For a long time we've heard about outsourcing. We've all either known someone or been a person who has lost a job due to it being outsourced. Did the call center close, or did it go to India? Did the factory close, or did it go to Mexico?

This has prompted the Buy American movement in the past yet even that is obscured by a smokescreen.

Right now President Trump's vows to penalize companies that outsource is making people very happy. At one point it would have seemed like a good thing to me as well. I just happened to be in the right place at the right time to learn some things that make me look at that in a very different light. Some of you may be aware of the same information through your own life experiences or perhaps you've read some of my older blog entries where I touched upon this subject.

Outsourcing is generally viewed as bad as it takes jobs away from the American people when jobs are what are needed. It is also sometimes viewed bad due to the sweatshop conditions and low wages paid to the workers at the locations that the outsourcing goes to.

Buy American

What if I told you that Buy American could be twisted on us, and has been twisted upon us as well?

There are products, and services that can claim to be 100% American and they ARE, but in terms of jobs for the American people and sweatshop conditions they are no better than the Outsourcing. You need to know now that claims that we will not outsource jobs could also be a concern.

The concern should be if they do not outsource then who are those jobs going to.

We immediately think. The American people.

Yet in reality there are at least two types of American people in the United States right now, though due to how the justice system works there appears to be an actual caste system.

The two classes I am referring to are those who are not in prison, and those who are in prison.

We have a massive prison population. The largest in the world. We are not the most populated country in the world.

It may be that they are rapist, and murderers. In reality, most of them are not. Many of them are in prison for victimless crimes, and that population is growing.

"He smoked a plant" - throw him into prison for a very long time.
"He downloaded and watched movies" - throw him into prison.
"He said something we don't like and was not standing in a free speech zone" - many are crying that people that say things they don't like should be in prison. Will this happen?
"She used CBD oil to treat her child, and it has no psychoactive properties, the government holds the patent on their medicinal value, yet they call it a schedule 1 drug which means no medicinal value" - throw her into jail.
"Guy lost his job, yet has no insurance, so owes an Obamacare fine, and doesn't pay it" - throw him into prison.

So some of you may have seen the recent Netflix documentary about the 13th Amendment. Let's correct something that video seems to not want to show. 39% of prison population is White, 40% is black, and the majority of the remainder is Hispanic/Latino with others. I am not stating that to get side tracked into proportionality. I just am stating it so we realize that the black and white populations are very close in number when it comes to prison.

The 13th Amendment makes slavery illegal... EXCEPT AS PUNISHMENT FOR A CRIME.

So, wouldn't that make these victimless crimes great from a slave owner perspective? You could use these victimless crimes to acquire new slaves, and the amount of new slaves coming in will require more and more housing, which the government might even subsidize. You can build additional plantations, I mean prisons...

Inmate labor is rapidly taking on more and more jobs. This decades ago stopped being simply breaking rocks and making license plates. They are not being put to work doing the jobs no one else wanted.

They have actually put some sectors of our industries out of business. I was exposed to it when I worked for a company that shipped parts for furniture kits (multiple full diesel trailers per week) to prisons around the country. Why? Because, inmates are finishing them and then the prison industrial complex sells them. Even better many places are told they MUST purchase a certain percentage of their goods from these prison industries.

I got a job at IBM and left that company. It is a good thing I did, because they were soon out of businesses as eventually the prisons started making all of the parts as well. I've since encountered people that were not prisoners, but did work in the furniture business that were driven out of business by these new inmate plantations for producing furniture.

You may be thinking... "So what, I don't make furniture?" to which I have two responses. The first is "You don't make furniture yet!" If they continue to prosecute people for victimless crimes and they keep creating new things to be considered crimes then in the future you might be doing that exactly. You might not be picking cotton, but you might be making furniture. The second response is "The furniture examples began more than two decades ago, I worked for that company from 1994-1996 and they had been around for years before that, and they went out of business shortly after that as the prisons began making even the parts. They no longer needed any outside businesses to work with."

Do you think they stopped there?

The LOUD answer is NO.

They now make many products, and they handle a vast amount of services from catering to building web pages to call centers.

Even if you don't end up in prison, it is possible your job might be done by prisoners instead in the future.

I call this Con-Sourcing instead of Outsourcing.

It is modern day plantation level slavery. The 13th Amendment makes it possible. Yet, they got smart. It is out of view of the public, and these criminals must be very dangerous and kept out of society. That is at least what they would have us believe.

So as you see new laws being passed consider in the future the same things you already do. Which corporations are benefiting from this? Is this really a crime or just another oppressive move? Is that substance actually illegal because it hurts big pharmaceutical companies profits? Is the new law a great way to get more prisoners, preferably the non-violent victimless crime type of slaves, errrr, I mean prisoners.

This is a REALLY big deal. I think it is actually more important than OUTSOURCING. Yet the world is largely silent. The 13th Documentary could have really nailed this, but they only barely touched upon it. Instead they went out of their way to avoid showing white prisoners, and made it more a black lives matter documentary. I assure you that the slaves in these modern plantations come in all colors. If we continue to divide ourselves outside of the prisons over color then we make it easier for them to get even more slaves. The problem with the 13th amendment goes far beyond skin color.

Steem On!