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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[–] leagman1@feddit.org 9 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Y'all are so unbelievably mad over there.

[–] Lemminary@lemmy.world 7 points 7 hours ago
[–] Redvenom@retrolemmy.com 8 points 8 hours ago

It's not a hard concept guys, slavery it's bad

[–] billwashere@lemmy.world 21 points 12 hours ago (1 children)
[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Jim Crow with a fresh coat of paint.

[–] Butterphinger@lemmy.zip 4 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago)

No, that's employment, this has to be something new, then.

[–] Bluedragon012@lemmy.world 12 points 13 hours ago

So we should arm the homeless then.

[–] OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 19 points 14 hours ago

You mean the current prison system in the South, but expanded so that anyone without the ability to pay rent is a criminal? Yes, but call it slavery 3.0. The guys doing 20 years on chain gangs for pot possession would be slavery 2.0, which started basically as soon as OG slavery was made illegal. It's never gone away. Rebranded.

[–] Yuccagnocchiyaki@lemmy.world 7 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

Every chance they get, they prove they are NAZIs

[–] homura1650@lemmy.world 3 points 7 hours ago

No need to look to Europe here. This is the black codes.

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 12 points 15 hours ago

Louisiana: how can we make slavery even slaverier?

[–] KelvarCherry@piefed.blahaj.zone 20 points 17 hours ago

"indentured servitude", which is what this is, is slavery; especially when the costs are forced upon you. This was a common method of immigrating to the USA back in the, like, 1800s; but that debt was taken by willing people who had the option to walk away.

And the crime is sleeping. Jesus fucking Christ USAmerica has gone from a prison state to a torture state.

[–] deadymouse@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

Povertycrime

[–] MonkderVierte@lemmy.zip 11 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

Doesn't the US have more and more failed states?

[–] Etterra@discuss.online 10 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Louisiana is already the actual worst in a lot of metrics.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 3 points 11 hours ago

Mississippi manages to consistently undercut the rest of the nation, with states like South Dakota, West Virginia, and Alaska running tight behind.

But a lot of that is relative. You can live in a big rich blue state - like New Jersey or California - and still be confined to a miserable ghetto or desolate rural backwater by the racist policies of the ostensibly liberal state leadership. States love to concentrate wealth inside certain high profile urban and wealthy suburban enclaves, then gate these locations off with high rents and transit costs.

What you have in the Gulf Coast is this policy split between states. So Florida and Texas aggregate enormous amounts of wealth. Then they outsource the dirties and most miserable aspects of the shipping/refining industry to the middle states - Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi. By contrast, you've got cities like Vernon in California and Eugene-Springfield in Oregon and Akron in Ohio that do this kind of dumping in-house.

[–] Gonzako@lemmy.world 7 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] OrteilGenou@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

I could see this coming back. Five bucks to sleep on a clothesline, and avoid the workhouse. Looks like a growth business model

[–] Gonzako@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 13 hours ago

With surge pricing, we can keep piling debt onto the slaves.

[–] Tiral@lemmy.zip 4 points 15 hours ago

They already do this with teachers lol. Most work 2-3 hours unpaid every day. And no, they pay themselves over the summer and breaks because their check is stipend, they don't get "free money m" on breaks and summer.

[–] Treczoks@lemmy.world 12 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

Ah, back to 17hundreds UK, which their forebears escaped from.

[–] CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world 11 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Nah the pilgrims were their own brand of shit leaving multiple places they were perfectly welcome (including the UK itself) and allowed to practice their religion but kept leaving anyway because they weren't allowed to enforce their beliefs on others. This is the US going back to how it was founded.

[–] Napster153@lemmy.world 2 points 16 hours ago

More like peeling of the layers they tried to hide from everyone else

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[–] melsaskca@lemmy.ca 2 points 14 hours ago

Then the third choice would default to a last chance power drive of political violence.

[–] certified_expert@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Back to 1866?

The Vagrancy Act of 1866, passed by the General Assembly on January 15, 1866, forced into employment, for a term of up to three months, any person who appeared to be unemployed or homeless. If so-called vagrants ran away and were recaptured, they would be forced to work for no compensation while wearing balls and chains. More formally known as the Act Providing for the Punishment of Vagrants, the law came shortly after the American Civil War (1861–1865), when hundreds of thousands of African Americans, many of them just freed from slavery, wandered in search of work and displaced family members.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 6 points 19 hours ago

this is likely one of thier tactics to truncate,shunt homeless people to blue states to burden them financially. because they have use other methods to bus homeless to places like california, nyc.

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 37 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Unpaid labor?

You mean slavery?

[–] Uranus_Hz@lemmy.zip 16 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No you don’t understand, they are paid in room and board, therefore they are earning a “living wage”. Suck it libs!

/s

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 12 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

If we're going backwards in history, then I guess the next move is to count each one as only 3/5ths of a person.

Which sounds like a perfectly republican idea for "reducing" the prison population numbers.

[–] benjirenji@slrpnk.net 2 points 14 hours ago (1 children)
[–] nearhat@lemmy.zip 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

To get more congressional seats, of course

[–] A_Random_Idiot@lemmy.world 2 points 11 hours ago

and to have an other to continually focus the tribal hatred on.

[–] M0oP0o@mander.xyz 27 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Oh workhouses are back? Greaaaat

[–] D_C@sh.itjust.works 26 points 1 day ago (2 children)

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.
“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”
“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”
“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 2 points 8 hours ago

“This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased.”

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[–] obinice@lemmy.world 46 points 1 day ago (2 children)

Kinda weird that it's literally illegal there to take a little mid afternoon nap out in public, by the edge of a lake or under the shade in a nice park, etc.

Odd people.

[–] Sam_Bass@lemmy.world 33 points 1 day ago

The word is evil. Evil people

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