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Alex Wild

Who will pick the crops if we deport the immigrants?

It’ll be the same people, but sourced through private detention companies that take all the wages and return the immigrants to their indefinite holding cages overnight.

Chattel slavery, back again.

@alexwild

I want to make something up about why this can't happen but I can't think of anything.

@futurebird @alexwild

no it's exactly what's going to happen.

first the current prison population

then, the unhoused (see: npr.org/2024/06/28/nx-s1-49920)...

then undocumented workers...

then people they determine are sex offenders and other "degenerates" (porn watchers, lgbt+)...

then people they think have done an abortion...

then leftists...

then the "bad" black people...

then muslims...

then jews...

then the mentally disabled...

then the neurodivergent as mentally disabled...

...and so on

@pixelnull @futurebird @alexwild does the sex offenders and degerates include the felonious orange Rapist? Just askin for a friend/enemy.

@futurebird @alexwild California just voted AGAINST ending the enslavement of prisoners, so I think this is entirely plausible, even here.

@drahardja @futurebird @alexwild

I believe "no" votes have outnumbered "yes" votes for Proposition 6. :-/

@drahardja @futurebird @alexwild Not just plausible, it's almost certainly what they'll try and quite likely what they'll pull off without some major league organisation

@drahardja@sfba.social @futurebird@sauropods.win @alexwild@mastodon.online blue party supports genocide and slavery. They just were just more willing to lie about it.

@futurebird @alexwild i imagined at least "word gets out and people really do stop coming and *eventually* the (deceitfully) stated goal of deterrence is met and the supply dwindles to nothing as the slaves die out" but by then those firms will have developed very sophisticated human trafficking, sorry "enhanced and fully licenced recruitment", networks to keep the supply coming in

@apophis @alexwild @futurebird never forget that the original "illegal immigrants" were literally bused in by business owners as cheap labor and it wasn't an issue until Republicans wanted to make it an issue. It's literally just work and residency paperwork. Imagine arresting someone, holding them for months, and then dumping them in the bad part of a country they've never been to because they didn't file taxes on time last year.

@alexwild When those run out, it will be jaywalkers and vagrants and anyone else they can arrest on a trumped-up charge.

@alexwild

fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck me this is what's going to happen.

i didn't even see that piece of it, i'm dumb.

@alexwild gonna make being homeless illegal and increase rent

@alexwild increasingly, it's robots. Really expensive GPS enabled harvesters are used for row crops across North America. For stuff that isn't a row crop (orchards, fruits, and some of the veggies we get at the store), it's still people. But land owners are trying to nudge people out of this, too, to keep their labor costs down. We also import from central and South America, where labor costs are low.

@alexwild If you have the option, participate in a local CSA where you can volunteer and grow / pick your own food. Or pay people a living wage to grow for you. My two cents.

@kta @alexwild But there's no cruelty in using robots, you need human slaves to subjugate because the cruelty is the point.

@kta @alexwild ^This^.

Many farms do have unskilled laborers, but the bigger issue is going to be housing. Who do they think is building houses? Sure, your contractors might be Americans speaking English, but do you really think all of your Spanish-speaking subs are citizens of the USA?

The construction industry is filled with high-skill undocumented workers. Our country is going to stagnate if we harm them.

@kta
@alexwild
It wouldn't be too hard to make jailed labor cheaper than mechanization if they wanted to.

@cshlan @alexwild Yeah, but there's a thirsty market of start-up tech folks trying to sell farmers on robots. Prison labor *is* used in agriculture in the US, though. It's a thing. It's looked at as odd by small farms, though.

[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_f

en.wikipedia.orgPrison farm - Wikipedia

@alexwild I was discussing this with my wife earlier today. Private prison stocks are soaring right now. Many are filled with immigrants waiting for asylum hearings.

Setup concentration camps near the fields, move the prisoners around between the camps as needed.

No need to pay them. What a boon to the industry…

🤬

@alexwild
It’s not just agriculture. Who’s going to mow our lawns? Who’s going to build our houses? Who’s going to clean our houses? Who’s going to work in our restaurants? Who’s going to work in meat processing plants? It’s going to affect so many areas of our economy.
Naturally the private companies will step in. And who will be awarded these contracts? Just another opportunity for corruption and graft.

@sjharder @alexwild Teenagers of course!!!! Those pesky lazy buns need to their earn money /s

@alexwild

"Oh no, other countries won't accept the forced return of millions of people. Guess we'll have to keep them in cages, here. But they'll have to pay for their board and 'lodging'."

@alexwild my guess is that homelessness is now illegal. They will be placed in detention camps and that will be a source of forced labor.

@JBVPoet @alexwild Like in the 19th century with its workhouses for vagrants and unemployed

@alexwild

Yes.. more than likely... But the reality is we only changed the name to capitalism where us 'slaves' get the illusion of freedom and pay for our own clothes, food, housing etc from basic wages

@alexwild

Like the Dual 🇺🇸 🇮🇱 State Israel where surviving Arabs will be kept in secure ghettos when not working the orange and vegetable plantations

@alexwild I think it is interesting that so few people have a visceral understanding of what the “Jim crow” south was like in the US. Where people who were less than people could be beaten, raped, and killed while the people who were supposed to protect them shrugged. That’s going to be ANYONE who speaks out against Trumpism eventually. White, brown, won’t matter. This is really going to shock a lot of white people I know. Especially if they are jewish.

@alexwild probably same people, just in prison.
At some point they will run out of workforce.
But this will be increasingly ugly. Fascists rely on prison slave work force.

@alexwild This is exactly my view. We the crowds are being agitated so that there are stricter controls in migration. Not to reduce migration, but to reduce the rights of migrants. It's already happened in the UK, with African and Indian care workers who are in hoc to their employers. As the MP Tony Benn once said, "look at how they treat migrants, that's how they'd treat you if they could get away with it"

@alexwild prisoners, teenagers. But not young white male Americans.

@alexwild Christ that's dark. And all too plausible.

@alexwild @bynkii This is what I’ve been saying. We aren’t going to have massive deportations, we are going to have slave camps. Thank you for saying this better than me.

@paulc @alexwild the awful thing is since they’ll all be incarcerated, the 13th amendment carveout will apply and so free labor forever.

@bynkii Well, there is a reason why private prison stocks went up a lot this week.

@alexwild If Trump and his cult's thought process has more depth then we wouldn't even have stupid things like this

@alexwild in the case they will deport them, it will happen the same as in the UK. The crops will rot on the fields and farmers wonder why they cannot get enough workers.

Then they will come up with some forced labour approach.

Well at least that is my prognosis.

@alexwild This has been my soapbox for awhile. Nobody listens or cares. The Orange Fuckface™ will take care of them, believe him. He will take care of them better than any other President since Lincoln, and he will have a plan coming in 2 weeks.

@alexwild its a thing already but this i think will accelerate the hateful bible belt mentality.

@alexwild When I am lecturing about the police power, I describe it as a destructive process, rather than additive and contrast chiseling away stone and building up clay. The more chiseling we do, the more stone we destroy, the clearer the figure becomes, but 1. Is that a figure we want and 2. These are peoples’ lives. Be careful with that damn chisel.

@alexwild Don't forget chain gangs of people railroaded into state prisons.

@alexwild

Naw, AI enhanced robots will do it all for a fraction of the cost. Elon will save us!

(Sorry for the morbid humor.)

@alexwild ... and California just refused to amend it's constitution to outlaw that form of slavery ... in spite of the fact that the proposition proposing to outlaw it was unopposed!

@alexwild Your description sounded too familiar. Then I recalled this book I read a decade ago. My soul is breaking.