• Signtist@lemm.ee
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    20 days ago

    An eye for an eye doesn’t make the whole world blind. It makes a few people blind until they wise up and realize “Wait, I like making people blind, but I don’t want to be blind!” And then they stop blinding people, thus removing the need to blind them in return.

    • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldOP
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      20 days ago

      Yeah, I’m sure after we murder more people they’ll start thinking twice about putting people in debt. /sarcasm

      Without pursuing a legislative solution, no matter how many people you kill: the problem will never go away.

      • Signtist@lemm.ee
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        20 days ago

        A legislative solution? The people making legislature literally work with CEO’s, accepting their money in exchange for enacting policies that benefit them. They’re partners. I’d love a country where the government works for the people to hold back corporations, but this country specifically believes the opposite should be true. There will be no legislative solution insofar as capitalism is still the American system. There is no way within the current system for rich people to be brought to justice, only people working outside the system can make that happen.

        Brian Thompson made a living making people blind, sometimes even literally, and it was all well within his rights in the eye of the law. Us giving him a taste of his own medicine is already showing results in those other CEO’s that don’t want to suffer the same fate. We’re literally already seeing what “an eye for an eye” gets us, and it’s fear among those who have been free to blind people for decades without ever worrying about being blinded themselves before now.

        • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldOP
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          20 days ago

          It doesn’t matter if you think a legislative solution is silly, this is never going to end any other way. If it is legal then people will do it, forever.

          • Signtist@lemm.ee
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            20 days ago

            Well, yes, you’re right. People will continue to do it forever. So long as accumulating capital is the goal of the country, companies like United Healthcare will exist, and will be free to ruin people’s lives in the name of gaining more capital. However, unless we literally overthrow the system, it too will never change. Currently, the only viable solution that I can see actually happen is that every few years we need to remind the CEO’s that they’re not entirely safe by culling a few. Because we literally have no other way to influence them - the law is on their side, and we would need to overthrow the law itself to change that.

            Your solution is only the right one in a hypothetical world where a legislative change is possible, but we do not live in that world. We might be able to change the world to make it a viable option, but to do that would require a lot more killing of a lot more powerful people, otherwise known as a revolution. Even then, in the scenario where we tear down this system and build a new one, greed will always exist in society, and those that seek power will always eventually worm their way into powerful positions. The new system would work for a while, but when greed and power inevitably come back together again, we’ll need to tear that system down and start over once more.

            • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldOP
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              20 days ago

              LMK when a country exists that doesn’t have accumulating capital as a goal for its people, until then we can use the method I mentioned which actually works.

              • Signtist@lemm.ee
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                20 days ago

                Sure, you let me know when your method actually works. I’d love it if it did - it’d sure be a game changer literally around the world. Until then, let’s just be happy that this random gunman actually did something that worked, even if only temporarily.

                • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldOP
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                  20 days ago

                  Yeah actually the vast majority of modern countries have public healthcare, so people like the UnitedHealthcare CEO don’t exist in countries like that. Do you want a list?

                  • Signtist@lemm.ee
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                    20 days ago

                    So you agree that the vast majority of countries don’t put capital gain over human life? That legislature is possible in such a scenario, but not ours, with capital being the most important thing, lives be damned? Because that’s what I’ve been saying. Public healthcare exists when a country’s government doesn’t lie in bed with private healthcare CEOs. America’s does, and it was designed to do so. You want public healthcare? Then prepare to join the inevitable revolution, because that’s how you’ll get it.

                • finitebanjo@lemmy.worldOP
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                  20 days ago

                  They don’t allow visitors, those who do visit pay roughly $200 USD equivalent fines per day and $3,000 per night minimum for lodging. They didn’t allow any immigration for a long time and now allow very very few. While they were famously extremely poor several decades ago, they’ve been trying hard to reduce the number of people in extreme poverty, two decades ago it was more than 2 in 10 then down to 1 in 10, but many still remain in poverty by the nation’s own definition. An average Bhutan citizen could work their entire lives and not be able to afford a stay at one of their own resorts, or leave the country, nor would they be able to adapt to modern life outside of Bhutan because they lack education. The richest resident of Bhutan has a net worth of over 30 Billion Nu, which is something like 353 Million USD, made by developing roads (with public funds).

                  But I guess they might be happy in an ignorance is bliss sort of way, even if they live like medieval peasants.

                  • idiomaddict@lemmy.world
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                    19 days ago

                    Well of course they’re poor, they put a higher value on the happiness of their population than on their capital generation. The country can only sustainably support so many people, so they can’t let a large number of people immigrate unless they want to sacrifice their wildlife or impose reproduction limits on residents (directly or through reduced support for families), both of which would be fucked up.

                    I didn’t realize they had zero billionaires though, now I’m even more impressed by them!