this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2023
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[โ€“] That_Mad_Scientist@kbin.social 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.