• nonentity@sh.itjust.works
    22·
    1 day ago

    Financial obesity is an existential threat to any society that tolerates it, and needs to cease being celebrated, rewarded, and positioned as an aspirational goal.

    Corporations are the only ‘persons’ which should be subjected to capital punishment, but billionaires should be euthanised through taxation.

    Conversely, a mature society would assassinate the poor by ensuring the provision of subsistence is readily available to anyone who needs it, and not gated behind employment.

    • Waraugh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      1·
      1 day ago

      I like it, surely such a society has reasonable means for law abiding and respectful people to integrate. Do you have a website or something where I could start the process?

  • AA5B@lemmy.world
    16·
    2 days ago

    Used to be called starting a war. It’s working for Russia but you really need to have a draft/conscription to make it succeed. The wealthy pay a doctor to say they have bone spurs and the poor go die somewhere else. As a plus some wealthy benefit from an overheated military industrial complex

    But there are side effects, such as generating more poverty by killing off the main income in families

    • isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      3·
      10 hours ago

      That worked well enough back in ye olden days, but you don’t see it much in the modern world. Winning a war isn’t just about having enough people on the front line. It’s about what kinds and what quantities of weapons and equipment you can get to people that matters. A tiny country with a small population and an advanced industrial economy will wipe the floor with a country with an army of peasant conscripts 10x as large. Keeping the people in uniform equipped and fed is even more important than actually finding people to put into a uniform.

      This matters because every person you send to the front line is another that can’t be on the home front working at a munitions plant, or working on a farm, or driving a train to transport war supplies, etc.

      Unless your economy already has structural mass unemployment, there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Every draftee you throw away into the meat grinder is one more that can’t be supporting the war from the home front.

    • morphballganon@mtgzone.comEnglish
      7·
      2 days ago

      Starting a war only kills certain demographics, namely young poor people, as well as anyone who lives in a place that gets bombed.

      Police handle other demographics.

  • thisbenzingring@lemmy.todayEnglish
    189·
    2 days ago

    kill a couple billionares and give their wealth to the poor people and they wont be poor anymore and it a lot less killing…

    2 or 3 instead of millions, I think that math works out pretty well

    • Town@lemmy.zip
      51·
      2 days ago

      Why kill them? I would rather they compete on a reality TV show to not get fired from a soul sucking benefitless job at their former corporations.

      • finallymadeanaccount@lemmy.worldEnglish
        16·
        2 days ago

        I’d watch a reality TV show where people like Musk had to work for a week in a mine, or on an oil rig, doing the hardest jobs. They wouldn’t last a minute.

        • baggachipz@sh.itjust.works
          4·
          2 days ago

          They had that stupid undercover boss show but it was nothing but a shameless commercial for the company and patronizing pandering to the slave class.

          • ZMoney@lemmy.world
            12·
            2 days ago

            I’d love to watch these geniuses try to “innovate” their way out of cleaning toilets.

    • FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca
      20·
      2 days ago

      Why can’t we, as a society, just take Musk’s money and redistribute it? It is absolutely stupid that we allow someone to have more money than he can use while so many people can’t afford to live

      • Wispy2891@lemmy.world
        11·
        2 days ago

        Most of those trillions are unrealized gains based on completely unrealistic valuation in “trust me bro” style

        Like Tesla being worth more than all the western car manufacturers combined or xai being “worth” billions even if it’s losing billions every year.

        The second he dumps those stocks, the house of cards would crash almost immediately

        • EvilHankVenture@lemmy.world
          5·
          2 days ago

          I swear people think billionaires have a giant vault of money like Scrooge McDuck. I have had to explain this to people so many times. His wealth is almost entered imaginary and based on the speculative possible future profits of his companies. If he ever tried to convert it into cash the value would go to zero.

          • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
            14·
            2 days ago

            His wealth isn’t imaginary when he uses it as collateral to borrow actual money, though.
            That’s the weird part, when billionaires use their money, it’s real.
            But when you discuss taking it away or taxing it, it’s suddenly just an imagination.

      • BeardededSquidward@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        10·
        2 days ago

        Realistically it’s not liquid assets like it is for you and me. They purchase items that “appreciate” like land and art, then take loans out using them as collateral to then get them appraised higher to take out another loan to pay off the other one then use the extra for living on. They don’t live on dividends or income, it’s a game of loans that they have a small army of accountants running. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take those assets. Just that it doesn’t translate into immediate cash flows for people.

