Bakers make bread. Kill the baker and you got no more bread at all. Bad analogy.
this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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Kill the Baker and people can access the bread, and the resources the Baker was hoarding, and ALSO make bread. Bread making isn't a genetic trait like hair color, it can be learned.
Yeah but in this town, they kill bakers . Don't listen to this guy y'all, he's just trying to up his baker tally so he can look cool eating bread. It's a trap, don't bake bread.
Edit:
Don't do it, really guys, I'm not joking.
I'm not a baker I'm a patisserie.
Guys i found the baker who only bakes expensive bread for rich people, get him!!
OK, but opportunity cost. Sure, anyone can learn to make bread, but not everyone has the time, space or equipment to make their own bread, or wants to spend their time doing it. Not making bread themselves should not exclude them from having access to bread.
Idk dude that sounds a little like capitalism or at least economics
Division of labour is not capitalism, trying to do everything by yourself is not anti capitalist (and in fact that extreme individualist fantasy has more to do with capitalism than anything else)
You assume those people would 1. Actually make bread and not just eat what was left and then go back to being starving. 2. Somehow not be subject to the same exact economic conditions that required a baker to charge for bread in the first place (ie. Cover the cost of his inputs, afford a place to live, feed and cloth his children, etc.)
Hoarding is a strong word. Rather than blaming a baker that is producing something that benefits other people, why don’t we focus on the people who are starving. Why are they starving? How do we help them make enough to afford bread?
They're starving because they bought too many lattes.
They're starving because they refuse to eat anything other than avocado-toast
Exactly that's why you kill them too, don't leave it up to chance
So you’re saying that, in order to maximize evil, we should kill the baker?
If maximizing evil is the goal, killing the baker is the best thing you can do. Those people will eat some temporary bread and then go on starving. What’s worse, is more people will starve as well.
But then you need to set up a cult to keep on killing bakers, because there are incentives for someone else to take up the mantle.
or you take over operations, adulterate the bread with sawdust while selling the good stuff only to the 1% who can afford it. Also, maybe make it an overpriced subscription, where in order to have the privilege of buying bread, you also have to pay per loaf, too.
If that sounds like corpo-shit... that's because it is.
Then you might as well lightly poison the regular bread to keep the poor feeling like shit and preventing them from improving their life. You can still sell the premium, non-poisoned bread to the rich.
also placing some of the antidote into "herbal" remedies. to make even more money off them.
Now we're making progress towards a plan.
Killing the baker isnt the best thing you can do
Start a cult where no one is allowed to eat bread, having to make all bread poisonous and placing it in a line
You would waste more resources compared to just killing the baker and reduce the risk of another person becoming the baker
Don't you mean "what's even better"?
And poison his bread.
Yeah. Meanwhile killing CEOs has no drawbacks because they do nothing of value and horde all the money which can be used for better than just choking the economy for everyone else.
Good CEO's lead companies to brighter future!
Well, whole two of them, so your chance to kill one by mistake is kinda low, go wild.
CEOs aren't solely at fault, though. The board of directors is responsible for setting broad policies which might involve increasing profit even at the cost of human lives. And most publicly traded corporations have mission statements that explicitly prioritize profit over all other concerns because otherwise their shares wouldn't be as attractive on the stock market.
Mind you, making the CEO job unattractive will make it harder to find people who implement board policies. But ultimately that's a punctual relief attempt for a systemic issue – the way the stock market operates. Things will not improve as long as we not just allow but require companies to increase profit no matter what.
"Human dragon" is in perhaps a better descriptor for the analogy
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I know how to make bread. It's not fucking hard.
KILL HIM, HE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE BREAD!
But do you want to start work at 5 am every day, and bake bread all day, or do you want to go to the bakery and buy a loaf of bread?
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Given the context of the recent heroic event it’s important to remember that not only is it not the baker putting up the barrier but it is someone who actually probably can’t even do their job of doing nothing very well.
Killing the baker may lead to a problem where the bread runs out, but I suppose it’s also a good example of how baking is not magic and we could figure it our well enough to not need to put up with someone who would willingly let people starve.
Yup. The baker isn't the one that owns the bakery. They don't own the mills. They don't own the farms.
Instead, what's happened is one mega corporation has bought most of the bakeries, they set prices to the maximum level possible and have backroom negotiations with mills that an independent baker can't get in the room to make. The mills do the same thing with the farms. And the farms are all consolidating into few owners who get to run on almost no employees (It doesn't take a lot to run a modern farm). Further, the mega farms and mills end up driving small time farmers out of business because the mills won't cut deals with small time farmers like they will with the megafarmers.
At every layer, there is some MBA asshole idiot justifying his parasitic existence because he thinks nobody else is as smart as him (even though he likely got the business because of his daddy or his wife's daddy). He hordes the excess funds but builds himself a nice big house.
This is late stage capitalism in a nut shell.
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This being an old comic and people instantly forming the (seemingly) obvious connection to recent events seems like a good illustration of the concept of the dead author.
A baker ≠ a rich CEO.
The baker works for a living, if nothing else.
The Baker provides a service for a fee, the CEO denies service to inflate wealth (at least the ones that should be worrying).
Some More Bread Comic?
Saturday morning breakfast cereal
It's been like a decade since I last went to that site, can't believe he's still going
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That's kind of how ethical thought experiments already work.
I dunno, I think the baker might already give you their bread if you threaten them with death
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Sure, that would be worse than a few starving people getting some bread temporarily. If the baker is dead then there will be more starving people then we started with.
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Generally, bakers are blue collar hardworkers who do not gluttonously hoard their resources and instead sell at prices necessary for sustainability with a modest to moderate level of profit margins; eliminating one baker would reduce the number of skilled workers who know how to produce goods/services critical to society. The same cannot be said about people in certain other positions whom the aforementioned hypothetical you might instead want to kill.
If the artist believes that bakers’ role in society is not comparable to certain parasitic roles, that subtext has been lost in the satiric trope inversion.
Edit: Apparently this is an old comic, so the inferred modern subtext is not the artist’s intent. I was trying to think of a better scenario for what the artist was trying to convey. You want to kill a child but the child has O- blood and is registered for organ donation upon death?
This feels like a slightly odd take for SMBC given the assumed subtext
It’s an old comic I’ve found through the random feature. Felt like it would elicit some good discussion.
Bakers have skills and contribute to their communities, unlike ceos. I don’t think it’s relevant to Luigi
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