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this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
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Killing billionaires is both immoral and won't solve the problem. We need to kill the capitalist system that allows people to become billionaires.
Do you think billionaires operate in a moral fashion? That their journey was one paved to the top by the ethical treatment of others?
Perhaps we need a new morality because I find that operating inside of prescribed moral bounds is shooting yourself in the foot when making this particular kind of argument.
You operate morally, they use every dirty trick in the book, including killing you.
Just because some of them indirectly kill people doesn't make it moral to kill them. Maybe if it actually would make the world better, you could have a utilitarian argument for it, but as long as you just kill individual billionaires and not creating a new socialist system they'll just be replaced by new billionaires. As I said, regardless of whether it's moral to kill them, it won't help.
All of them indirectly kill people. It's impossible to be a billionaire and a moral person, as a moral person would spend that wealth to improve the lives of others. You can say that "oh but this billionaire runs a charity!", but how much of their own wealth do they give to it? Would a moral billionaire rely on the money of others to make change in the world? Would they still be a billionaire if they truly wanted change?
Just to be clear, you don't need to convince me there are no moral billionaires.
I have no doubt it would make the world better if you kill them and distribute their money (in minecraft) to I don't know social housing, public hospitals and schools (not claiming they will be used with %100 efficiency or %100 ethically but will be orders of magnitudes better than what billionaires are doing with them in maybe all cases). If it turns out to be a billionaire whose businesses we are currently addicted to (not gonna name names but you know), then there will be a period of inconvenience but we will get over it and adapt.
Obviously redistributing their wealth would be good. Killing them doesn't automatically give you their wealth to redistribute, and redistributing without killing them is also a possibility you seem to be ignoring.
🤣
yes fair point. I am also ok to give them the following choices:
1- live in a poor country with minimum wage with no opportunity to change jobs and a wealth cap (your annual earnings from other sources should be comparable to annual earnings of a minimal wage job). I have the feeling that after a couple months they will commit suicide. for billionaires directly affiliated with arms companies, this should be a country which was recently a war zone.
2- trial by combat. no wait that is game of thrones got confused.
This extra punishment's purpose should be to act as a deterrant
It will absolutely solve the problem,.
People dont want to die > People stop doing things that make others want to kill them > Success
It might have many unintended negative and positive consequences but you wont have any more billionaires very quickly if people literally killed anyone as soon as they amassed more than 1 billion dollars.
It would basically result in a voluntary 100% tax of anything over 1 billion because they dont want to die.
Sadly it will never happen because too many people would die in the process of getting there by the hands of people easily influenced by the billionaires money. (i.e. Police, Private Military, etc) But just a few martyrs would go a long way already and USAmericans have lots of guns.
All of this ofcourse only In Minecraft TM
Got it death penalty for all crimes
Well no, the answer should be prison, but the system is obviously corrupt because they are not in prison. If the system doesnt imprison criminals then sometimes the systems need to be circumvented.
Edit if y'all don't see how I'm being sarcastic, and this reply is about how the death penalty does not deter crime, I don't know what to tell ya.
You can't change the system while they own it and you can't jail them when they own the prisons as well as the ones that should be putting them there.
What do you suggest?
Well, non violent seizing of the means via unionizing and community action via grassroots electorate driven by transparent mutual aid.
But once you sign on to get the executions starting, you better hope you're in the "in group" all along. Else the violence will eventually come for you (not you you, hypothetical anyone)
And back to my point, the death penalty will just make them crafty, it won't stop greed.
Okay so once you've non violently seized the means, and they come to violently take them back, then what?
If you've seized em you've seized em. The system is no longer available for their exploitation. So did you or didn't you?
Again, have fun with the violence, but once that cat is out of the bag you always get 2 things:
Nice dodge
I've fundamentally contested what you said.
If you have seized the means and systems, the billionaire class are by definition deplatformed.
But still not answered the question.
I'll reword it for you, since you want to be pedantic about it.
You're in the process of seizing the means. They see this and don't like it. They respond with overwhelming violence (as they have repeatedly in the past)
Now what?
If peacefully unionizing or organizing folk are attacked, they are morally free to defend themselves, even in an organized way.
Establishing killsquads and public executions will not stay "pure" and will cause massive spill over violence.
There's an important distinction between the two.
