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It's a perfectly legitimate thing to ponder, even in movies like Denzel Washington's "John Q", and Amazon Billionaire Nick Hanauer's essay "The Pitchforks Are C

It's a perfectly legitimate thing to ponder, even in movies like Denzel Washington's "John Q", and Amazon Billionaire Nick Hanauer's essay "The Pitchforks Are Coming (For Us Plutocrats)" [0]. If you bury your head in the sand and pretend that people will never break the social contract because "inequality doesn't matter" and "macroeconomic indicators look fine", you're going to miss a big part of the picture. [0] http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchforks-are-coming-for-us-plutocrats-108014.html http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/06/the-pitchfork...

joshuapants 11y ago
Not advocating the murder of innocents is burying my head in the sand? Fascinating.
- tomp 11y ago
  He/She posed it as a question worthy of discussion, s/he wasn't actually advocating murder. That's like saying, "How come bank tellers don't just rob the bank a bit every day?", a perfectly legitimate question.
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    > I don't know why the poor just don't kill the rich, to be honest > I'd probably tear up the person with the bag "I would literally murder a random innocent" is a bit different from what you suggest.
    - tomp 11y ago
      Well, if I had to choose between having my child die and letting a rich person keep their $5k bag, I might do the same.
      - joshuapants 11y ago
        > Well, if I had to choose between having my child die and letting a rich person keep their $5k bag, I might do the same. Where on earth did you pull this dichotomy from?
        zo1 11y ago
        It's a very common theme, actually. I'm not the OP who mentioned it, but I've heard the same basic form rehashed in many different ways. Essentially, morality and right/wrong are seen as "relative". Thus, you get situations where basic, very simple morals are thrown out the window by some sort of superseding narrative. Unfortunately, we're conditioned into it every day. Long story short: "it's okay to do bad things to bad people" is glorified and romanticized. While the opposite, absolute moral of "doing bad things is bad" is ignored. It's hard to not take this sort of discussion into the realm of politics. But, again, long story short: If we were ever to use absolute morals, we'd very quickly run into a slew of problems with most political systems every created or envisioned.
        dang 11y ago
        Comments like "where on earth did you pull this [...] from" and "please seek psychological help" break the HN guidelines, which ask you to comment civilly and substantively. Please don't post any more comments like this to HN. littletimmy's comment was a good occasion to apply the Principle of Charity: http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html. An easy plausible interpretation was that he was asking why violence doesn't happen more often—not advocating it.
        joshuapants 11y ago
        An easy and plausible interpretation of my post is that I was concerned for the psyche of my fellow human being, and for the people he might be around. In the future please respond more civilly and substantively instead of dismissively.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- kachnuv_ocasek 11y ago
  They might not be innocent from the poor person's point of view.
  - joshuapants 11y ago
    Abortion doctors might not be innocent from the fundamentalist Christian's point of view.
ChuckMcM 11y ago
Yes and no, the pitchforks come out when people are prevented from achieving their full potential by others who feel threatened by that. For now, this isn't the case in the USA. Sure you have a harder time getting lift off if you are born into a dysfunctional family living on welfare, but there are exits and many people work very hard to help illuminate the pathway to the exit for those kids. The question of "Why not just kill the people who have what you want?" is fundamentally a dystopian one. Feudalism, warlords, not a way to move forward. There are plenty of examples in the world today, just look at Syria which has millions of people who could be productively running shops, writing books, learning about the world, developing new products, and instead they displaced in refugee camps in Turkey by war between fundamentally ideologically disjoint groups. So while it may be uncharitable to suggest someone seek psychological help for asking the question, the fact that the question is even considered as a possible "solution" (and it is presented that way in the GP post) raises a bigger question which is "What exactly does the poster expect to be the result of people just going out and killing other people they don't like?"
- EliRivers 11y ago
  More importantly (in fact, only importantly - reality doesn't matter in this case; perception is everything), the ruling classes manage to continue to perpetuate the idea that if you just work hard you can join them. Over the last few decades (in the US and many other places), the wealth you are born into has become ever more correlated with your own success in life, but as long as the underclass believe they can get there, they'll keep playing inside the system. We don't need to actually provide a route out of poverty to keep them from rising up; just make people believe it's possible.

