• Toes♀
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    7 months ago

    Don’t even need the dude on the tracks, the money bags are already more incentive than they need.

  • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    The rich dude should be on the bottom track and the people on the upper track. The rich continually decide to fuck us over. They don’t just do it passively. They choose to protect each other instead of us.

    • Coreidan@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      “There’s class warfare, all right,” Mr. Warren Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

      • TotallynotJessica@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        This has always been the case. Unfortunately for them, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to win at modern warfare. As a result of their exploitation creeping into their backyard, they’ve needed to empower fascists to beat back socialism.

        Unfortunately for everyone, fascists are violent and uncontrollable, virtually guaranteeing that they’ll end up fighting each other. Unlike in the past, violent power grabs against powerful empires cannot work. As the power levels of everyone increase, defense becomes less of an option in a violent confrontation.

        When empires go to war with modern tech, the entire system, from the states the economy, are put in apocalyptic danger. Even without nukes, conventional weapons killed tens of millions with the last great war. In less than 3 decades of technological advancement and globalization, military deaths more than doubled while civilian deaths quintupled. With our current system, the economic disruption will kill hundreds of millions who never see the front line.

        No amount of wealth can fully shield you from global collapse. Even the assholes who moved to New Zealand aren’t going to be having a good time. They cannot appreciate the scale of their fuck up. Even those who remain on top will live in constant danger.

  • Uriel238 [all pronouns]@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    7 months ago

    The original trolley problem serves as a thought experiment to illustrate two points:

    • When holding a personal code (e.g. Batman’s code against killing) can lead to a worse outcome, morality may not be so clear, and…
    • Sometimes incidental circumstances can influence how we interpret the situation, which can alter what we feel is the better choice. It’s easier to pull a lever than to strongarm a big guy in front of the trolley, to personally gun down an innocent refugee or to carve up an innocent stranger to harvest their organs, even though the outcome is the same.

    We can see real-world examples of how corruption sways officials from representing their constituency to representing plutocratic campaign contributors. They’re often not making a moral decision, so much as making a decision informed by their own need to survive and continue their career. They might justify their decision with contrivance to soften the blow, but those who imagine themselves moral still know they’re forced to abide by corrupting influences to keep their jobs. (We’ve had to watch while Representative Occasio-Cortez concede her values to preserve political influence over the last decade. It’s ugly.)

    Hence we have situations like the opening scene to Inglourious Basterds ( on Youtube ) in which a dairy farmer in occupied France has to decide between lying to Nazi Jew-hunters and preserving the well-being of his own family. Very often, we cannot afford to do the moral thing, for fear of personal consequences, even as we know we’re only prolonging the time to our own eventual downfall.