I'm not locked in here with you, you're locked in here with me!

- the hilarious thing about these apologists is that the majority of the 1% wouldn’t even piss on them if they were on fire. we are beneath them.
  You're 100% wrong and you should ask the burned and executed corpses of the original BLM organizers if they were beneath notice.

Can't shake the feeling that swapping panels 1 and 3 would make more sense.

No, no, we can’t be mean to the rich, that will upset them 🥺

Yes, kill them, by taxing them out of existence.
- This would be ideal but I'm skeptical that it's actually possible. Bribes are cheaper than taxes, so I think they'd likely just prevent the taxes from happening by greasing the correct palms.
  
  Well yeah, that’s exactly what’s happened for at least the past 50 years. In 1968 corporations were paying 53% of their profits in taxes, and billionaires were paying 94% around that time! Btw, if you’re making billions, paying 94% still leaves you richer than most…
  Contrast that to today, where the system is so obviously broken during a time when Amazon is paying less in total taxes than a fry cook at McDonald’s.
  It would need to be done with actually no loopholes, and meaningful enforcement of consequences for those who would try to cheat (perhaps the guillotine).
  
  Don't they already just avoid paying taxes by not having a salary and just using bank loans or something? So they have no actual money in the bank
- I think people would be okay with taxing them away, as well. It could be fine to give an either-or option to each billionaire, even.
- they will just come up with another new deal to temporarily calm us down.
  then work on better propaganda to keep us submissive in the meantime.
- 10% off (of their bodies)
- Who will do this? Trump? Kamala? Superman?
  This is not the way...

Every healthy society requires a robust guillotine maintenance capability, ideally across all competencies.

I support this idea. Invite most of the world's nations' leaders, too. I think the Met-gala attendees and G20 summit attendees might be a good starting point all-in-all. Then seize the means of production etc., you know how it goes.
- Didn't AOC go to the Met Gala?
  
  Yes, although IIRC she was sort of sponsored to go. She didn't pay for her seat or dress... I'm not sure we should hold that against her too much. Still don't like that she went but when someone else foots the bill? Fuck it, go have fun.
- Oh yeah and then what. The Worlds 20st richest countries leaders are dead. The world is in chaos and you think communism would solve all problems, just like it did in China, the Soviet Union or Cuba. The people there have no problems right. Violent fanatism jippie!
  
  final edit: I wrote some words here, quite a lot of them actually, accusing you of many things. Now that I've slept and am calm(er at least) I realize I am in the wrong here. If you got to read my message, I apologize for the words. Violence should never be the answer, because it breeds more violence most likely towards the innocents. That is the difference between this place and Hell, because in Hell there are no innocents. In any case, for what it's worth: I am sorry for going rabid, and striving only to insult you while projecting some of my own insecurities on you. I don't even know you.

I'm for giving them a choice. The guillotine or we take away their money and make them work a minimum pay position in one of their factories for the rest of their lives. I'm pretty sure they would take the guillotine after a week.

Billionaires use violence all the time to get what they want. Just because they hide behind layers of abstraction that they've set up, doesn't mean they aren't using violence.

Don't tease me like this.

Why does the proletariat, the largest class, not simply eat the bougouise?

Actually doing this would not only be immoral but just treat the symptoms of the downfalls of capitalism, not the cause. We need legislative change that has a proper social safety net, not violence LARPing.
- In a perfect world, that would be ideal. But for at least 50 years, capital has been buying the legislators and we're backsliding even further from positive change. Without the threat, there's no reason for them to let things change for the better for the rest of us.

This whole populism trend is concerning to me. I agree that some folks are more responsible than others for the problems we face today. Even so, singling out and blaming a small group of people for the problems we face, then punishing them with legislation, is not the most productive way forward. We need real, serious solutions. "Get rid of X" rarely, if ever, works.
- No, fuck X. Get rid of it.
- "rarely": so you admit sometimes the solution is "get rid of X" ? Then why would "get rid of billionaires" not be a solution for you ? To be clear I'm not saying we should kill them or physically hurt them in any way, we can simply reappropriate their wealth turning them into non-billionaire, also making it illegal for anyone to be a billionaire in the future. Why would that not work in your opinion ?
  
  What we need to think about is how this works practically. A billionaire isn't someone with a billion dollars in their bank account: it's someone with a 50% share in a business with a market cap of $2bn. How do we address that fairly?
  Now I'd say that a business with a certain level of profitability owes something to its employees, such that very few businesses would reach that level of capitalisation.

