As usual, lots of people in this thread calling for other people to sacrifice on their behalf by assassinating someone.
And as I said in response to someone, I do not think assassination solves systemic problems, but if you do, expecting else to go to prison (or die) for you is ridiculous.
That was an execution after the revolution had already been fought. A more apt comparison would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Archduke_Franz_Ferdinand or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Alexander_II_of_Russia
No, it doesn’t. Luigi is a tragedy, that boy is facing life in prison, and for what? A lot of people are parroting his name, but have they stuck their necks out too? No
I’m not against collective use of force if done appropriately, but people are generally cowards and lone actors are almost always left hung out to dry.
What makes you believe that there aren’t other people out there right now trying to figure out what the movements are of a particular CEO or billionaire are, so they can be near them with a gun or a bomb?
I have no idea if there are or there aren’t. I do know there are lots of people here expecting others to sacrifice their lives and their freedom so the people here don’t have to.
I’m not sure what relevance it is that others are less lazy about doing what they believe absolutely has to be done.
I think that it’s time we stopped putting the expectation on the working class to avoid violence while the ruling class and the state can use violence against us every single day.
I talked about what constitutes violence in another thread, but needless to say violence and the threat of violence is constantly used against us. Eviction, starvation, execution by police, denial of healthcare, denial of warmth and shelter, these are all kinds of violence that are used against the working class all the time. These things kill us, we die when we are evicted onto the street in the cold of winter. Or when our wages stagnate and we cannot afford food or healthcare. Or when some have disabilities and cannot produce endlessly for the ruling class. Those things cause death. Murder in its purest form.
We are systematically discouraged from perceiving them that way because if we did, we would see violence in return as justified. We have every right to riot against the conditions imposed upon us. We have every right to violently resist the rule of the state and the ruling class. I agree that assassination won’t fix the system because the system is broken all the way down to its foundations. Merely executing one billionaire won’t magically fix this. The ruling class will never give up their position within society, however. There are no conditions in which the ruling class will relinquish their capital or return any amount of power to the working class. For the sake of not breaking any rules of this community, I’ll end that thought there.
I will say that it’s super easy to say “someone else (not me) should assassinate these guys”. I think that’s the biggest gripe, that people are all too willing to volunteer other people to take the risks while themselves shying away. Either you personally are willing to take the advocated action or if you think “well for me, personally, the risk isn’t worth it”, well then maybe if it isn’t worth the risk to you, you should not be advocating that it is worth the risk to others.
if 10,000 people in a stadium are shouting “Fuck Shit Up! Fuck Shit Up!” it gives that 1/10000th person in the crowd -courage- perhaps even a primal ‘permission’ to ya know, Fuck Shit Up.
if an old lady is standing outside a burning building on the sidewalk and pointing up at a window says “someone should do something”, you wouldn’t start yelling at her to shut up and intellectualizing how she has no right to tell others what to do. in fact, you telling her that makes you worse than her. she’s at least encouraging action while you advocate…what? silence?
scolding others who SAY the right thing, because you’re unhappy they should DO the right thing (themselves) is peak hypocrisy/braindead logic and misapprehends basic group psychology and the nature of humans as social mammals that yes, god forbid, do need some encouragement from the crowd sometimes before taking action.
no one is volunteering anyone else… we’re telegraphing to the person who finally does take action that we approve of their decision to act.
Did anyone that upvoted this see this line? WTF:
If there are human shields preventing your mission, eliminate them. The tree of liberty must be watered by the blood of tyrants and innocents. X ÆA-Xii is not an innocent child, he is a shoot-through.
Nothing WTF about it, the trolley problem math is overwhelming. If you can kill one person to save a million, it is immoral to abstain.
If you won’t kill the king because his child prince is an innocent, then you will be a peasant forever.
That’s cool that you believe that edgelord shit, but around here we don’t endorse killing children for lemmy karma upvotes. Take that shit elsewhere.
Edit: and to all you downvoting because you agree with edgelord krono here: walk your talk. Give me your PayPal. I’ll wire you any money you need to accomplish your edgy online takes. I want to see how brave you are pointing a gun to an innocents child’s face.
Fucking scum.
Did… You just endorse shooting a child to achieve your goal? Are the mods awake???
I don’t know who you’re talking about here because we’ve been plenty critical of Biden’s genocide support. Did you wake up yesterday?
We kill children every day to achieve political goals. The problem is when you endorse it. What we have learned is that you first condemn it, then you do it any way, you achieve some goal and refuse to comment or spin it so it’s actual the other parties fault. This way there is no issue.
I consider the Soviets and Americans who defeated the Nazis to be heroes, and they murdered a whole heap of children.
Only Sith deal in absolutes.
That isn’t murder, that’s warfare.
This person suggested shooting through a four-year-old to assassinate Elon Musk.
