Tree
20d ago
The material is immaterial – what’s punishable is the broken promise (signature) that the bridge would stand.
I fear that in your attempts to shield some people from accountability you have descended into total nihilism. “No one will ever be held accountable, even if they build a literal doomsday device.” “Okay! That’s bad!”
Tree
21d ago
They’re not analogous. People consume oil and tobacco willingly. They don’t, or wouldn’t, aquiesce to GoF research or a cardboard bridge. If we’re trading horses, you could have oil spill C-suits. Of course we can’t draconically punish a low-level technician for releasing a virus if he was not adequately compensated for that responsibility.
I know this secretary in a big company, she would produce and present documents for the (somewhat dumb) CEO to sign and she was revolted that he wouldn’t understand, or even read, most of what he was signing. One day she was in a hurry to get some papers through, and instead of waiting for the CEO, another executive suggested that she sign them herself. “I’m not paid to sign!” she replied. And that’s true. The signature has to mean something. Some skin in the game, buck stopping power. In theory, they’re compensated for it, but they’re not really accountable for it. That's the way the managerial class wants it. But the rest of us don't have to take it.
Tree
1mo ago
Your google search proves that it's impossible to kill a man with a pot of boiling water. You have to immerse him in boiling water.
Tree
1mo ago
What level of punishment would feel more appropriate?
It would be nice if she at least offered Seppuku.
“That won’t be necessary, officer. Half your ear will suffice.”
Tree
1mo ago
The republicans stopped Trump from taking the crown after J6 because he’s senile?
Tree
1mo ago
I award some points to democracy because a monarchy or dictatorship would definitely be stuck with Robinette I the Senile.
Do you think the republicans could force an equally-impaired Trump to renounce earlier? I don’t.
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Trump is more stubborn
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Personality cult around him is stronger
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Loyalty and respect for elders are right-wing values
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Maga siege mentality
Tree
1mo ago
Yeah, it’s very hard for family members to accept dementia in their loved ones. Plus the voter deserves some of the blame for electing them.
Bottom line, the democrats and Biden have done the right thing here, they have de-clownified the world a little. It’s a low bar, but one I am not sure republicans could clear, if Trump was as decrepit.
Tree
1mo ago
It costs me 350 euros per year to insure other people’s cars, but only 35 euros per year to insure their houses and everything else. So the likelihood of me destroying their house is multiple orders of magnitude lower.
But strictly speaking, yes, any accidental destruction should only be compensated at used discount prices. If you have a working class friend and you let him borrow your luxury watch and he loses it you can’t expect him to repay you full price. But again, insuring this is cheap so I’m not going to die on that hill and claim classist oppression on the basis of 35 euros.
Tree
1mo ago
I understand that I am on the hook for anything other than $10,000 worth of damage to other people's stuff, and act accordingly.
Even that little insurance shouldn’t be necessary. If I crash into your brand new Porsche, me or my insurance should only have to repay you the price of a used kia – else you owning expensive shit is an externality I have to pay for.
Tree
1mo ago
Morally good:
Roman Emperors who did us all a favour by being assassinated: Caligula, Commodus, Elagabalus.
Quick executions where everybody went “About time!”: robespierre, beria.
Achieving goals:
Making Serbia great again: Alexander I of serbia, Franz Ferdinand.
Left-wing rabblerousing impeded: Jean Jaures, the Gracchi.
Japanese military rule through assassination in the 1930s.
Tree
1mo ago
Practically speaking, you can’t adequately calculate the consequences of the assassination, so it defaults to “him or you” and you’re morally justified to kill him (he is the aggressor because a dictator issues implicit death threats). Perhaps Tito not being assassinated and keeping yugoslavia going longer than it should have, precipitated the genocidal killings of the breakup .
On principle, on hypotheticals, I agree that you shouldn’t kill him (and even die by his hand if necessary) if you have divine knowledge of incoming nuclear war or genocide. But that’s a huge if.
Tree
1mo ago
On a personal level, a dictator taking power is like a guy challenging you to the most significant bar fight of your life, a duel to the death really. You don’t have to fight him, but then you become his bitch for the foreseeable future. If a dictator should claim to rule over me without my consent he will have to do without my peaceful cooperation.
Ultimately our power as citizens is backed by the threat of this ehm… counter-revolutionary violence. It’s what keeps the fringes in line and our countries relatively coup-free.
When Tito uses force against me, coerces me, puts me in prison, kills me, that’s just him being a dictator, all according to plan. But when I use force, I’m supposed to have perfect foresight of any resulting chaos before I lift a finger… I’m sorry, but that’s too passive, copenhagen ethics. On self-defense grounds alone I have a right to assassinate him (before any utilitarian arguments about discouraging coups or genocides).
Tree
1mo ago
I’m an optimist myself, but he had written a book where he announced the war and the massacres to come, he had tried to putsch, his goons were murdering politicians, etc. It was hard to miss that he was literally hitler. A rule where we kill all politicians who do all that would have an acceptably low false positive rate imo.
And later, after 1933, surely assassination is permissible and recommended in all cases. A free man has the right to murder even a benign dictator. Without the vote, it’s really the only way left to express disappointment and provide valuable feedback.
Tree
1mo ago
I’m surprised at the strength of the backlash tbh. I expected biden‘s condemnation of political violence to be less categorical than it was. As a centrist with a strong interest in maintaining the democratic peace & order , who doesn’t think Trump is that bad, it’s easy for me to say that the old geezer should live. But I confess I don’t understand the anti-assassination case for opponents of the status quo who have spent years denouncing him as an authoritarian threat.
We all agree Hitler should have been killed, right? That’s the most popular hypothetical ever. Although some (e.g., Lothar Fritze) have objected to dead waitresses and complained of insufficient self-sacrifice in the few attempts on his life.
Therefore, I must conclude that they don’t believe Trump is Hitler after all, and instances of anti-trump and anti-red tribe hysteria only came from extremes or were meant to energize the base, while the leadership remains sane and committed to the american project. Reports of the death of democracy have been greatly exaggerated.
It exposes the culture war these last years as a giant attack ad, clickbait, crude emotional manipulation for dull partisans, irrelevant and rightly ignored by people who matter.
I don't think there would be any more gaming than on any other tax change of that sort. Claiming to not be paid for the first 40 hours is convoluted, and besides, lawmakers aren't total morons and usually close such simple holes in the laws they write.
Don't you have such tax exemptions for night work, sunday work, overtime work in the US? They are very common in Europe - Sarkozy passed one (winning campaign slogan: "work more to earn more"). So did Hitler, and it held up.
Economically, the argument’s pretty straightforward. Why favour the hard-worker over the smart-worker? You can’t really entice workers to be more productive, but you can entice them to work more. So this is better for GDP.
Politically, people think it’s fairer to be rewarded for conscentiousness than intelligence. You could sell it as industrial policy, onshoring. You need more people in factories doing dumb stuff for long hours if you want to compete with china.
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