# In a free and modern society, all people should have the right to every amenity convicted felons get **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 6, 2012, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884 "2012-09-06T18:33:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/21 "2012-09-07T00:12:30Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Take a bunch of normal people and put them into a prison without any criminals around and it wouldn’t be all that bad. [Make sure you don’t have any guards, either.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/22 "2012-09-07T00:20:22Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > A perfect example of wanting to help, but not too much, and then making sure to exclude things that sound unreasonable. The “no boob jobs” exclusion does little more than hurt women who just had a mastectomy. I used the insulting name to show that I meant elective cosmetic surgery, not necessary cosmetic surgery. Face lifts no, reconstructive surgery after accidents yes. > [@](#): > > Now we all get to slide down the slippery slope of socialism in a democracy. Obviously we can’t fund abortions, that just goes without saying. And we probably shouldn’t provide cancer treatment to people that smoke, they caused it themselves. Or anyone else that engages in reckless activities. Too reckless and you toss them in jail where everyone seems happy to pay for them. > [@](#): > > What evidence do you have that this would be the case? Places with shelters still have homeless in parks and dumpsters because like I said reality gets in the way. Some members of the homeless community are assholes. They drink themselves stupid, get high of the most insane stuff, and then cause problems at the shelters. At some point the shelter has to kick them out. > > Eventually there will be an asshole in one of these prisons, then what? Are we allowed to kick him out? If we do we’ll have a new homeless problem, same as the old. In the US the homeless problem accelerated when people were kicked out of mental care facilities - either out of liberal over-regard for their rights or conservative cost cutting, take your pick. That’s why I mentioned mental health. There are unfortunately too many homeless because of economics, but the hard core eternal ones have bigger problems than being lazy. And of course there aren’t enough shelters, though the mentally ill ones often don’t want to be in shelters. I’m not claiming this would solve 100% of the problem - just make it much better. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/23 "2012-09-07T00:23:18Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > ‘…all people should have the right to every amenity convicted felons get.’ > > I guess I was responding to that.., in the Thread Title. It bothers me, on a fundemental level, that people who (presumably) have never worn handcuffs, > or been locked up, even for a single night, might claim that prisoners in this > country are the beneficiaries of “amenities” in any way. I didn’t read the OP as saying that prisoners have it so great, but that isn’t it a shame that law abiding people have it worse in terms of food, shelter, and healthcare. Not that sleeping in a park is the safest thing to do in any case. ---
**Author:** ![Omar\_Little](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omar_little/32/269_2.png) [@Omar\_Little](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omar_Little)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/24 "2012-09-07T00:29:31Z")
> [@Rachellelogram](#): > > But we’d have to tax the living shit out of these people to make up for the ones who don’t want to work. I think you just described the current system in the US. Separately, I read last week about a judge ordering a sex change operation for an inmate. I guess that’s no longer considered an elective procedure. ---
**Author:** ![bobot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bobot/32/21622_2.png) [@bobot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bobot)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/25 "2012-09-07T00:33:23Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I didn’t read the OP as saying that prisoners have it so great, but that isn’t it a shame that law abiding people have it worse in terms of food, shelter, and healthcare. Not that sleeping in a park is the safest thing to do in any case. Yes, that’s a damn shame. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/26 "2012-09-07T00:42:04Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > If we decide that everyone gets the same health care, we still have to have some way of figuring out who actually gets the treatment when we’re resource constrained. Maybe we have a lottery. Maybe there’s some formula that takes into account likely quality of life and persona contributions. Maybe we have a council of learned citizens who decides who’s worthy (“death panel” is an ugly politicized name for this). But there’s gotta be something. There are actually not enough kidneys to give everyone who needs a kidney to get one. When the music stops, someone dies because they don’t have a kidney. I don’t think we’re saying “Everyone gets the same”. We’re saying “even the poorest get a bare minimum”. I also question your “resource constraints” regarding healthcare. We could certainly use a lot more medical professionals now, but I don’t think providing healthcare to a few million more people is going to break the system. People get emergency care wether they can afford it or not already, and a major portion of the currently uninsured are young people who mostly don’t need it (but might, and should be covered). Add an increase in preventative care, and, while we could always use more doctors and nurses, I don’t think we’ll have to resort to lotteries or death panels. Also, if organs were allowed to be bought and sold, supply would skyrocket. ---
**Author:** ![DrCube](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/a3d4f5/32.png) [@DrCube](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrCube)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/27 "2012-09-07T00:53:39Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > It means not everyone will stop working if you give