Confronted with the likelihood that we cannot achieve climate goals, confront socioeconomic inequality, and ultimately build a better world without significant personal sacrifice: How much are you personally capable and willing to lose? I mean this in the most earnest way possible. Acknowledging the likely possibility of working for an unethical organization while simultaneously supporting family who rely on you financially. Do you believe the amount we can and will bear aligns with the amount we must bear?
Calm. Kindness. Kinship. Love. I’ve given up all chance at inner peace. I’ve made my mind a sunless space. I share my dreams with ghosts. I wake up every day to an equation I wrote 15 years ago from which there’s only one conclusion, I’m damned for what I do. My anger, my ego, my unwillingness to yield, my eagerness to fight, they’ve set me on a path from which there is no escape. I yearned to be a savior against injustice without contemplating the cost and by the time I looked down there was no longer any ground beneath my feet. What is my sacrifice? I’m condemned to use the tools of my enemy to defeat them. I burn my decency for someone else’s future. I burn my life to make a sunrise that I know I’ll never see. And the ego that started this fight will never have a mirror or an audience or the light of gratitude. So what do I sacrifice? Everything!
Every day I look at the shit happening around us and I find myself getting closer and closer to Luthen Rael’s state of mind.
And here’s the relevant clip, for those who haven’t seen it.
Killing a billionaire would reduce carbon emissions more than anything else I could personally do, so let’s start there and see how it goes. We can talk about me giving things up when those efforts won’t be undone by some asshole flying to Chamonix for the weekend or whatever those fucks are doing.
Yeah the old lie that we are all in it together and should try our best was, yeah, a lie, and some just took all our efforts.
There shouldn’t be billionaires, it’s a morally wrong concept. Money is not meant for hoarding.
We could just confiscate everything over 100 millions and they’d probably wouldn’t even notice. An upper limit of 10 millions seems fair, until no one starves on the planet, have access to health care, education.
And no heritages. Get your money as everybody else.
An upper limit of 10 millions seems fair, until no one starves on the planet, have access to health care, education.
I actually really like this idea. They all seem to have some sort of God complex, so let’s put them to the test. You provide clean drinking water to everyone, you unlock another 50 Mil to your cap. Feed the world, you unlock more to your cap. You get the idea.
I’d additionally like to propose a change to corporate tax code. Any full-time employees at your company that are on food stamps or other financial hardship support programs have 2x the cost that the government pays for those benefits added directly to the company’s overall tax bill as a final adjustment. The adjustments will not be deferrable or offset by any other portion of tax code. If your company cannot pay those adjustments, your company now belongs to the government.
I am very fucking sick of companies socializing their losses to the rest of the country and keeping all the profit for themselves.
The first major issue is “How do I know it will work? How do I know the sacrifice won’t be in vain?”
Even if I just up commit suicide, cutting my carbon emissions to zero, private planes will still fly, we’ll still ship plastic trinkets across the pacific, still destroy habitat, etc.
Its defeatist, but unless we get the rich on board, shit sucks.
Well, I’ve heard people say that rich people are pretty delicious, so that could be an alternate plan…