Let me copy pasta myself here to save time and just say - they are already murdering us in the millions, any harm that might come to them is an act of self defence.
Look around - the violence is already here, it has been inflicted on to the working class for centuries, killing hundreds of millions (at least, in all that time) for profit in war, with hunger and restricted access to water, with homelessness and poverty, with preventable disease, with climate change, with immoral laws and entire systems designed to keep large segments of the population as slave labour, which is what they used to gain their power and wealth to be in the position to impose all of this in the first place. And all that just off the top of my head, there is so much more violence that is inflicted on us daily, they’ve just got most people convinced that’s just life, when it really really isn’t. And those who actually benefit are never just going to give all of that up.
But they did though. Robert E Lee, Jefferson Davis, Alexander H Stephens, plus countless slaveowners all just… surrendered, and went back to owning the exact same plantations their slaveowning had provided the startup capital for.
Was it right? Hell no! Their plantations should have been given to their slaves. We would live in a better country if they had.
But it’s worth repeating that people who blew out their chest and blustered about how it was better to die than to lose this fight just went right back to comfortable lives after a heinous, sadistic, brutal form of capital exploitation was abolished right out from under them.
If you can abolish slavery without killing Dolly Sumner Lint or Jefferson Davis, then it stands to reason that even after sending Pinkertons, cops, and bootlickers to die by the thousands, these billionaires will surrender at the first sign of blood on their doorstep.
Meaning you can abolish capital without killing Jamie Johnson OR Jeff Bezos.
Which in turn means the killing of those particular people ends up peripheral at best.
They will not throw their bodies in front of the bullets aimed at their orphan killing machines.
As much closure as they would bring, as good as that would feel. It’s just not going to happen.
And then, at that point – when they have surrendered – it’s like torturing a serial killer. We gain nothing. It doesn’t bring anyone back to life. It doesn’t put the aerosolized carbon back underground or bring the temperature back to livable levels. All it does is introduce a little bit more pain to the world.
Again: at best.
At worst it could potentially set a precedent that anyone perceived as “aligned” with billionaires deserves the same death inflicted on those billionaires.
In other words, at worst, it could turn the person holding the guillotine into the de facto capitalist controlling all of the factories, all of the land, and all of the equipment single-handedly. Because who is going to stop them? Anyone who challenges that person can be easily labeled a “capitalist reactionary, counter-revolutionary” and punished according to that label.
Yes. And it’s horrible! And we should have done more!
We should – like I said – have stripped property from the slaveowners. They surrendered unconditionally! The North could have done with them as it liked.
It should have confiscated the property of everyone who profited from slavery prior to the war, and given that property to the slaves. And yes, the North should have killed as many people (be they slaveowners or bootlickers) as was necessary to carry out that transfer of property.
Station troops on the plantations. Shoot everyone who shows up with torches to burn them down and deprive former slaves of their newfound wealth.
But what I’m trying to say is: no more than that number. No more killing than is absolutely necessary to achieve that goal.
We should be imagining Jeff Bezos in prison, not dead. You don’t want to make allies out of the people who want him dead. Those people are not good friends.
Perhaps because even after they lost the slaves they were still rich as fuck and powerful. And then they passed laws to still enslave black people and fuck them over so shit didn’t really change all that much. Think about how much better life would be today if every slave owner and klansman were put to death for their heinous crimes instead of slapped on the wrist and given back control of their slaves
if every slave owner and klansman were put to death for their heinous crimes
Their property would have passed to their heirs.
If your only available tool was killing people, then maybe you could have followed it up by killing their children?
But then you have to contend with the fact that your movement (and the people you have handed weapons to) are now a very specific subset of communists – “communists who are okay with killing children.” You can’t build a country off of that!
If on the other hand you have some way of stopping slaveowners’ heirs from receiving their fortunes without killing those heirs, then you clearly have some tool that can void the property of the slaveowners themselves without killing them.
And once again, if you choose to kill the slaveowners despite possessing such a tool, then you wind up building your movement off of, “people who are fine with killing when it’s no longer necessary.” After that, it’s no surprise when that movement starts running over a bunch of members of Hungarian soviets – the very people the movement claims to protect – with tanks.
Yeah, I think their plantations should have been taken from them. Yeah, I think Klansmen should have been stripped of everything they owned.
But once you’re powerful enough to do that, you’re also powerful enough to do that without killing them.