Above I provided a meaningful reply to "what's your solution". You can argue it might not be effective, but I'm certainly not avoiding anything. I made my point, and my suggestion.
I was just trying to show that taking the high road effectively does nothing, when the opposition is willing to stoop to any level to win.
And that, historically, whether we are non-violent or violent, both have been countered with violence.
You're absolutely right about the spillover violence, but I would contend that we're currently experiencing that anyway, as inequality runs rampant and people are forced to crime to survive.
We've been trying the peaceful way for my entire lifetime and made no real progress. Perhaps it's time for a different approach. I'm not really comfortable with it morally, but I'm also not morally comfortable with things staying the way they are for another generation.
Rust my bolts and call me the tin man, 'cause I'm standing next to the biggest strawman of the century, and he still has no brain. Dorothy's probably on her way any second.
Sarcasm my dude.
Death penalty doesn't reduce crime.
What I'm calling out is that the comment laid out the blueprint for authoritarian extrajudicial killings, they just don't get it.
And that's fair. I think, though, that they were pointing out that the violence in that case would be mob violence from the hypothetical revolution, not actually at the behest of an authoritarian ruler. The death penalty is not involved. They seemed to be arguing that, at some point, the measurable and visible harm a person or small number of people does or do to the world by their continued practices, combines with the risk of them using their power and influence to escape from justice should any real attempt be made to force them to reconcile with their crimes, and that this inability to enforce justice without death, combined with the inherent injustice of doing nothing, could be the fomenting factor for mob violence against such tyrants.
And billionaires are going to, what, just let us kill the system they run and are the primary beneficiaries of? Get your tongue out of the taint and look at the dying planet you're on that they're making.
The problem is that the billionaires perpetuate the system that supports them, and they effectively have all the power.
And hoarding money that would provide housing, food, and medicine while people are dying or barely living paycheck to paycheck for the lack of those things isn't immoral? Lick the boot harder. They might give you a fucking dîme.
What? No, why would you assume those things about me. There are no ethical billionaires.
Hey, it doesn't all have to be work, work, work. Some fun is in order too.
Oh OK we'll just do that then
The problem is coming up with a solution to give us the advances (Tesla successfully made electric cars desirable, inspiring other companies to make them too, before Musk went and showed everyone how shit he is; SpaceX are the cheapest launch provider) but prevents the person who owns the company from owning the wealth it produces, and inspires those people to try
Neither Tesla nor SpaceX would exist either if Musk had not been able to take a large share of the sale of PayPal
The obvious way is preventing them from passing ownership and assets to their children, so let one person be ultra wealthy but not their successors (to keep from owning companies, government could sell off whatever shares it acquired) but good luck getting that sort of law up with billions of dollars against you
Now this guy worry about what's immoral. How about hoarding wealth off the backs of labor, is that immoral?
Of course. However killing billionaires is still immoral if there are peaceful solutions to redistributing the wealth, and useless if the act of killing them doesn't magically redistribute the wealth fairly (it doesn't)
What's your larger point? Why hedge with "killing billionairs is immoral" instead of just saying what you really mean.
What do you think I really mean? Killing anyone, including billionaires, is unethical. Maybe it could be justified in a utilitarian sense if it was guaranteed to lead to wealth redistribution and there was no other way, but even that isn't the case.
Do you understand why people use of the phrase "eat the rich" or their threats to bring out guillotines? Do you understand the historic relevance and the iconography. To me, if you did, there would be no reason to make the misguided statement, "that's immoral." Other than to create subterfuge.
But that's the whole point, there aren't any.
The whole idea of being able to tax them fairly and properly is merely a pacifier so the people think they have a chance. And while they hope something might change, the rich actually use their power, money and influence to rig the system in a way that ensure they'll never have to pay their fair share.
There's no peaceful solution to the unethical and violent accumulation of wealth
Okay point to a success doing it your way.
Have you read the Jakarta Method?
No, but neither ways have succeeded, we still live in capitalist system. I'd prefer to try a method that doesn't involve unnecessary killing and suffering.
i need you to answer the question I asked instead of spouting off about things you could easily know better about if you did some investigation into the topic.
And you're 100% wrong on this point. The other way has proven to work again and again. But only ever after your way fails and kills a shitload of innocent people. Just to say it explicitly: Every single violent revolution that has ever occurred on this earth began as a peaceful protest that was forced to become violent to protect themselves.