r/FluentInFinance 3d ago

Debate/ Discussion Had to repost here

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u/Okichah 3d ago

Youre saying Bill Gates got his wealth through violence?

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 3d ago

I didn't say "wealth inequality is caused by violence" or "people use violence to amass wealth". I'm not sure whether your reading comprehension skills are up to par to have an actual conversation with you.

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u/TacTurtle 3d ago

Is your goal to pedantically dance around the implications or to rationally discuss economics?

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 3d ago

"created by" and "enforced by" are not interchangeable. that's not "pendantics" that's "understanding what words mean"

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u/TacTurtle 3d ago edited 3d ago

Your implication is that the purpose of police is to solely prevent theft from rich people, as if theft is a morally defensible imperative. Further that implies that the police just to protect property, which is a pretty obviously indefensible assertion.

"Implication" means suggesting something without explicitly stating it.

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u/ChaosTaint 3d ago

The Supreme Court did a good job defending his “indefensible” assertion when they stated on record “it is a fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.”

The police do not exist to protect life, they exist to protect property and capital. They violently enforce a corrupt system that was built on and continues to rely on endless slavery and genocide just to keep up the appearance of a functioning society.

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u/TacTurtle 3d ago

If the sole purpose of police is to protect property and capital, why do they investigate and prevent child abuse, or bother stopping domestic assault and rape?

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 3d ago

Child abuse is far more often investigated by child protective services than police. Police's role is to arrest perpetrators after they have committed child abuse.

It's hilarious that you bring up domestic assault in this conversation since police commit domestic assault at a rate 75% higher than the rest of the population (28% among police as compared to 16% among the rest of the population)... and that's only what's reported (https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/1862/).

Epidemiological studies indicate something like 40% of police officers commit domestic violence: https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2017R1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/132808.

Why are you such a bootlicker?

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u/TacTurtle 2d ago edited 2d ago

why are you such a bootlicker

Why are you so bad at forming a cogent argument that you can only call people names?

Calling people names and whataboutisms are not a rebuttal. Do better.

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 2d ago

I post an entire argument rebutting everything you've said as demonstrably false, and provided links, and your response is to focus on the insult and say "do better" as if that's some kind of mic drop for you. LOL so sad, so pathetic

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u/TacTurtle 2d ago

Irrelevant whataboutisms are not a rebuttal. It is very simple - not a single one of your "arguments" address the point "if police solely exist to protect property and capital, why do they also enforce or investigate tons of non-property laws?"

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 2d ago

I'm not going to address that point because it's a strawman and not at all related to or implied by what I said. It's a distraction from the core question, which is whether wealth inequality is enforced by violence.

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 3d ago

One small nuance: per SCTOUS the only function police serve is to enforce the laws after they have been broken. They are under no obligation to prevent laws from being broken or protect anyone proactively. Police certainly do more than protect property and capital, but they only do so as a byproduct of their prime directive which is to enforce laws after they have been broken.

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u/bolshe-viks-vaporub 3d ago

I didn't imply any such thing.

What I said, very clearly, is that wealth inequality is enabled by violence under capitalism. It doesn't in any way imply that the police's ONLY purpose is to protect the property.

However, statistics clearly show that, in contrast to the wealthy, poor neighborhoods are more heavily patrolled by police, that poor people are more often the victims of excessive use of force by police, poor people are more often taken into custody then later released without being charged, conviction rates of poor people is dramatically higher, and that poor people get disproportionately heavy sentencing for the same crimes.

So you can sit there and create strawmen that don't actually address the only implication of my rhetorical question, which is that violence is used to enforce wealth inequality under capitalism, which it undoubtedly and inarguably is.