    • timestatic@feddit.org
      1·
      2 days ago

      Money would be devalued quite a bit, since production capacity doesnt randomly jump. If everyone is rich, no one is

      • workerONE@lemmy.world
        10·
        2 days ago

        If people had money and were able to take care of their needs, they would spend more than the billionaire who just keeps it but doesn’t use it. Money spent would drive the economy creating revenue that can be reinvested into the business to increase efficiency and capacity.

        But to address your point, redistributing billionaire wealth directly into workers hands wouldn’t make everyone rich. Yes people would have more money, at least at first. This is why socialists believe in controlling the means of production. Workers should share profits.

        Workers should not be so desperate that they can’t afford to go on strike or take time off work to vote, or to have the time to find a good job.

        Arguing that everyone can’t be rich isn’t a sincere argument. You’re arguing that we need people to be poor and desperate.

        • timestatic@feddit.org
          2·
          12 hours ago

          I wasn’t arguing against wealth distribution. Im just saying its crazy to believe if everyone were millionaire, everyone could afford what current millionaires can afford. I think the wealth assessment of few individuals is a systematic failure of capitalism. No individual can work enough that they should have a million times that of the average citizen. I think having certain variation in pay grade and wealth can be okay if it serves the best interest of the public and entices people to work hard. The economy would be driven by spending, yes but that spending would devalue money quickly. Also billionaires have most money in company shares, land etc, not liquid cash. Inheritance and wealth tax can do a decent amount to reduce inequality I believe. A good social safety net would also make the US a much better place for the average citizen.

          People are just misunderstanding my argument. Although I don’t think violent means like mentioned here are the way to go. But what am I even saying we are in a shitpost community after all.

            • timestatic@feddit.org
              3·
              10 hours ago

              Yes, that is very reasonable and has been the standard in most developed nations for a while now outside the US. Although in the US it would quickly be decried as “communism” or whatever (ignoring the fact the US healthcare system is the most expensive in the world)

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
    37·
    2 days ago

    This is not merely a hypthetical. Vlad Tepes (Yes, The Impailer ) notoriously invited all his poor to a grand feast, instead to kill them all. (I think he burned them alive.) Usually in feudal and early capitalist societies, it was just enough to deny them basic necessities and let them die off, but this often would lead to an outlaw problem as some of the more able poors would turn to banditry and poaching to live.

    In liberal societies, just as we don’t outlaw people anymore, there are some known good reasons to support low income, disabled and marginalized groups.

    One of them is to cut off or discontinue the outlaw-to-professional-criminal pipeline. People who are forced to work but cannot for some reason will resort to poaching, banditry, fraud or any number of extralegal revenue-enhancement tactics. Criminal syndicates such as the Crips and the Bloods pull their numbers from demographics that are given no other choice by the society they live in.

    Another reason the state might support it’s low-income demographics is in recognition that capitalist societies teem with social roles and efforts that contribute value to the society without compensation. Parenting is the primary one.

    In fact, in the US, as social programs for low-income households have been defunded or rendered inaccessible (such as SNAP and Medicaid), millennials and zoomers are now choosing not to have children, and avoiding romantic relationships, so that the fertility rate is well below the replacement level 2.1 children. We’re not just not having kids, we’re not having sex.

    Also, thanks to deregulation, and the failure of wages to keep up with inflation, a lot of the US is under-compensated. Much of the poor population in the US have jobs, but they’re not being paid a living wage. Infamously, Walmart workers still have to rely on SNAP benefits and Medicaid because their wages are not enough to afford a sustainable living. They still count as poor, and would be swept up if ICE were to start going after poor Americans. And then Walmart would find they have fewer applicants, and might have to offer better wages and benefits. (This happened after the great resignation when workers furloughed during the COVID-19 lockdown found they could monetize their home hobby, or just didn’t want their shit job anymore.)

    But this isn’t to say these uncompensated or under-compensated people are useless or not contributing to society, just that what they do isn’t recognized by the system that rewards value with compensation.

    Curiously, our political class and our ownership class both imagine they could dispose of the poor without ill effects, even as they directly depend upon those people to parent, to maintain homes, to organize communities and yes, even sometimes to do basic labor. At the same time, they’re also the ones screeching about how American women are not having enough (white male) babies.

    Just as the US is suffering a shortage of farm hands to harvest crops, thanks to the persecution of immigrant workers, when we deny benefits and services to low-income houses, we’ll find that other work we depend on will cease to be done. And that will be accompanied by a new wave of organized crime… or maybe organized resistance against a state that has turned violent against them.