yeah just putting this right the fuck out here don't EVER go off on "just kill all the billionares that'll make it better" type shit around me
we will never kill our way to a better world. we can take away their money and ability to do harm, but history has taught me that whenever we create a class of people who don't deserve life, the criteria creep outward and expand and innocents get hurt. "what's one more purge"? so we nip it in the bud. we take a hard stand. we stand for mercy or we stand for nothing at all.
please. i've... i've had people say to my face that the world would be better with my family dead, because of that very phenomenon of the criteria widenening until people like me apparently are Just As Bad
i'm quiet about this usually because of how common these sentiments can be but i. i can't handle them being said to my face. i can't. it hurts too much...
i can understand anger, i can understand resentment. but please, have some mercy in your heart...
i didnt want to have to say this because im afraid of losing people valuable to me for expressing it but. i can't deal with it being said to my face. it prompts... too many bad memories.
am i naïve? probably. but i'd rather be too kind than too bloodthirsty, damnit. maybe my heart is too soft, but that's just who i am...
Even setting aside the "lists of acceptable targets will always grow"1 thing, death is also quite binary and irreversible.
In the billionaires example, this treats a billionaire who funds research on Alzheimer's and green energy the same as one who gets their PR via big checks to police unions. There's no "points for trying," they're either dead or they're not. Oddly enough, people don't seem amicable to trying to half-ass killing someone: very few people across the execution divide would agree to "what if, for the better ones, we simply seize all their assets and then break... three of their limbs, or maybe lobotomize them?"
And of course, it's kinda hard to un-kill someone, especially if they were killed on purpose. Someone ran the numbers again and, whoopsy, there were two extra zeroes the first time around? Sorry mister ten-millionaire, looks like you're free to g- oh, wait. This is already a major issue with modern capital punishment, cases where, say, a black guy gets arrested, tried, and executed for selling drugs, only for the whole case to be thrown out when someone takes another look at it ten years too late for the dead guy.
Killing's just bad. Should be avoided whenever possible.
1 This is why fascism is doomed to fail: it needs an Other to dehumanize, and if there are none left outside the nation, it will turn inwards and gradually kill itself.
