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But we oppress some people. Criminals for one are people I would say are oppressed.
That’s exactly right. Crime, punishment vs rehabilitation and the prison industrial complex are big topics on the left. Nowadays, it’s popular even for people on the right to criticize the “prison industrial complex”, but the left has been criticizing it since at least the 70s. The most radical leftists even argue for the abolishment of prisons and pretty much every leftist advocates at least for prison reform and focusing more on rehabilitation as opposed to punishment.
You presented oppression as a bad thing.
Yes, I would say oppression is generally a bad thing. To explain further, I would also say that people shooting people is generally a bad thing, but I think we can all agree that in some special situations, people shooting people is a “necessary evil”, for example when there is no other option and you need to defend yourself. I still don’t think you shooting someone in self defence is “good”, I think it’s a situation that sucks for everyone involved, but you had no other choice, it was necessary and the best possible option.
I look at prisons in a similar way. I don’t think people should be locked up for non-violent crimes or in cases where they are clearly not a danger to anyone, I don’t think people should be tortured in prison as punishment, but I do think that in order to protect the lives (and personal freedom) of other people, we need to sometimes separate dangerous people from society.
Lol, most people don’t “just trust the government”… But the thing is, simply hoping that government will just disappear will not in fact make it disappear… And simply voting for the Libertarian party will also not make it disappear either.
What we can somewhat influence though is who has the most control/influence over the government. And I would rather have us, the people, having influence over government than just leaving corporations to do whatever they want with it while we pay their bills…