If they throw their bodies in front of the Orphan Crushing Machine, don’t let that stop your bullets. But if they step aside, you have a choice: align yourself with people who kill when they don’t need to, or align yourself with people who avoid killing whenever possible.
One of those is better than the other.
You replied to my accidentally deleted comment (which probably isn’t deleted on your instance.) I really wish Liftoff didn’t put the edit button right next to the delete button. But oh well.
Did the children abuse and own slaves? No? Then who the fuck said kill the kids too. Imagine fucking defending slave owners and saying they don’t deserve to be out to death. Imagine defending the most evil atrocities imaginable. Do you think the Nazis shouldn’t have been put to death? Because the slave owners did worse than the Nazis ever did.
Edit: also no one fucking stepped aside. They fought a fucking war over it remember. You don’t get to start a war to enslave humans and then cry peace I surrender when you start to actually suffer the consequences.
Try defending black people like you defend slave owners.
I believe in life sentences, not death sentences. I would have been fine if the Nazis had been thrown in prison to serve non-commutable life sentences for their crimes. I would have preferred it.
But the entire reason the Civil War didn’t stick was because slaveowners kept their property. Not because they kept their lives.
who the fuck said kill the kids too
Dude. Their kids grew up and enslaved black people using “prisons” and Jim Crow laws. And they were able to do this because they wielded the power they inherited from their slaveowning parents. If you leave the kids this power, then you’re going to need to kill them eventually for committing the same crimes.
Just take away their power! Imprison as many of the slaveowners if you can. And then leave it at that.
The South surrendered unconditionally. If I had a time machine, and could influence the North’s decisions, I would take their property because that would actually accomplish something. But I would not take any more lives than were absolutely necessary.
Because I don’t want to be on the side that kills more people than is necessary.
What an absurd sweeping generalization of incredibly complex events and context.
Just say you’re another bootlicker and get on with your life. Please oh PLEASE don’t hurt those that exclusively exist to make our lives worse keep us poor dumb and sick!!!
You sayin the French were fools? Fuck off with your neat little bow on top of a simple little “just threaten them and they will play nice”, life isn’t that simple, that’s not how this works, the civil war and what we have now is incomparable. These billionaires are international and actually play as a united team against us poors.
But yeah just a drop of blood and Bezos gives up his fortune and union breaking and insane net worth and lives a subservient life after that. Yeah that sounds realistic
I kind of envy the mindset where one has empathy for someone who is so out of touch with reality given their status. I like to think I’m a good, just person that wants to do the right thing but when I think of what the billionaire’s perspective is: someone with so much power and influence that most people are just objects or playthings to them, it’s frustrating to think about. They think they’re bigger than people, the earth, maybe even the universe.
I’m not saying I could be the triggerman, I’m not that kind of person, but yeah, fuck 'em.
Exactly. These people are downright evil. They at least accept that their actions kill thousands of people. Why would I has sympathy with a psychopathic murderer?
Every billionaire has enough power and influence to change the world on a whim. And every morning, every single one of them wakes up and chooses to be evil.
Imagine having so much money that you could never spend it all your entire life and your first concern is to hoard even more of it.
The more savy billionaires at least try to hide behind their “philanthropy”, but it doesn’t take too much digging to find out that those ventures are actually run for profit/propaganda.
Eden of the East has this as a main plot point and it’s a badass show to boot if you like weird thinking shows/anime.
I don’t think you should, but should we derive what is just from how much sympathy capital a given person has? Assuming your objective is to end poverty, etc, and to minimize suffering, then if you are ready to advocate for something like murder even in the hypothetical that you absolutely don’t need to, then you’re probably just letting your feeling dictate your actions. You can of course dispute that hypothetical, and there is definitely an argument to be made there, but a lot of people don’t and still go all in on it. Hence the problem with “wanting” these people to die, as opposed to “doing what is necessary”.
Let’s entertain that thought for a minute.
What you’re describing (in unnecessarily complex phrasing) is, that calling for the actual death of billionaires is an emotional response.
If you read my comment above, my argument is not, that per being rich billionaires are bad and thus deserve death. My argument is, that the fact that these people own so much directly causes deaths several orders of magnitude above what a complete eradication of all billionaires would cause. That’s math, not emotion.
Now, killing them and redistributing their wealth is without question violence, but not doing it causes much more violence.
