RE: Liberty vs. Extropy

Billy Brown (bbrown@conemsco.com)
Mon, 24 May 1999 13:31:35 -0500

mark@unicorn.com wrote:
> Uh, last I checked, America imprisoned a larger fraction of its population
> than any country other than Russia; that sounds a lot like oppression to
> me. There are various areas where America does beat the rest of the world
> in terms of freedom, but you can find plenty of exceptions.

It depends on how you measure freedom. The number of ways in which the American government restricts its citizens is smaller than average, but some of those restrictions put an awful lot of people in jail. Of course, the real tragedy is that the difference between America and places like France and Russia is small enough that we can argue about who is better.

BTW, I think we actually have a higher incarceration rate than Russia these days.

Billy Brown, MCSE+I
bbrown@conemsco.com