So that’s who’s back you have right now.
No, every single person would be a ‘thousandaire’.
383,000,000,000 divided by 335,000,000 is 1,143 dollars per person.
I’m not sure the best place to post this, but I would like to say I do regret this comment.
My honest intention was to make a provocative post that would generate a discussion on ethics and morality in the age of Luigi and Elon. My intention was to lay out a hypothetical scenario “if anyone wants to become a hero…” but with sober hindsight I now see how my words could be misconstrued into a call for violence, and that is deeply regrettable.
I was recently prescribed a new muscle relaxant for my rheumatoid arthritis, and I mixed it with a couple alcoholic drinks for the first time. The result was not some drastic change, but I did become unfiltered, sloppy, and inaccurate with my words, and I will not be making this mistake again.
In the future, I do intend to continue making provocative comments, but I am committing myself to no longer discussing violence in this context.
My guy, if you keep posting like this you’re going to get a visit from the secret service
I appreacite your concern, but is there something substantial to fear?
I have not crossed the line into credible death threats; this is first amendment protected speech. If I get a visit from the secret service I will consider it a win for having wasted their time.
And if Trump starts rounding up “online leftists agitators” or “antifa” or whatever to put in his concentration camps, I’ll probably already be in the camps for a different reason.
Disagree. Rabid dogs who must be euthanized deserve care, compassion, and respect when doing so. Rabies isn’t a life choice a dog makes.
Billionaires deserve no such care, compassion, or respect.
also did Bill Burr ever apologize for all the transphobic shit he’s said recently? Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy with anyone of any walk of life gaining class consciousness, especially if they talk about it. But it’d be even better if he’s stopped being transphobic on top of that.
I’m pretty sure the only anti lgbtq comments bill burr has ever made was a bit about how when you watch something intimate the mind tries to place you in the scenario and when it’s two guys kissing it’s really hard to stomach, but Bill Burr has always leaned left and I honestly doubt he cares in the slightest about other people’s gender or sexuality
1.5 people died during hurricane Katrina.
For every billion in a billionaires hands, how many lives are lost? It can probably be quantified.
Using this paper, we can calculate a number of deaths per megawatt of energy consumed (using global averages). If the planet consumes 17,000 TWh annually, and there are 10 million deaths annually, thats about 0.0006 deaths per MWh.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33577774/
Just quick and dirty numbers but from some lazy searching the following companies used…
Samsung: Nearly 30 TWh in 2023. Google: Approximately 25 TWh in 2023. Microsoft: Around 23.5 TWh in 2023.
Samsung:
30,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=18,000 deaths
Google:
24,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=14,400 deaths
Microsoft:
24,000,000 MWh×0.0006 deaths per MWh=14,400 deaths
Now these big tech companies don’t all use fossil fuels, but we’re just trying to get into a ball park… so lets continue as if they had used all fossil fuels… Samsung:
18,000 deaths/ 17.92 billion USD≈1,004 deaths per billion USD
Google (Alphabet):
14,400 deaths/ 94.2 billion USD≈153 deaths per billion USD
Microsoft:
14,400 deaths/ 69.02 billion USD≈209 deaths per billion USD
So we can estimate some where between maybe 100 and 1000 deaths per billion dollars for these tech companies. Now of course how you make those billions matters (maybe). For example, we can do the same thing with Exxon mobile, which represents 3.7% of global emissions. 10,200,000 deaths×0.037≈377,400 deaths. 377,400/ 37 billion, Exxons 2024 profits gives us 11,200 deaths per billion.
We can of course also divide this out to get to about how much profit is generated before a single person dies. Maybe this could be considered the lower limit where profit extraction should be considered criminal
In the lower end scenario, it would be at between 6.5 million dollars and one million dollars in profit extraction would relate to at least 1 lost life. Obviously extremely rough numbers, but if we look at some one like Musk, allegedly worth 500 billion, that would relate to between 100k and 500k deaths their profit extraction is directly responsible for.
And of course this is only from particulate matter emissions from emissions. There are many, many other externalizes not quantified here. It also isn’t fully representative because, yes, many companies do purchase renewables (Amazon claims to be renewable) but this probably gets us close enough to start having a more serious dialogue about the relationship between extractive capitalism and consequences to human life. Based on these back of the napkins, it would seem like every billionaire should be considered responsible for, at a minimum, at least one lost life.
And to put that into Hurricane terms, Elon Musk represents around 300 hurricane Katrinas.
1.5 people died during hurricane Katrina.
This figure is highly inaccurate unless I’m missing the point of something, but I’m guessing it’s a typo?
1,392 deaths according to https://www.nola.com/news/hurricane/how-many-people-died-in-katrina-toll-reduced-17-years-on/article_e3009e46-91ed-11ed-8f2a-a7b11e1e8d34.html
