How about people like Bill Gates or Warren Buffet, who've pledged a lot of their time, money, and effort into "charitable" causes? Obscene wealth, but I guess they're doing something that can lift the material conditions or standard of living for people across the world.

Who is further redeemable between a methhead mugging a stranger on the street to get their next fix or some Wall Street banker who plays the game but also makes sure to acknowledge or give cash to the homeless people he passes on his way to work? No one's perfect, of course, but are we drawing lines in the sand in a future society?

I know, I know, I'm turning in my Lib card. :liberalism: .

  • Zuzak [fae/faer, she/her]
    1·
    4 years ago

    This is entirely the wrong framework to look at things from, imo. Redeemable for what, to get into heaven? If heaven exists, then it still doesn't matter because I'm not the one to make that call.

    Presumably what you mean is redeemable enough to deserve to be spared from being guillotined or whatever. But that's not how punishment works. The purpose of punishment should not be to hurt people because we don't like them. The purpose should be about deterring certain behaviors. It's the same way, if you're deciding whether to put a toddler in time out, you probably don't assess whether they're a good or bad person, rather, you do it because you believe it will improve their behavior. If you apply ethics correctly, which is to say, focusing on your own actions and how to produce the best consequences, then I find that the question of who is a good person or who is and who isn't redeemable fades to irrelevancy.

    From that framework, we can see that the question of what sort of punishment we ought to administer to the rich is a strategic question. Does killing them make a counter-revolution less likely? Would it antagonize foreign nations that we don't want to be openly hostile towards? Would it be perceived as just or unjust, and would we gain or lose support? These are the questions we ought to be asking.

    Justice is cool and good, and is an important tool for being seen as legitimate, but in cases where justice does conflict with survival, survival is generally more important. If our decision (whatever it is) on what to do with a handful of people causes a war, then you can be sure that plenty of innocent people will be unjustly harmed in the course of that war, so I don't see the sense in that. Our guiding principle should be to do what's best for the people.