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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
Plantation owners and slaveholders used the legal system to enact a second set of laws specifically intended to make freed black Americans subject to white rule and operated workplaces, schools and public spaces with separate rules.
The American prison system even has a carve out in the 13th amendment that allows the operation of a majority black prison in the south as a plantation where prisoners aren’t paid for their labor. To this day. There is an actual factual black slave plantation right now.
Reconstruction was ended through assassination. This was hardly a resounding conclusion to slavery but a re-systemization of oppression. For starters, the slaves never received compensation, whole many of the previous slave owners did. Same goes for the GI Bill.
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.
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.
I'm feeling a lot of that in this thread as far a lack of empathy goes.
We all act as if we're experts on what it takes to become a billionaire and are confident enough in our knowledge to the point that some people here are actually ok with murder because they think they know enough to justify it.
Just one, possibly shitty, example: Bezos' ex wife. Did she do anything wrong to people? Bezos more than likely did, but as far as I can tell the worst thing she did was be married to him. She's a billionaire now. Do we murder her? Is that really justified?
Personally I'd much rather have them all stripped of their wealth and made to live like the rest of us. Their endless quest for more and more wealth would leave them distraught if it was all taken away. Murder is not only wrong, but too quick of a thing especially if you truly hate these people.
Why do people constantly hoist that guy up on a pedestal as if he's some kind of godly, selfless dude who gives all his money to the poors? He is insanely rich, and the amount he does "donate" is all funneled back into his bank account through tax write-offs. Stop deluding yourself and selling other people falsehoods that do more harm than good.
For me it's a case of where the end justifies the means. While murder is terrible and I'd personally feel bad if I had to take another life, it'd be for the greater good of our species (as well as every other lifeform on this planet) if the world was suddenly ridded of a billionaire or two... or more...
I do recognise that this is a slippery slope in justifying homicide, but what is the alternative?
If you assassinated or executed all the billionaires in the world nothing would change. They are just figureheads at the top of a big corporate mound. Yes they are absurdly personally rich, but the majority of that wealth is tied up in the value of companies that they own - the companies wouldn't go anywhere, and they would continue to do the same bullshit with or without a billionaire at the top.
I wish more people would understand this. If you remove the capitalists, capitalism will just make more. You need to remove capitalism, though obviously the capitalists will fight you on that and you may want to remove them from the system anyway. In either case, a lot of eat the rich discourse sounds like it's out of spite and not in search of actual solutions.
Frankly the actual individuals at the top of the corporate pyramids are probably the least important elements in the whole fucked structure. If we disassemble the foundations, well, they have a long way to fall and we won't need to push.
I just see it as venting. People feel better when they see a whole bunch of others agreeing when they say "eat the rich."
When I see it I just laugh and think "yeah right, you're literally never going to do that. We'll bitch on reddit lemmy and then never do anything about it."
Pretty sure if all the billionaires were written in a death note then would-be billionaires would think twice. What's missing is repeated culling, then they would do more then think twice.
This still doesn't stop the problem, though. Because the corporations they own will still operate, and their multimillionaire shareholders will just avoid technically reaching the billion mark. Billionaires aren't the problem, they are a symptom.
Agreed. Personally, all I wanna do is take the vast majority of their money and redistribute it to society. They can keep a few million to fuck off with. I don't really care about them beyond that. They largely only have power imbalance because of their money. I don't think anyone should be a billionaire (or frankly more than about $10M USD or so -- which is currently enough to comfortably live your life without having to work, yet isn't utterly crazy).
Once they no longer are so rich, why would I care about them anymore? I'm not one to try and get revenge or anything, and I think that's a harmful way of thinking. I just want society to suck less and fixing the massive wealth imbalance is a big part of that.
If we were in a position where "eat the rich" could be taken literally, then "seize their current and future wealth" is just as achievable.
Look, no one wishes death first thing, obviously people would prefer it if billionaires suddenly became good people and gave up their money willingly. Obviously people would prefer it if the government made extreme sanctions or taxes against them. There are many things people want but time and time again they don't get them. There's really no just way to have that much more money and power than everyone else. They're modern day monarchs in all but title. Policy makers may have the power but they're forced to stay in line and not deviate too far from what the billionaires want. When the solution to better humanity is "you should share more, you've got more than you could ever possibly imagine needing" it's no surprise that the people with the power to keep those folks out of office do so. That's why we see such mild criticisms from so many parties and even an embrace of the rich by the American "left".
I’m sorry, but this point of view is so brain-dead to me. What do you think happens when a billionaire dies? The money magically disappears? It’s redistributed to the masses? No, it’s inherited by relatives. Killing billionaires only creates different billionaires. How about we use our brains and come up with actual solutions rather than parroting brain-dead bullshit?
You're taking the argument at it's most basic level, assuming that we would kill the billionaires and then sit around twiddling out thumbs. I don't think it's much of a leap to assume we'd change how the system works as well lol.
The prevelance of the "murder billionaires" mindset and other generally negative attitudes and suggested violent solutions to everything - even more often and more exaggerated than reddit - is probably gonna chase me off lemmy. It's everywhere here. Even blocking all the explicitly political communities isn't enough to keep it away. This platform has a lot of growing up to do, and I'm not sure if it's gonna do it.