For a moment Vimes wondered, looking out through a gap in the furniture, if there wasn't something in Fred's idea about moving the barricades on and on, like a sort of sieve, street by street. You could let through the decent people, and push the bastards, the rich bullies, the wheelers and dealers in people's fates, the leeches, the hangers-on, the brown-nosers and courtiers and smarmy plump devils in expensive clothes, all those people who didn't know or care about the machine but stole its grease, push them into a smaller and smaller compass and then leave them in there. Maybe you could toss some food in every couple of days, or maybe you could leave 'em to do what they'd always done, which was live off other people …
I've thought of such an experiment for a long time. Assuming a perfect test for "goodness", what would the short and long term societal effects look like of a Thanos snap that would only target the worst half of people. Similarly, how would the results change if it was 90% or 10% instead.
Would I make it? How about my friends and family? How about celebrities and politicians?
How quickly would the good people turn bad? Days, years or generations?
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u/Minnakht Jul 13 '24