this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2024
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I'm anxious that all the praise for the CEO shooter is revealing that "eat the rich" wasn't a euphemism for "tax the rich" but that people actually want the streets to run red with blood and cranberry sauce.
Cook me daddy
'eat the rich' specifically means 'we should eliminate the existence of the rich - by any means.' so taxation works, but more extreme methods are not ruled out. It's entirely up to the rich on how they'd prefer to respond to this motive - and it's then up to the working class extremists on how they respond in kind.
I agree with you; I think you have the meat of it.
There are two problem here: first is that "rich" isn't clearly defined. When the billionaires are all dead, are the millionaires next? Where doors it stop? Maybe that fucker in the house that's bigger than your's deserves to get her bullet too? How about anyone who's rich enough to own a house?
Second, kill the rich and we still have a system that enables consolidation of wealth. We'll just get a new group of 1%ers, only they'll probably be more dedicated to repressing the public to ensure that what happened to their predecessors doesn't happen to them.
Maybe the biggest problem, for me, is that I don't know what's better than what we have. Probably a limited capitalism, maybe modeled after one of the Nordic countries? Semi-socialist? I don't know. I'm pretty sure a huge part of the problem is the stock market (if not specifically, then the economic model that enables it), and laissez-faire economics is a shit-show fantasy that doesn't exist, but which the striving for causes all sorts of issues. But beyond that, I don't know how to limit consolidation of wealth, and outcomes like Citizens United.
So, people can kill all the CEOs they want; I don't expect it to improve anything.
You're first point ends up just being a slippery slope fallacy. If we take out the billionaires, it's just a hop and skip until we take out the people in mobile homes! Just using a single data point provided by census.gov is 'Real median household income was $80,610 in 2023'. A person who's a lowly billionaire (i.e. JUST has $1,000,000,000) made 12,405 YEARS worth of money. Someone who's JUST a millionaire ($1,000,000) would have 12 years. Which if you flip that, it's possible for someone to earn a million dollars w/o exploiting people. It's clearly not possible to become a billionaire (using USD as the base) w/o being an immortal being who had a successful career starting in 10,381 BCE. The order of magnitude ends up being overlooked since it's just the next thousand -> million -> billion. And to answer, when would it stop, it would probably stop naturally. Prices keep going up so billionaires can be multi billionaires and now we have one jack-ass gunning for being a trillionaire. And our taxes goes to subsidies these pricks too. If homes became affordable, if food was affordable, if our education system was up to snuff and affordable (K-12 and higher education), our healthcare was up to snuff, our roads were in good shape, our internet wasn't nickle and diming everyone... you'd see a general lack of interest in being pissed off. It would happen organically, just like it has in the past... the wealthy get got, things change, and we peasants get less "eat the rich" motivated.
To you're second point, yes the system is broken. But not everyone who's family of the one in control of the estate, agree with that person. Also, fear is a great motivator. Most people fear homelessness or starvation. The 1% don't fear much. Also, if vigilantes start taking out multiple 1%ers they're either going to hire a lot of security (putting money back into the system, back into the hands of the people) or they're going to start doing something to not be viewed as "dinner". And we literally saw that. UHC gets got... and Blue Cross Blue Shield immediately reverse the change on anesthesia. They claimed it was due to backlash, but they're a for profit company, they don't care. But the CEO being targeted and seeing the people cheer... that sends a message.
I don't think anyone has a clear plan as to what would be better. There's certainly a lot of ideas out there. But so long as the ultra rich control the government, control the means of communication (news outlets, social media) it's difficult/impossible for change that would negatively impact them that would positively impact the rest of society.
And you might not believe in it, but the French of utilized this method to much success. Honestly, we did to way back when if you want to throw in the revolutionary war.
There are many more examples of revolutions that did more harm that good, than vice versa. It may be there only viable avenue left, but I think it's grossly ignorant to think it won't sweep up a whole lot of innocents, with a good chance of ending up in a defacto brutal dictatorship for a few decades.
Those are heavy dice to throw. If they're the only dice, then so be it, but I really hope not.