Opinion - Death clocks are ghoulish, whatever you think about billionaires in subs

I appreciate your voice and the importance of the sentiment that all humans deserve fundamental dignity and respect.

That said, “all billionaires are malfeasant parasites who don’t deserve to participate in society” is a hill upon which I’m willing to die.

It takes a special kind of sociopathy to pillage and hoard resources unfathomable when people are starving, suffering, and dying.

“Eat the rich” is more stirring and concise than “humanely strip the heinously wealthy of their power and resources”.

How many people died in car accidents, and from preventable disease, every day of the coverage?

I only have so many fucks to give and I'm not wasting them on some spoiled thrill seeker.

That's a strawman argument. No one is saying "I'm glad the son who didn't want to go on the boat died."

I do feel sympathy for the human lives lost, at the end of the day, they were still human. On the other hand, people are allowed to feel whatever they want.

Up until it was confirmed they died, I was on the side of "Fuck um', they're stupid act cost millions of tax dollars that they lobby to pay as little as possible into." But after it was confirmed, I still can hate billionaires, but I am now directing my anger at the CEO who bypassed all regulation to make money and took five innocent people with him.

The moments before the implosion were something that no one should ever need to feel in their lives.

(That being said, who tf unquestionably enters a vessel where you need to be bolted in from the outside and there is no emergency exit.)

Systems exist because people willfully build and maintain them. Extreme wealth inequality is not the result of an accident. It is very much by design.

I think that years of struggle just to meet basic needs leads to dangerous anger, resentment, and bitterness. Tbh billionaires are the ones who have rigged the system against us with decades of lobbying and most, if not all of them, would gladly see us dead in a cost benefit analysis if it gained them profit, so I have no problem with people taking pleasure in their misfortune. They made their choices and current public opinion is the consequence of that. No one gets to and stays at billionaire status off of pure merit alone...

If you hate the system why not the designers of the system?

We don't get to pick and choose who's lives have value, even if they do something risky or stupid.

But isn't that exactly what happens? Was there as much of a rescue effort to find the hundreds of missing Pakistani migrants who went missing off the coast of Greece last week? Was it even as widely covered in the media as 5 missing rich people in a sub? Have you even heard that they were missing before this comment?

What about the 5,000 missing and murdered indigenous women who disappear every year? Are we mobilizing the military to find them?

We absolutely pick and choose whose lives have value. That's the problem.

I think there's a difference between choosing whose lives have value and choosing who to empathize with. I'm not celebrating their deaths, but aside from the teen who was on there, I can't say I feel much about it one way or another. They knowingly chose to take the risk, signing waivers saying that they knew the trip could result in death, and it ended badly.

Looking at it from a different angle, I can also see why people would be frustrated that an incredible amount of attention and resources are being spent on people who intentionally put themselves at risk for a pleasure jaunt, while if a fraction of that (on a per capita level) was spent on everyone who was at risk of dying from issues brought on or exacerbated by poverty, we'd be saving a lot of lives.

We have to choose where to spend the limited material and human resources we have.

These people made their own bed. Those rescue resources were wasted on them. Don'tkird yourself that poor people in a boat accident would've got a 10th of that attention.

We don’t get to pick and choose who’s lives have value

Lol, on an individual basis, yes we do

I remember years ago a bunch of people were removed about the cost when some family that got rescued in the middle of the ocean. The coast guard response to the money complaints was,"Look, if we weren't rescuing them, we would be running drills to prepare to rescue them at the same cost."

It's like when people removed about having fighter jets fly over a baseball game. We don't rent F-16s from Lockheed every time we want to take one out, they're paid for already, and pilots need training. But I'm sure they're the same kind of people who don't understand why it's useful for military pilots to run drills on things like being in a specific place at a specific speed and making it line up at the exact right time. I say complain all you want about glorification of the military-industrial complex, but don't take the line that it's some atypically expensive cost to the taxpayer.

If it was some experimental space aircraft that lost pressure and got stuck in orbit it wouldn't be the same as a normal aircraft going down. I would also say to leave it there as a reminder of man's hubris.

That's true. None of what I said applies to the 19 year old who seems to have been either cajoled or coerced onto that submarine.

people like that CEO with his libertarian view of safety regulations actively hurt all of society

Sometimes, those views just sort of have a way of imploding.

For sure. Their passing is likely overall objectively good for humanity. By at least a little bit.

Most humans do that on a regular basis, so I'm not sure how that's supposed to be dehumanizing.

This and the transphobic "debate" comments that got left up by the mods has definitely put a dent in my initial enthusiasm for this platform.