this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2025
56 points (95.2% liked)
Asklemmy
48875 readers
393 users here now
A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions
Search asklemmy ๐
If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!
- Open-ended question
- Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
- Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
- Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
- An actual topic of discussion
Looking for support?
Looking for a community?
- Lemmyverse: community search
- sub.rehab: maps old subreddits to fediverse options, marks official as such
- !lemmy411@lemmy.ca: a community for finding communities
~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That's a pretty good starting list. I don't know that I'd waste time trying to show them anything; just go straight to disposal.
I, too, was thinking "murder." It solves only a sort term problem though. Within a few years, you'd just have a new batch.
The system is broken. Capitalism as we practice it is broken; our political systems are broken (some more than others). That won't be fixed by DXing a bunch of oligarchs.
After the first 12 hours, as chaos is setting in, release a video demanding that all heads of state sign an agreement to limit the wealth of legal entities worldwide, something similar to the existing agreement on minimum 15% tax for corporations. However, this is a wealth-based tax, not income based.
Set minimum limits, e.g.
If their annual tax submission determines that they exceed those limits, they have 6-12 months to reduce their wealth. Companies can achieve this through splitting the company into smaller legal entities. Individuals may make charitable donations (anywhere in the world) but only to organisations that they can prove they and their family have no financial ties to. Also, the value of any non-profit organisations that they manage will count to wealth controlled by them/their families, to limit options for simply shuffling wealth around.
If they don't comply, the remainder is 100% taxable, with the tax collected globally based on the location of their wealth. I.e. if they have money sitting in 3 countries, each country can sieze their proportional share of the wealth in that country.
Any head of state that doesn't comply within 12 hours is added to the hit list. After the first few heads of state drop, the rest will comply quickly.
Most heads of state of western democracies do not have the authority to enact such measures, much less in so short a deadline. And their political opponents will simply drag their feet on any approval process and let you eliminate a rival. Most of the billionaires live in countries without a dictator (quite yet, anyway) who could comply, even if they wanted to.
You'll need to make it very visible and very real to as many people as possible, and make it sound credible that "shit like this starts up again, and I'll be back, be excellent to each other or else"
Remember those found-footage style videos that were going around a decade or so ago, where there was this mysterious figure in black who just appeared and was offing criminals in fairly graphic ways? There was speculation that it was a viral ad for some anti-hero superhero movie, but it never materialized.
That's the way. Be mysterious. Be featureless. Don't talk. Give them no way to track you after it wears off: appear, do, disappear. Repeat for 48 hours, then disappear.
I still think it wouldn't last long. The temptations of power and wealth will override any fear; after year, it'll be back to business as usual. 5 years later, it'd be mostly forgotten.
Now, if you could parse out 48 hours in 2 hour chunks over 12 years, with a couple of "examples" every year at random times, that might have a lasting effect. Do it 4 years in a row, give it a break for 2 or 3 years and let people think it night be over and strike again... that would probably have a more lasting effect. But I still think, at some point after your powers run out a decade or two at most and the shenanigans would start again. Humans believe what they want to believe, and what they're best at deluding themselves and is "that can't happen to me."
Counterpoint: Superman is strong enough that he could raze the system to the ground.
He could certainly degrowth the planet. But, than, we're well on the way to doing that ourselves.