You don't need a mechanized execution machine to kill three people. You need it to kill the crowd of people.
And historically that's what it was used for. It was used BY the rich AGAINST the poor.
- It was pretty much just one of the options used for death penalty from what I understand. Then there's the revolution bit but otherwise it was a state execution method used as late as 1977.
  
  TIL

This whole "kill the rich" thing is counterproductive and needs to stop. Advocating for murder has never been cool.
- I respectfully disagree.
  The ultra-rich aren't shy about killing you or your loved ones if it makes them an extra million. There are exceptions, but they're definitely not the rule.
  Tit for tat. We're absolutely in a class war and the owner class has been winning for three or four consecutive decades. The inequality in society was lower during the French revolution than it is now. Hell, the pay Scrooge gave out in the old tale was more than minimum wage is today adjusted for inflation.
  I'm not saying we need violence, but I am saying we need the threat of violence for these kind of people to do their part. No one needs a billion dollars, let alone a trillion.
  
  I also respectfully disagree. Tit for tat, taken to its logical conclusion, eradicates all life on the planet; if that's your goal, fine, you can make that argument, but that's ultimately a separate discussion. There were literal slaves and serfs around the time of the French Revolution---now you could make an argument that "wage slaves" or whatever exist in the first world, but that is pure abstraction when compared to the absolute widespread human suffering in France during the late 1700s. You would have to be entirely disconnected from reality to think that people, en masse, have it worse in first world countries than they did in France during the 1700s; that's a "log off" moment, for sure. If you want to expand the scope to the world at large, then, yeah, there is some fucked up stuff going on, and people (millionaires, billionaires, &c. &c.) do hoard wealth, but murdering them is not the solution; that won't even do anything to their accumulated wealth, as most of it is tied up in corporate assets; instead, harsh regulation needs to be enacted on the system that allows these people to accumulate obscene amounts of wealth. But instead, we have these very surface level takes that are just like "kill the billionaires", which solves nothing and actually makes our side look insane, which hurts our cause—frankly, its stupid. Now, if you want to alter the claim to "the threat of violence is needed," then I would be more inclined to agree; however, individually murdering certain billionaires is not productive; I don't know about you, but I don't want to match whatever vitriolic bullshit eye for an eye sentiment that these billionaires might have, and maybe that's an idealistic take and naive, but it feels right.
- People are killed daily not so indirectly by billionaires. Overpriced medicine, Military industry, Unhealthy products, Monopolization of water and other resources and land, poisoning ground water with industrial waste, unsafe work conditions, the list is endless.
  There is almost no billionaire that isnt responsible for someones death and in a moral world they would be in prison. So morals are already completely out of the window.
  
  Not every billionaire built their life doing something unethical. Killing them wouldn't make you any better. People also fuel monopolies out of convenience even if they have a choice to act ethical. We should strive for legislative change. The billionaire might be the owner of parts of a company, but we as a society use the services for our daily lives. What economic system that actually works also supports free ideas, innovation and the willingness to perform other than something based on capitalism (Communism never worked and doesn't reward it properly). Treating symptoms won't treat the cause. We need legislative change.
- If you were a slave and I was your master, would killing me be murder?
  
  ...yes? But, as all people and legal systems agree, there are times when murder is legal and endorsed.
  
  Are you a literal slave? If you play with meaning, you can turn everyone into a slave and kill everyone. Is that what you want?
- I prefer "eat the rich" as a metaphor for seizing their assets, not a literal endorsement of cannibalism. I'm actually surprised how many people literally mean "kill the rich". Are you guys actual sociopaths?
  
  I’m actually surprised (not really) how many people can come this close to getting it, but still be so desperate to follow the rules they've set (E: where they can directly and indirectly kill millions a year for profit with impunity, but we're not allowed to even say nasty things about them, never mind plan to fight back against them, without being considered dangerous terrorists), that you manage to convince yourself billionaires will just freely and willingly give over those assets and all of the power that comes with them one day once we've asked nicely enough.. 🙄
  
  Nah, some of us just see that they buy the elections so that we can't vote for change. And they buy the judges so we can't sue for change. And they buy the media so we can't speak for change. So now we're exploring the extremely distasteful option because all other avenues for change have been blocked
  
  Lots of folks here are 100% for violence against anyone they disagree with.
- I'll take some of your money then, I'm sure you won't mind considering how well-off you are (and how blind you are to those of us less fortunate). Oh, you don't want me to do that? If only there was some system, some measure of equality, some safety from poverty, a safety net for those that got dealt a shit hand and are juuuuust treading water... while fuckwads buy their second Bugatti this month.
  So for now, off with their heads. A few rolling away and they will come up with something real quick.
- Nah man. I know cool.