the basics. Some people will. Like I said, I’m not that concerned with some amount of perverse incentives/parasitism if it means that people who need it are helped out. I don’t know how many people are likely to not work if they’re given the basics of food and shelter. The level of benefits required to blow off productive work clearly varies from person to person. A relatively high percentage of people who inherit massive trust funds don’t feel much of a drive to work. And there are obviously people for whom the current level of benefits provided by sleeping in parks and under bridges is sufficient. Any increase in the safety net is going to add some people at the margin. Maybe, at whatever level of safety net we decide to have, it’s few enough that it’s not a significant cost compared to the benefits of a strong safety net. But I don’t think we should ignore the issue. Also, look at the other side. How many jobs, like movie ushers or bathroom attendants, were mostly eliminated by the minimum wage. And think of how many jobs will come back when people don’t have to work to survive. If I got a grand a month and my spouse had a decent job, I could easily see spending a few hours a week at a sub-minimum wage job that I enjoyed. Or volunteering, or any number of things that I couldn’t do now because I’m preoccupied with scrounging out a living at a job I hate and am barely competent at. (Hypothetically…) And don’t leave out the wealth creating benefits of learning new skills, inventing things, starting businesses and just plain being able to shop around for a job I care about and am good at without having to settle for the first crap job that pays the bills. I think all this taken together could cancel out the few lazies who would rather watch tv and scrape by than produce something of value in return for a better life. Look at the trust fund babies you mentioned. How many of them just sit around all day, versus the ones who volunteer, or paint, or write blogs, or do something productive, even if nobody is paying them for it? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/28 "2012-09-07T01:08:59Z")
I’m wondering what the significance is of the phrase “ **In a free and modern society** ” in the thread title. OP, why did you choose this wording? And what specifically do you mean by the word “free”? I suppose a “free society” is one in which everyone gets stuff for free: free food, free housing, free health care, etc. Or, contrariwise, it could mean a society in which everyone was free to do whatever they want to. In that sense, it seems to me that the freer the society is, the less we have (or “have the right to” have) things provided for us, because that obligates someone else to do the providing. ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 1:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/29 "2012-09-07T01:27:14Z")
> [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > I’m wondering what the significance is of the phrase “ **In a free and modern society** ” in the thread title. OP, why did you choose this wording? And what specifically do you mean by the word “free”? > > I suppose a “free society” is one in which everyone gets stuff for free: free food, free housing, free health care, etc. > > Or, contrariwise, it could mean a society in which everyone was free to do whatever they want to. In that sense, it seems to me that the freer the society is, the less we have (or “have the right to” have) things provided for us, because that obligates someone else to do the providing. I didn’t mean anything like that. I suppose I meant “free” in the “it’s a free country” sense… i.e., not Soviet Russia. I suppose I’m talking about places like the US, Canada, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/30 "2012-09-07T01:44:57Z")
> [@iamthewalrus\_3](#): > > [Make sure you don’t have any guards, either.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment) The Stanford prison experiment is complete bullshit. ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 7:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/31 "2012-09-07T07:46:54Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > Just so you know, we do this same topic pretty much every year. If you do a little searching, you will find several threads on precisely this topic. It was one of the very first Great Debate threads I participated in way back in 1999. Time flies. ---
**Author:** ![Blaster\_Master](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cab0a1/32.png) [@Blaster\_Master](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Blaster_Master)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/32 "2012-09-07T15:29:21Z")
> [@emacknight](#): > > If you are going to use this line of reasoning, it can then be used to argue against any and all of our social services. Ignoring the US for a moment, every modern developed country has various programs that ultimately add up to “free food, clothing, shelter and health care.” It is true that the _perceived_ tax rates are higher, but note that it’s perceived. In the end, all the costs are still there, we either have higher cost of health insurance to cover people who can’t pay, or we have UHC that ends up being cheaper for everyone involved. > > All the same arguments for UHC can easily be applied to shelter, food, and clothing. We as a society are already paying a lot of money for a hodgepodge of shelters and services. We’d probably save a lot of money through efficiency of simply setting up a prison-style system of housing instead. > > But that’s where the real problem with socialism appears. People aren’t willing to “live like criminals.” There are more than a few people on this board with prison experience, and I’ve known a few people personally that had to spend a weekend in jail. It’s 4 people to a room sleeping on bunk-beds. Prison uniforms. And horrible horrible food. > > I’m pretty sure we could easily afford to have voluntary prisons for anyone that wanted. The problem is that reality gets in the way and people would demand more. Things like their own room, their own bathroom, better clothes, and obviously better food. What happens then is that we create a barrier, just like with negative tax rates. A person living in prison ends