riskllama wrote:close enough...*shrugs*
So language no longer means anything?
Seriously, half the problems in this world could be solved if people would learn to communicate better.
That means excessive exaggeration in political debate should end, and the meanings of words need to be understood.
If we live in a world where the word “scam” is equivalent to the phrase ”bad policy” then we might as well throw in the towel.
A bad policy is potentially an honest mistake that can be corrected.
Even if a bad policy or law is abused by nefarious people it still can theoretically corrected by the political process.
A scam is an intentional dishonest and likely illegal scheme whose sole intent is to defraud someone/some entity of money.
A scam has no legitimate purpose.
I believe ‘privatization’ of activities previously performed by the government is not necessarily or absolutely bad.
There are situations where some actions can be better performed by private sector, and there are situations where it’s not effective.
Now in order for you to define the privatization of prisons as a ‘scam’ you must think that the idea was...
- initiated by the legislature with the sole purpose of defrauding the gov’t/public of money.
- the companies so enriched are in on the scheme.
- the police and courts prosecuting the cases/convicts are also in on the scheme.
- all groups are actively colluding together to perpetuate and enrich themselves.
That’s a pretty high bar.
More likely it’s a bad policy... whose original intent was to offload the expense of building prisons, and reduce the cost to the public.
... and now some companies are taking advantage of to enrich themselves... but there’s no active collusion. Likely this bad policy is exacerbated by other bad policies, like the ‘war on drugs’.
When you start using words like scam you turn off the people who originally liked the policy... which may feel gratifying, but makes them feel threatened, so they double down on the policy and you don’t get change. If you want change you are better off using less threatening (and more accurate) language to get these people on your side.
