Massachusetts becomes fifth state to make prison calls free

There is no logic that a good thing should be free. In fact it should likely cost prisoners something if it is good for them. Just like breakfast is good for you but it is not free.

“If it’s good for you, it shouldn’t be free” is a very strange hill to die on, even if we weren’t even specifically talking about attempting to rehabilitate criminals.

What about clean air

In the libertarian ideal, a clean ecosystem should be monetized to incentivize the production of value by those who think they need a clean ecosystem. In theory, we would all be richer for it.

At the same time, there's no logic that says that a good thing should cost money. A walk in the woods is good for you, should we charge for that?

Breakfast is literally free for prisoners

The lack of basic logic training in the responses are hilarious, and some of them can’t even notice there is a damn “likely” there.

The fact that A does not imply B, and A often implies not B does not mean that you cannot find an example that show both A and B. But it is sufficient to weaken the argument to support B using A.

Also in your particular example, if you walking in a woods that is private or requires hiring people to maintain, you will likely need to pay it. You don’t need to pay it if you walk in the wilderness, but even that you still indirectly paying it via tax if there are any work needs to be done to keep the wilderness looks good to you.

A terrible theory. Business owners can increase profits by X% by polluting more, and they can just live in the clean air areas that have higher property values and make the poor live in the polluted areas. Weather patterns move pollution in specific directions.

Don't believe me? Look at industrial cities like Cleveland where the poor areas are concentrated phyiscally downwind of the factories, and the wealthy areas are either upstream on the West side or further away on the East side, where they built a private train for themselves that allowed them to be further from the city while keeping commuting distance. This line is now the RTA Blue/Green line, and if you do a street view of the line in Shaker Heights you'll see that it runs straight down a boulevard of period mansions.

The wealthy can avoid almost every negative externality they create:

Underfunded public transit in NYC? Just take a helicopter to work.

Too many people are poor and crime is high? Hire private security and live in a gated community.

The poor are mad at you every time you go out in public and have their pitchforks at the ready? Fly private, have your assistant pick up your coffee, dine out in a private room, spend time in places the poor can't afford to go like your yacht or Monaco.

In Science Fiction, they go as far as moving off-planet, like in Elysium.

If things that were good for society were profitable we'd be living in a Star Trek utopia by now.

Can you find a “shouldn’t“ part in my response?

This is silly. Non-prisoners are paying out the nose for prisoners' "free" stuff already, and worrying about some pennies on top of that is petty.

Offering prisoners free phone access is very likely to save non-prisoners shittons of money, so we should do it.

Yes, it's implied.

Sorry omitted /s

In an earlier comment you wrote:

> In fact it should likely cost prisoners something if it is good for them.

Which is equivalent to "if it is good for them it should likely cost prisoners something" i.e. "if it is good for them it likely should not be free for prisoners".

I'm aware that the hnarn's comment said "you" instead of "prisoners", but the principle of charity leads me to assume that hnarn meant specifically a prisoner rather than any person. And regardless, the answer to the question "Can you find a “shouldn’t“ part in my response?" is yes.

Haha, you got me

>“Which is equivalent to "if it is good for them it should likely cost prisoners something" i.e. "if it is good for them it likely should not be free for prisoners".”

You will have the same conclusion if there is no “likely” in the sentence, so you are obviously trying to pretend it is not there or you likely need basic logic course. (Don’t ignore likely here again, though)

This is totally stupid and illogical. The fact that you already paid some money for the other people doesn’t necessarily give you any reason why you should pay more for another expense, big or small.

Again, none of you guys seems to care about the reason and just want the conclusion.

You do pay for that through tax. And yes it costs money to maintain clean air, at least in urban settings.

I know you just threw that in, but there is considerable evidence that breakfast is not good for you (unless perhaps you're out working in the fields), and the modern concept that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day" was invented by ad agencies.

On the topic of meal timing, I recommend anything by Salk Institute researcher Dr. Satchin Panda.

If I say "you likely should give me 1 dollar" then in my interpretation there is a "should give" part in my response, even if there were also a "should not give" part or an "I don't know" part.

hnarn:

>> “If it’s good for you, it shouldn’t be free” is a very strange hill to die on, even if we weren’t even specifically talking about attempting to rehabilitate criminals.

up2isomorphism:

> Can you find a “shouldn’t“ part in my response?

In your case, you said "should likely cost". You took issue with the "shouldn't be free" part in hnarn's comment, so in the context of hnarn's comment, your first comment in the thread can be expressed as "should likely not be free". To me, there is a "should not" part in "should likely not be free", and I am not claiming that the "should not" part is the whole.

There's more to it though. Here's what you, up2isomorphism, wrote in full:

> There is no logic that a good thing should be free. In fact it should likely cost prisoners something if it is good for them. Just like breakfast is good for you but it is not free.

My natural interpretation is going to be one of the following:

1. up2isomorphism wants calls to cost something for prisoners (should not be free for prisoners)

2. up2isomorphism thinks that calls should cost something for prisoners regardless of which outcome up2isomorphism personally wants (should not be free for prisoners)

3. up2isomorphism is not sure about what they want or what should be the case regarding whether calls should cost something for prisoners, but they are leaning toward "should cost something" (should not be free for prisoners)

If all three of those interpretations are wrong then I'm just wrong about what you said. If so, sorry.

I know it is your "natural" interpretation, but it does not automatically make you correct. In this case, I did not give anything particular stance of if prisoner should be given free calls or not. I merely state that being a good thing for somebody is really not an supporting cause why it should be free. There might other valid reasons to provide it free or not free, but being a good thing for prisoner is just a poor argument. The same goes for things like since non-prisoner are already paying bunch of things for the prisoners they should not be bothered to pay another thing.

> The fact that you already paid some money for the other people doesn’t necessarily give you any reason why you should pay more for another expense, big or small.

You're right, but in the wrong place.

You're paying for another big expense when the person commits another offense and ends up with another round of prison. BIG bucks. If you'd just paid for their phone calls when they were in the last time, you'd have had a much better chance of not needing to spend that additional money.

People that become incarcerated have also paid for their phone calls and prison sentences by virtue of having been part of the public. They also don't cease producing value while incarcerated, but the prison system captures that, not the public.

Think of it like health insurance. Everyone pays, it's a service available to all of us, but not everyone uses it.