For no particular reason, I was lying in bed dwelling on what my wife tells me are overly negative ideas about what to expect from the future(as well as the present). I say I'm being realistic, and imagining things are better than they actually are won't help anything. You might have noticed, but these kinds of things are always on my mind, all the time-- and whenever the subject comes up, particularly in the Asylum, you're going to hear about it quite a bit.
So then I got to thinking-- what if I were to put together a story of sorts to illustrate these ideas? I keep thinking of classic satirical tales we all read in grade school like "Animal Farm" or "Harrison Bergeron," and I wonder why no one seems to make those anymore, or if so, why they aren't worth mentioning.
The premise of my story would revolve around the idea of "for profit" prison systems, and the fact that the United States jails such a large portion of its population-- a number that will grow dramatically once they have succeeded in dismantling our social security and government safety net programs. In the story, laws targeting freedom on the internet will have passed, rendering it essentially useless. Education is no longer compulsory, but a privilege for only those who can afford it, and only those who accept a Christian faith-based curriculum-- all of these things designed to further increase the population of those in prison, and to segregate the privileged from the "undesirables."
Stricter laws are put into place to regulate relationships between people, and to prevent those who have found themselves in extreme poverty from making a living for themselves legally, while laws that regulate business are all but non-existent. If you are suspected to be engaged in a homosexual relationship, for instance, you are jailed for "sodomy" and put to work in "for profit" prisons doing jobs that would otherwise be paid a decent living for nothing or next to nothing. If you have sex before you're legally married, you face a ridiculous fine or go to jail. Birth control, pornography, abortion, and even accidental miscarriages are strictly forbidden. Offend the wealthy fundamentalist ruling class in any way, and it is made into an excuse to put you to work in the ever growing slave labor workforce, which now covers practically all low to middle income job positions.
The thing I'm wondering now is, has this story already been done?
Edited, May 12th 2014 8:48pm by Kuwoobie