Here is a meme from The Skeptical Libertarian that showed up on Facebook today.
It is one of those memes that sound really good if you think about it for less than five seconds – and that’s most people, but a thoughtful person will start asking questions.
Is the demand for prisoners 0 without private prisons? Of course not. We have prisons so the demand for them is above zero. So it does not create a demand. Presumably, that there is a demand is a good thing. Most people think that a world without prisons would be filled with murderers and rapists running the streets, or something like that.
Given that the demand for prisoners would exist without private prisons, why would privatizing them even increase demand? There are people who profit from prisons in any case. In addition to prison guards, builders, and cooks, law makers profit from building prisons or else they wouldn’t do it.
Given that the demand for prisoners is non-0 with public prisons, and that’s a good thing (or else there would be no prisons), why is any more demand bad? There is no reason to believe that we have the optimal amount of demand for prisoners already. More than zero is good, but any more than we already have must be bad? If the optimal demand for prisoners is between 0 and infinity, why is are we currently above or at that point?
