this post was submitted on 17 Sep 2025
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What do you mean with quality of life? Remember people will only get their basic needs met. If they want more quality they have to pay for it and thus have to work. So the rest should be figured out by the free market (even better than now because labor market isn't free if people have to work to survive). Of course there will be a certain percentage that is okay with just surviving but I am sure their needs can be met by the taxes of the overwhelming amount of people who want more than that.
Well, like I said, even today, it is basically impossible to starve to death in the Western world. You can get your caloric needs met from charity programmes and government assistance alone. It requires you to sacrifice your dignity and accept a very low quality of life, but you will not die.
So if coercion is defined as "forced to perform some action under threat of not having one's biological needs met", nobody is in fact coerced to do anything.
and if you're not doing good then there's always the "go to jail" route: free housing and food, at the cost of your freedom
In some parts of the Western world (particularly in the US), prison is also forced labour. The state I live in has abolished it but many other states still have it.
I completely forgot this was a thing
Still a way not to die I guess?
What happens if the prisoner refuses to work?
It seems like they get less privileges, not specifically punished
In many cases, psychological torture (solitary confinement)
It doesn’t state that this is a punishment that can happen when refusing to work
It's a general prison punishment. What do you expect them to do if a prisoner refuses to work? Shrug and say "aw shucks, too bad I guess"?
You can’t just assume things. From my research, there is no forced labor. Prisoners work to gain benefits
That is certainly some thing to say from someone who apparently did not even read the Wikipedia article
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penal_labor_in_the_United_States
Indeed, thanks for the source. This seems to be illegal but it happens