"The billionaires said I could be one of them if I let them live, so I sacrificed the biosphere." - Millions of morons
it's more horrifying than that. they're fine with the boot on their neck as long as they can keep their boot on someone else. they don't think they're temporarily embarassed millionaires. they think the rich deserve to be rich, and the suffering deserve to suffer, and they'll vote based on making sure the suffering continue to be in pain
The funny part is the billionaire never even whispered that. They just go to it instinctively like maggots to rancid meat.
It's kind of indirectly implied by what they say though. Think of the Elon Musk worship sphere, that basically argues if we just give him more money and vote for his politics, we're gonna have self-driving cars and travel to Mars whenever we want. Oh, and by the way, buy this cryptocurrency (that he happens to own a lot of) if you wanna profit from it all too. This can also be extended to other tech bros like Peter Thiel and Marc Andreesen.
Although I’m very anti billionaire, I would put capitalism there.
If suddenly all the billionaires magically disappear, the world will get morally lighter sure but in a decade you’ll have new ones.
Bingo. There aren't simply a handful of uniquely shitty people who just happen to be uber rich and when they're gone all will be fixed. When our economic and political systems enable and encourage the existence of such people, another one will always fill the void until we reform or replace the root cause.
I just explained this to someone who claimed killing the UHC CEO was "self-defense" for all the people suffering from all the wrongs he was responsible for at UHC. As if CEOs aren't easily replaceable and as if the new CEO would significantly change things.
Yeah, the guy might have done it to get revenge, but if it was self-defense, it was the worst attempt at self-defense ever.
There is a large complex system of gears and pulleys constraining the lever-puller.
Inaccurate. There is no lever, and the billionaires should be at least on the tram if not driving it.
Sounds like snowpiercer and in that case it's a mutiny
Killing 2700 doesnt save the planet, thats the problem. For some reason complex solutions like tax and election finance reform are so far beyond the average person's intellectual capacity that they fall back on Unga Bunga big stick.
With the 2700 owning all of the avenues to tax and election reform, seems like it's not likely that's going to be easier than the old unga bunga.
But killing 2700 doesn't take away their avenues. It just makes 2700 more who are more defensive and hostile.
To put this into perspective, the Trump Admin has a combined networth of a MINIMUM of $540 Bn USD, and more than 50% voted for them. Do you understand? This isn't us versus 2700 people. It's us versus the majority of people.
There is no "Easy Way."
What do you think happens to companies when a CEO dies suddenly- from murder or from another cause?
Because the answer is not that the company folds or that it suddenly puts people over profits. The answer is the company finds a new CEO who puts profit over people.
There is no shortage of people with MBAs.
It's hard because the lever doesn't say which way the trolley is going
Spoiler alert: the lever doesn’t do anything.
I guess it's 2699 now
Problem is, while you can do as much homicide as you want, you cant easily undo the systems we have in place.
So many cars run on gasoline. Are you gonna ban them all effective immediately. Yea see how Covid lockdowns worked, people would just riot, if you tried this.
Not to mention, the entire powergrid of many countries, including the USA, runs mostly on fossil fuels.
All the planes that runs on fossil fuels? Are we also banning plane travel?
Cargo ships that run on fossil fuels? Can we even attempt to ban those?
And so much more.
My point is, not trying to be pessimistic, but it seems a bit late.
We can stop more damage, but the damage has been done.
The trolly problem happened like sometime before 1950. The person near the lever already made the decision, we are living in its aftermath.
The point is that we don't need to ban airplanes, just the people who are using private jets to fly every other day (that's below average for a billionaire).
Sure. Here's some data:
https://ourworldindata.org/global-aviation-emissions
We are at >1 billion tons of CO2 from airplanes.
And according to:
https://www.iflscience.com/private-jet-carbon-emissions-surge-by-46-percent-in-just-four-years-76695
We are at 15.6 million tons of CO2 from private jets.
How do you plan to get rid of the remaining 98.5% of emissions after banning private jets?
There is no Economy B
If we get rid of all the billionaires, everyone will stop using gas vehicles and fossil fuel electricity.
I'll just leave this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
