Policing for Profit, For Profit Prisons, and War Profiteering are all misnomers based on misconceptions about what profits are and what the profit-seeking motive entails. Like all other social ills that leftists blame on the profit motive in particular and capitalism in general, this is a fatal misconception that leads to false conclusions about the creation and distribution of wealth. The fallacy that arises when people talk about the evils of policing for profit, the prison-industrial complex, or the military-industrial complex, is that they conflate profit with (economic) rent and thus profit-seeking with the rent-seeking. Policing for profit, prison profits, and war profiteering would be more accurately described as policing for rent, prison rents, and war racketeering. What one earns, either in wages, interest or profits, is distinct and polar opposite to what one could appropriate from earnings of others in rent through monopoly pricing. The profit-motive drives economic growth, and wealth grows exponentially providing a larger share to everyone even if their proportion of aggregate wealth shrinks. Rent is sum zero; it is set by a monopoly in a fixed supply of some factor of production or asset or by having any power to attain wealth without reciprocating wealth (broken window fallacy). The broken window fallacy is basically tautology that you can not create wealth by destroying it. The nature of war, incarceration and confiscation is destroying life and property, taking people out of the labor force, and depleting people's wealth and disposable income.
Policing for Profit
When the police seize a person's earnings through tickets for petty traffic violations or civil asset forfeiture, they are not generating a profit from the seizure of another person's earnings but imposing a rent. The revenue generated by 'policing for profit' is not wealth, but maintenance costs imposed on the victims to supply the modern highwaymen with a fund for equipment and luxuries. It is the cost of maintaining a police state apparatus.
The Prison Industrial Complex
The same holds true for the private prison industry, though this is less obvious than in the first case because they have all the formalities of any other private business along with shareholders and employees. But private prisons are monopolies since their only customers are governments. Prisoners don't get to choose among competing prisons. Private prisons do not generate profits to their shareholders, but rents because they do not create any new wealth; their supposed 'profits' actually represents the maintenance costs of incarceration. The revenues of private prisons, just the same as government owned prisons, are appropriated from the earnings of taxpayers and other industries.
The Military Industrial Complex
The same principle that holds true for the private prison industry is no less applicable to the defense industry. The revenue that defense contractors generate are no less than rents because they produce tangible goods unlike private prisons. The sole customer being the federal government, the revenue generated by producing military weapons and equipment is appropriate via taxation on the earnings of other industries and individuals. War itself does not create any wealth but destroys it. Defense spending diverts wealth from other industries to defense contractors. Any technological gains made by the defense industry are inevitably offset by both the monetary and opportunity costs incurred by other industries and the invaluable cost of human life. The return on defense industry production is thus a rent, and the revenue represents the maintenance cost of maintaining the empire.
This is correct, government is a parasite, and destroys what it touches.
It's interesting that the government presents itself as the solution to Every problem; when they are the source of said problems!
Great post!
🤠👍💗
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