effort, though. you could ban private prisons, for a start.

and, in fact, this law is likely not disconnected from the growing power of private prisons in the united states. the comments are focusing a lot on nike. but, this is old information: nike has reshored over the last decade, and now mostly produces it's shoes through domestic prison labour, rather than foreign child labour. a ban like this essentially acts as a tariff, giving the prison slave labour industry a competitive advantage.

listen, i didn't build this. i don't even live there. i'm just saying.