joshuapants 11y ago

Not advocating the murder of innocents is burying my head in the sand? Fascinating.

tomp 11y ago
He/She posed it as a question worthy of discussion, s/he wasn't actually advocating murder. That's like saying, "How come bank tellers don't just rob the bank a bit every day?", a perfectly legitimate question.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  > I don't know why the poor just don't kill the rich, to be honest > I'd probably tear up the person with the bag "I would literally murder a random innocent" is a bit different from what you suggest.
  - tomp 11y ago
    Well, if I had to choose between having my child die and letting a rich person keep their $5k bag, I might do the same.
    - joshuapants 11y ago
      > Well, if I had to choose between having my child die and letting a rich person keep their $5k bag, I might do the same. Where on earth did you pull this dichotomy from?
      - zo1 11y ago
        It's a very common theme, actually. I'm not the OP who mentioned it, but I've heard the same basic form rehashed in many different ways. Essentially, morality and right/wrong are seen as "relative". Thus, you get situations where basic, very simple morals are thrown out the window by some sort of superseding narrative. Unfortunately, we're conditioned into it every day. Long story short: "it's okay to do bad things to bad people" is glorified and romanticized. While the opposite, absolute moral of "doing bad things is bad" is ignored. It's hard to not take this sort of discussion into the realm of politics. But, again, long story short: If we were ever to use absolute morals, we'd very quickly run into a slew of problems with most political systems every created or envisioned.
      - dang 11y ago
        Comments like "where on earth did you pull this [...] from" and "please seek psychological help" break the HN guidelines, which ask you to comment civilly and substantively. Please don't post any more comments like this to HN. littletimmy's comment was a good occasion to apply the Principle of Charity: http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html. An easy plausible interpretation was that he was asking why violence doesn't happen more often—not advocating it.
        joshuapants 11y ago
        An easy and plausible interpretation of my post is that I was concerned for the psyche of my fellow human being, and for the people he might be around. In the future please respond more civilly and substantively instead of dismissively.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
kachnuv_ocasek 11y ago
They might not be innocent from the poor person's point of view.
- joshuapants 11y ago
  Abortion doctors might not be innocent from the fundamentalist Christian's point of view.

ChuckMcM 11y ago

Yes and no, the pitchforks come out when people are prevented from achieving their full potential by others who feel threatened by that. For now, this isn't the case in the USA. Sure you have a harder time getting lift off if you are born into a dysfunctional family living on welfare, but there are exits and many people work very hard to help illuminate the pathway to the exit for those kids. The question of "Why not just kill the people who have what you want?" is fundamentally a dystopian one. Feudalism, warlords, not a way to move forward. There are plenty of examples in the world today, just look at Syria which has millions of people who could be productively running shops, writing books, learning about the world, developing new products, and instead they displaced in refugee camps in Turkey by war between fundamentally ideologically disjoint groups. So while it may be uncharitable to suggest someone seek psychological help for asking the question, the fact that the question is even considered as a possible "solution" (and it is presented that way in the GP post) raises a bigger question which is "What exactly does the poster expect to be the result of people just going out and killing other people they don't like?"

EliRivers 11y ago
More importantly (in fact, only importantly - reality doesn't matter in this case; perception is everything), the ruling classes manage to continue to perpetuate the idea that if you just work hard you can join them. Over the last few decades (in the US and many other places), the wealth you are born into has become ever more correlated with your own success in life, but as long as the underclass believe they can get there, they'll keep playing inside the system. We don't need to actually provide a route out of poverty to keep them from rising up; just make people believe it's possible.