Moral dilemas (SMBC)

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https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/moral-dilemmas

https://mander.xyz/pictrs/image/c4762d9c-06b5-478a-af23-6df9d7c770a9.png

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Given the context of the recent heroic event it’s important to remember that not only is it not the baker putting up the barrier but it is someone who actually probably can’t even do their job of doing nothing very well.

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This feels like a slightly odd take for SMBC given the assumed subtext

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Generally, bakers are blue collar hardworkers who do not gluttonously hoard their resources and instead sell at prices necessary for sustainability with a modest to moderate level of profit margins; eliminating one baker would reduce the number of skilled workers who know how to produce goods/services critical to society. The same cannot be said about people in certain other positions whom the aforementioned hypothetical you might instead want to kill.

If the artist believes that bakers’ role in society is not comparable to certain parasitic roles, that subtext has been lost in the satiric trope inversion.

ERROR: Earth.exe has crashed

Why are we killing bakers?

Just go to your nearest chain supermarket and shoplift!

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It’s an old comic I’ve found through the random feature. Felt like it would elicit some good discussion.

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Bakers make bread. Kill the baker and you got no more bread at all. Bad analogy.

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Yup. The baker isn't the one that owns the bakery. They don't own the mills. They don't own the farms.

Instead, what's happened is one mega corporation has bought most of the bakeries, they set prices to the maximum level possible and have backroom negotiations with mills that an independent baker can't get in the room to make. The mills do the same thing with the farms. And the farms are all consolidating into few owners who get to run on almost no employees (It doesn't take a lot to run a modern farm). Further, the mega farms and mills end up driving small time farmers out of business because the mills won't cut deals with small time farmers like they will with the megafarmers.

At every layer, there is some MBA asshole idiot justifying his parasitic existence because he thinks nobody else is as smart as him (even though he likely got the business because of his daddy or his wife's daddy).

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So you’re saying that, in order to maximize evil, we should kill the baker?

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Kill the Baker and people can access the bread, and the resources the Baker was hoarding, and ALSO make bread. Bread making isn't a genetic trait like hair color, it can be learned.

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Sure, that would be worse than a few starving people getting some bread temporarily. If the baker is dead than there will be more starving people than we started with.

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You assume those people would 1. Actually make bread and not just eat what was left and then go back to being starving. 2. Somehow not be subject to the same exact economic conditions that required a baker to charge for bread in the first place (ie. Cover the cost of his inputs, afford a place to live, feed and cloth his children, etc.)

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If maximizing evil is the goal, killing the baker is the best thing you can do. Those people will eat some temporary bread and then go on starving. What’s worse, is more people will starve as well.

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But then you need to set up a cult to keep on killing bakers, because there are incentives for someone else to take up the mantle.

NaibofTabr

OK, but opportunity cost. Sure, anyone can learn to make bread, but not everyone has the time to spend making their own bread, or wants to spend their time doing it. Not making bread themselves should not exclude them from having access to bread.

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Bakers have skills and contribute to their communities, unlike ceos. I don’t think it’s relevant to Luigi

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This being an old comic and people instantly forming the (seemingly) obvious connection to recent events seems like a good illustration of the concept of the dead author.

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Now we're making progress towards a plan.

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good discussion about what ?

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Exactly that's why you kill them too, don't leave it up to chance