These people obviously have unquestionable control over everything by wealth and influence. People underneath them suffer under their ‘leadership’ whether it is working unhealthy hours for shit pay to working in unsafe environments where they’re subjected to abuse or harm.
Yet there are pockets of people, where if you express the desire of these kinds of people who lead to die, will defend them because reasons. The top reason being that they don’t like the idea of life being taken away. However, the way I see it is that, if you are in high positions and anybody suffers by a big number because you’re a poor leader or so. I think the idea of jail or any justice imposed sentence is beyond them.
Lots of people forget because it’s been 5 years, but Trump allowed 350,000 americans to die under a mishandled pandemic. Was the pandemic going to take lots of lives anyways? Yes, but I argue that it could’ve been negated and handled better. But no, that’s not what we saw happen.
And it is because of that kind of gross example, I wish death on Trump everyday, anyday.
And people argue “oh, he should be in jail to think about his crimes and the law will prevail” blah blah. People have been clamoring for jail time for lots of powerful people, only to find that very few of them do. To them, time is like money, they’re too busy counting how many days they have left before they’re back out and will attempt to re-capture their influence and wealth to resume what they did before again.
So I feel that by sentencing these people to death, we are taking away immediately, what enjoyment they have, in spending making hundreds to thousands to even millions of people suffer and having their lives be worse off.
Death sentences are a slippery slope. Today its okay to kill the rich, tomorrow its protests that block roads, or LGBT people.
Even if we still to a hard line of “only the ultra rich”, how rich is ultra rich? $1B networth? Sure. $10m net worth? Maybe. Anyone who earns more than you?
I get what you are saying and it is a slippery slope, but it is very doable to draw clear, objective lines around it. “Anyone with so much money there is absolutely no way they got it without heavy worker exploitation, ie 10bn+” for example. Nothing even remotely close to the average working class individual or even minor wealthy individual
You used so many subjective terms in that description. You can draw the line at a number, that is objective (but see tax evasion for how that works in practice), but “heavy worker exploitation” is entirely subjective.
In my mind, most failing hospitality businesses fall into “heavy worker exploitation”, but many of them are owner by people who arent billionaires.
That’s fair. The line is clearly harder to draw than I am making it seem. For the sake of argument, can we both agree that a line exists somewhere? Or would you putting forward that there is never a situation in which killing someone is morally justified no matter what the situation is?
And a follow up question, would you instead prefer that for certain extreme offenders, a life imprisonment sentence is used? I believe an argument could be made that, as the prison system exists in many countries now, this may be worse.
Or perhaps more broadly, for someone guilty of rampant repeated murder with no demonstrated indications of potential remorse or reform, what would be the ideal punishment or societal repercussion?
I think the part of your original comment that I find upsetting, and I understand this is a lot my own biases at play here too, is this idea that if we start killing the ultra wealthy then we or people we like and care for will be next. It’s not that that is incorrect per se, it’s more a cause an effect thing. Living in the US, it’s been made abundantly clear that the ultra wealthy are not waiting on violence to justify their violence, they are just doin violence as often and eagerly as they feel like. In my state, it is officially, government certified legal to run over a protester who blocks the road. This ruling was made after a truck decided to do it. Police here kill people for being the wrong skin color. The ultra wealthy kill us albeit more indirectly by paying starvation wages and denying medical care for life saving treatments, and restricting housing access and making homelessness functionally a crime. People here get to watch their friends and neighbors already having extreme violence and sometimes murder done upon them already.
I know that an eye for an eye is not a great approach. But for most it feels like self defense, and it’s worth remembering that no lasting societal change or revolution in the world’s history has ever been successful without at least some violence. Hearing “hey you shouldn’t be violent” can be hard to take for people who just watch it happening all day every day to everyone around them, especially when not paired with an alternative, preferable suggestion that works.
So I guess I would ask what alternative you are advocating for, and what you might tell people like me and, presumably, op, who are so sick of all of it that violence is starting to look like an ok option
To address the edit, I think part of the US’s problem is that you are already on the slope, and have been for a while. Violence has been normalised and accepted (and legalised as you’ve pointed out). I’d like to beleive you can reverse course, but it certainly doesnt seem likely.
I dont have any answers for you or op, but if it were me, I would focus on the defence and protection of my family/community first, rather than searching for retribution. I know that sounds hollow and empty though.
I can definitely place people above the line so to speak, but I dont think I could draw an objective one-size-fits-all line.
Humanity is a continuous spectrum from people living in extreme poverty up to the one percent, and its very hard to find any clean delinineation that I would be comfortable drawing the line through.
And the other problem is that the definition of that line would vary wildly from person to person.
If I’m honest with myself, I live in a well off first world country, that in of itself means that I am indirectly responsible for a non-zero amount human suffering in other parts of the world. It doesnt necessarily make me black and white evil, but to someone in one of those parts of the world, they definitely might see it that way.
I’m happy with death as a penalty for certain acts of evil, but I would want it to be the exception, not the rule. Everytime someone is death-row’d, we should all be unanimously sure that its the right thing to do.
People make this more complicated than is needed. We already know who these people are. We already know what kind of wealth they’re wielding. Why do we pretend as if we don’t and we need to re-assess this?
Lol, that is definitely not true. You may have a list, it almost certainly doesn’t match everyone else’s list.
And let’s say we complete your list. What then? If things dont improve, do we lower the bar and try again?
I know that some racists shitheads will definitely torch Asian American small bussinesses and lynch small bussiness owners if society gave the “go ahead” of doing a mao-style revolution.
I don’t want to see my parents dead because some racists are jealous that we are slightly higher on the working class ladder than they are.
the law enforcement aren’t gonna help Asians when racists attack us, we are seen as expendable, I don’t wanna live in LA Riots type of shit and having to do Rooftop Korean style of defending the community. That’s pure chaos.