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by gnosis
4702 days ago
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While your point about small-scale violence and theft of physical goods is well taken, the ultra rich have the opportunity to steal and commit violence on a scale undreamt of by the poor -- and these crimes are rarely the subjects of police statistics. As the old saying goes, the best way to rob a bank is to own one. The elite and ultra-rich commit theft and fraud on a scale that would bankrupt entire countries, and start wars with hundreds of thousands if not millions of casualties. They get laws written in their favor, buy off politicians and judges, hide their gains in off-shore tax havens, and hire armies of high-paid lawyers to protect them -- with the effect that few of them suffer any consequences (rarely anything like the SWAT-style raids and hard jail time routinely inflicted upon the poor for far smaller offenses). |
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Replace the first word, "the", with "some", and I'm with you. It's undeniably true. And "some" elite and ultra-rich do more good in the world than entire towns full of poor people. This is an observation about leverage, not about differences in average ethics by class.
It's reasonable to assume that the same housing project residents who are so willing to violently assault a passerby and take his wallet or swarm around a traffic accident, stealing what they can from the injured victims, would be willing to "commit theft and fraud on a scale that would bankrupt entire countries" if only they had the means to do so. That they don't do so is probably not a sign of higher ethical standards.