this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2026
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A Boring Dystopia

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“HB 211 is a debt trap. It creates a population of people who are, by definition, unable to pay. And then converts that inability into a labor obligation,” Michael Ryan, a finance expert and founder of MichaelRyanMoney.com, told Newsweek. “The ‘streets to success’ framing is deliberate misdirection. No legitimate treatment program requires the patient to work off their bill under threat of incarceration."

I'm morbidly fascinated by how carefully this article avoids using the obvious term. But slavery. It's slavery. It is a bill that would literally, legally, enslave a population (of predominantly Black men, fucking surprise) for the "crime" of being poor.

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I see that Christianity is getting back to its roots.

[–] fizzle@quokk.au 7 points 1 day ago (4 children)

Yes this is obviously slavery.

What kind of work are they expecting people to do though?

Most menial tasks are performed by machines now.

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Well since ICE rounded up all those "illegals" they will replace them with the homeless. Of course a large majority of homeless are mentally ill. Doubt they can accurately replace migrant workers.

But this shit needs to be torn down and anyone who votes yes on this bill removed from society.

[–] fizzle@quokk.au 2 points 1 day ago

Those undocumented migrants weren't screwing lids on tubes of toothpaste though. A lot of farm work uses specialised gear and skilled teams zoom along rows planting or picking.

It would cost more and take more time and produce a less desirable outcome to force slaves to do it.

[–] wheezy@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Machines cost expensive forms of energy and need to be fixed and maintained. Humans cost almost nothing to keep alive and are in large supply. When humans "break" you just replace them with new ones. Slavery is very efficient for capital production.

[–] MeatPilot@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (2 children)

I feel like we are moving towards a sci-fi story where AI enslaves humanity. But instead their is an elite class of trillionares and politicians above the AI.

AI does the thinking for free. Unpaid slaves do the physical work that machines can't do or costs too much to do. All that equals 100% profit and control.

[–] fizzle@quokk.au 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Can you give me some examples of that physical work?

Im sure there are things, but most things I think of can be done very efficiently by a machine with a skilled operator for less than it would cost to force unpaid labourers to do.

[–] MeatPilot@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Sure, I work with printers and suppliers a lot. A vast majority of what they do requires "temp workers" usually low paid people or even disabled adults with down syndrome to do a part of the process that would be much more costly to retool a machine to do or too expensive to build something that does it. Like folding and filling perfume boxes of various sizes, shapes.

Also the same kind of labor was used to pack over a million bags of various items because making a machine grab or move a changing inventory is just too expensive and having a machine that does one thing than never do it again is wasteful.

Really it's a balance between what costs more people or designing and/or resetting a machine for the job. A lot of times bringing in a group of low-paid people for a few months is much much less than a machine. People have more flexible parts.

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[–] captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Farming and sewing. Both involve manual laborers that's unpleasant and not yet able to be automated. There's also some assembly work that amounts to loading and unloading things in machines or inspecting things that come out of machines. Then you've also got a lot of building of more complicated machines like cars.

There's more I'm sure, but that's a lot of the stuff I can think of as an industrial engineer.

Oh also unpleasant service labor like call center work and content moderation. And don't discount pointless labor. Or labor that could be automated, but it's cheaper to pay prisoners to do it since the state subsidizes their care.

[–] ProdigalFrog@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 day ago

Wow, this is exactly what the British used to do back in the day. Absolutely barbaric.

[–] MrSulu@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 day ago

Slavery making a bigger comeback. It never really left.

[–] _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 day ago (3 children)

Every time I hear something about Louisiana, it sounds like a progressively shitty place to visit and an even worse place to live.

[–] SparkyBauer44@lemmy.world 2 points 1 day ago

Bingo. I made a huge "learning lesson"...

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[–] Sanctus@anarchist.nexus 4 points 1 day ago

Oh boy, is it time for Harper's Ferry 2.0?

[–] Wilco@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 day ago

Looks like they are bringing slavery back. When do we guillotine these despots? This is pure evil.

[–] weirdbeardgame@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Are there no prisons?" asked Scrooge.

The American citizen's version of H1B.

[–] MushuChupacabra@piefed.world 2 points 1 day ago
[–] SaraTonin@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

That’s unconstitutional. Slavery Is outlawed. Unless you’re a prisoner. So what they need to do is not give them a choice. Put them in prison, then you can make them do as much unpaid work as you want

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