What your fundamental error is, is that you’re equating doing nothing with doing neutral. In your setup, watching a Nazi kill 100 Jews is neutral, but killing the Nazi is bad, because murder is bad. I’m exaggerating slightly here, but I think you get the point.
This kind of thinking is unfortunately very common, and it’s almost perfect for people who are so aloof, that it’s even beneath them to interact with the real world and they claim is rational - which is it not.
So circling back to the initial question: killing billionaires is a net positive. It’s without bad sides, it’s certainly neither the way I would prefer things to go down and it’s not the ideal way neither. But it’s not the worst option either, certainly better than the status quo.
It amazes me that people don’t make the connection that billionaires are both directly and indirectly killing massive amounts of people. They force people to live paycheck to paycheck, skip meals, skip basic medical needs, work multiple jobs till they die, feel in a hopeless cycle until the depression is too overwhelming.
They deserve to die.
Empathy doesn’t mean you can’t be angry. I feel sorry that they have so much money it’s corrupted their view and made them heartless gods amongst men. Feeling sad for someone doesn’t mean you can’t be mad and it doesn’t mean you can’t want them to see justice.
I think most people (on every part of the political spectrum, unfortunately) believe that restorative justice is the same thing as punitive justice.
And it’s hard to explain to someone who thinks they are the same that “making someone suffer” can be independent and separate from “righting someone’s wrongs.” That you can be anti-suffering and pro-reparation.
It’s kind of like this: there are languages that don’t have a word for green. The people who grow up speaking these languages have a harder time distinguishing different shades of green.
You say, “I don’t want that shade of green.” And these people respond, “the hell is wrong with you!? We agreed we wanted this blue-yellow color that you call green! Now you’re saying you want less green instead of more? Green is good!” Because they genuinely cannot see what you’re advocating against and what you’re advocating for.
Just like how it’s nearly impossible for me to explain to a pro-capitalist that there is a difference between a workers’ cooperative and a public traded corporation. The person will say, “they’re both businesses” even though to me that’s like saying dictatorships and democracies are, “both governments.”
But the difference is missing from their vocabulary. And because of that, they don’t even know how to approach it and think about it and express their thoughts on it. Because they don’t even have the words to describe it.
They can live, but it has to be on 60k a year, with all of their initial assets liquidated and used to support people in need.
yeah i’m fine with that but not murder like a lot of people here say they want
I think most of us start with the assumption that they’ll never give up their stranglehold willingly, and move on to more practical solutions.
They need to make the choice: pay a lot more taxes, or take the second option. I’m not threatening violence, but as our society gets more desperate the targets on their backs get larger.
There are 756 billionaires in the US and 330 million of us. Once that becomes clear to people things might change, one way or the other. All other “culture wars” are noise generated to distract from this one.
Look I’m all for taxing the wealthy, but saying we should force billionaires, or really anyone for that matter, to give up everything more than $60k/year is fucking laughably insane.
Why, exactly? Only two years ago, 37.9 million people were below the poverty line, which is only $20k/yr. And that’s only counting the US. If we can do it, they can do it.
If those making over $60k currently cannot make it work when so many of their own countrymen have been doing so for their entire lives, perhaps we need to talk. If nothing else, I can give you financial advice.
Nice red herring. The argument was that demanding a billionaire give up all of their money and live on a relatively small salary is absurd, and nothing you said refutes that.
I want them to give up their wealth and power for the benefit of society. But they aren’t going to do that, are they?
They sure aren’t. They give up their wealth, but by doing so gain more power. They get to decide what is important for the world by dumping millions of dollars in their favourite charities. Charities that they conveniently get to put their names on to feel good about themselves.
So they’re not allowed to have the money…and they’re also not allowed to donate it? Am I clear? Because that seems stupid, tbh.
The world worked a little better when philanthropy was encouraged for the tax break. It always will. They get their cute little name on a plaque, whatever. The money goes where it’s needed.
This is not to say anyone needs to be able to make that much in the first place, but demonizing one for also getting rid of it is funny
If they still have billions to their name, they’re not as good or generous as they’ve made you think they are.
Most of these people only have billions in stocks. 2 things would happen if they sold these stocks: the stock prices would decrease (leading to them losing a lot more money than they would plan) and other people (with worse entintions) would buy the stocjs so they control the company and then push anti consumer changes
Billionaires is a weird group of people to choose to speak up for.