up with an effective income around $20k by the time you add up all the benefits. So some how if they want to get a job and their own place they need to earn way more than that to be better off. One generation later and we’ll have people that have never known another way of life. Two generations later and we’ll have an entire class of people entirely dependent. > > All this does is highlight just how cheaply people could live if they wanted to, and how > unnecessary most social services end up being. There’s a difference though between some social services for everyone or providing enough to live off of in special cases and providing enough to live off of for everyone. Without arguing whether UHC is a right or not, providing it or not providing it to people means that people still have to work to get food, clothing, and shelter. But it’s something else if people who are completely capable of working now have an option to not work. So let’s simplify things a bit and, to use your number, just say that this sort of idea is more or less equivalent to the government giving everyone $20k a year. I have known in my life more than a few people who were perfectly happy to live with packed in a small apartment with other people, eat Ramen Noodles, and wear clothes they bought at the secondhand store. They were happy to do this because they didn’t want to work and were happy to just sit around all day. Yeah, it’s a crappy lifestyle, but some people are fine with that. The difference is, in order to have that, they at least have to either work enough themselves or get someone else to give them that money, so somehow $20k of work is going into the economy. With this system, that same person now has no incentive to work at all because if they weren’t incentized to work more than 15 hours washing dishes at TGI Friday’s to live better than that, why would they work as much or at all when they can now have similar conditions with no effort? And now that job washing dishes isn’t getting done. I don’t know how much of society these sort of people are, but they’ve now just gone from being at least slightly productive members of society or a burden. The thing is, I can get behind helping people who lost their jobs because of a downturned economy or people who are disabled or discriminated against or on hardtimes or despite working just have trouble making ends meet. Sure, there are people who abused those systems, but that cost is worth helping those people that really need the help. I just can’t see how providing this to everyone would help anyone that still needs help but isn’t covered under some other program and some program less than everyone can’t be created…I just can’t see how this is doesn’t increase the cost of abuse or just sheer laziness at a much faster rate than anyone who might have slipped through the cracks of one of those other programs. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/33 "2012-09-07T16:27:24Z")
> [@bobot](#): > > Yes, that’s a damn shame. You mean a guy, not so bright but hard working, who when laid off from his job because some CEO wants to please Wall Street to get a bigger bonus finds that he and his family are hungrier, more exposed to the elements, and more at risk for getting sick than some murderer? I agree - damn shame. ---
**Author:** ![iamthewalrus\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/258eb7/32.png) [@iamthewalrus\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iamthewalrus_3)\ **Post date:** [September 7, 2012, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884/34 "2012-09-07T16:41:47Z")
> [@DrCube](#): > > I don’t think we’re saying “Everyone gets the same”. We’re saying “even the poorest get a bare minimum”. I also question your “resource constraints” regarding healthcare. We could certainly use a lot more medical professionals now, but I don’t think providing healthcare to a few million more people is going to break the system. People get emergency care wether they can afford it or not already, and a major portion of the currently uninsured are young people who mostly don’t need it (but might, and should be covered). Add an increase in preventative care, and, while we could always use more doctors and nurses, I don’t think we’ll have to resort to lotteries or death panels. I’m totally behind “even the poorest get a bare minimum”, and I agree that our current system of providing expensive emergency care to everyone while not providing cheap preventive care doesn’t make much sense. But there are always going to be treatments that are too expensive for everyone, or otherwise resource constrained. Organ transplants are a good example of this right now, because it’s really easy to see how the limited supply of organ donors sets a hard restriction. We could certainly increase the supply of organs with different social policies, but there will still be other treatments that are possible with current technology but too expensive for everyone to have. I expect this will always be true. > [@](#): > > Also, if organs were allowed to be bought and sold, supply would skyrocket. Yes, but most people think a market in organs is immoral. It’s certainly a whole other can of worms. I think it’s probably a good idea and will produce better outcomes, but it still doesn’t solve the general problem that there are some medical treatments that are resource-constrained in some way and that there isn’t enough to go around. My general case here is _not_ opposed to some kind of health care safety net. It’s simply pointing out that a health care safety net is fundamentally different than a food or shelter one. The basic requirements to not be malnourished or overexposed are pretty cheap. We can relatively easily keep people from dying of starvation or exposure. But we _can’t_ keep people from dying of health issues. We can certainly do a better job than we’re doing, but there will always be people who die of technologically preventable illnesses because we can’t afford to treat everyone. > [@Little Nemo](#): > > The Stanford prison experiment is complete bullshit. Care to elaborate? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/in-a-free-and-modern-society-all-people-should-have-the-right-to-every-amenity-convicted-felons-get/633884.md?page=1)