Whoever made this needs help, murder is not good
- Slaying dragons is self defense and defense of others, not murder.
  
  Please don't slander dragons by associating them with the filthy rich human cretins
- I kind of agree with this type of objection. But note that the instrument of death is a guillotine. That hearkens back to a time of radical societal change, the French Revolution.
  
  Additionally guillotines were seen as a more humane method of execution than the hangings and manual beheading of pre-Enlightenment France.
  
  But also note that 99% of the victims of the guillotine during the French revolution were innocent commoners, most of the nobility escaped abroad long before the reign of terror started, and the final victim of the terror was the guy who had been in charge of it.
- Seems like the people in the comments are rather fond of the idea
  
  It's hard to tell. Satire is usually funny. #justaprankbro
- There's an air of truth to that in that, I want them to be tortured first. Don't build the wood pyres so high at the start. Make sure the fire slowly creeps up to their vital organs. We should also flash scenes of violence and poverty caused by their actions into their retinas as they boil into greedy little pools of charred carbon.
  To answer the question you're thinking, like a baby, every night. Zero issues.
- Billionaires murder millions.
- I like how you think this is a realistic scenario.
- If you ever scoffed at the word 'ableism' observe it here being used as a weapon
- The classic lemmy response:
  "its not about the murder it's symbolic of revolution"
  "um it's satire"
  "murder is good sometimes"
  all in reply to one comment
  
  I’m sure in a future thread we’ll get a comment saying something like:
  “No one on Lemmy is saying we should murder billionaires”

Killing billionaires is both immoral and won't solve the problem. We need to kill the capitalist system that allows people to become billionaires.
- Do you think billionaires operate in a moral fashion? That their journey was one paved to the top by the ethical treatment of others?
  Perhaps we need a new morality because I find that operating inside of prescribed moral bounds is shooting yourself in the foot when making this particular kind of argument.
  You operate morally, they use every dirty trick in the book, including killing you.
  
  Just because some of them indirectly kill people doesn't make it moral to kill them. Maybe if it actually would make the world better, you could have a utilitarian argument for it, but as long as you just kill individual billionaires and not creating a new socialist system they'll just be replaced by new billionaires. As I said, regardless of whether it's moral to kill them, it won't help.
- It will absolutely solve the problem,.
  People dont want to die > People stop doing things that make others want to kill them > Success
  It might have many unintended negative and positive consequences but you wont have any more billionaires very quickly if people literally killed anyone as soon as they amassed more than 1 billion dollars.
  It would basically result in a voluntary 100% tax of anything over 1 billion because they dont want to die.
  Sadly it will never happen because too many people would die in the process of getting there by the hands of people easily influenced by the billionaires money. (i.e. Police, Private Military, etc) But just a few martyrs would go a long way already and USAmericans have lots of guns.
  All of this ofcourse only In Minecraft TM
  
  Got it death penalty for all crimes
- And billionaires are going to, what, just let us kill the system they run and are the primary beneficiaries of? Get your tongue out of the taint and look at the dying planet you're on that they're making.
- The problem is that the billionaires perpetuate the system that supports them, and they effectively have all the power.
- And hoarding money that would provide housing, food, and medicine while people are dying or barely living paycheck to paycheck for the lack of those things isn't immoral? Lick the boot harder. They might give you a fucking dîme.
  
  What? No, why would you assume those things about me. There are no ethical billionaires.
- Hey, it doesn't all have to be work, work, work. Some fun is in order too.
- Oh OK we'll just do that then
- The problem is coming up with a solution to give us the advances (Tesla successfully made electric cars desirable, inspiring other companies to make them too, before Musk went and showed everyone how shit he is; SpaceX are the cheapest launch provider) but prevents the person who owns the company from owning the wealth it produces, and inspires those people to try
  Neither Tesla nor SpaceX would exist either if Musk had not been able to take a large share of the sale of PayPal
  The obvious way is preventing them from passing ownership and assets to their children, so let one person be ultra wealthy but not their successors (to keep from owning companies, government could sell off whatever shares it acquired) but good luck getting that sort of law up with billions of dollars against you
- Now this guy worry about what's immoral. How about hoarding wealth off the backs of labor, is that immoral?
  
  Of course. However killing billionaires is still immoral if there are peaceful solutions to redistributing the wealth, and useless if the act of killing them doesn't magically redistribute the wealth fairly (it doesn't)
- Okay point to a success doing it your way.
  Have you read the Jakarta Method?
  
  No, but neither ways have succeeded, we still live in capitalist system. I'd prefer to try a method that doesn't involve unnecessary killing and suffering.