Government performs services, and acceptd payment for those services in the form of taxation. The thing that is missing is the recognition that the powers exercised by government are possessed by We The People. We own those powers. We “invest” those powers in the government, who uses those powers to provide paid services to its customers.

We are each owed a return on our “investment” of political authority. Our political authority should not be given to the government freely. We should be individually compensated for it.

We are shareholders.

Universal Basic Income is one possible method of compensating the citizenry for the use of our political authority.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bag_limits

Increasing the bag limit on “billionaire” to something greater than “0” would have a much more appreciable effect on the climate than a thousand families forgoing children.

Oh, this one went somewhere, just not anywhere you wanted it to go.

You can say “billionaires harm society, literally”. That’s a literal statement that is true.

You can say “billionaires benefit society, literally”. Thats a literal statement that is untrue.

You can say “billionaires are human, literally”, so long as you are talking about individuals, and not corporate entities.

You can say “billionaires are steaming piles of shit, figuratively”. They are not literally turds emitting water vapor. That metaphor is quite apt, but not literally true.

Likewise, they are not masses of mutated cells. That metaphor is also apt, bit is not literally true.

You can say “teratomas are cancer, literally”. You can’t say “this argument is literal cancer”. It is figurative cancer, not literal.

I think you will see that OP is saying that “Billionaires are cancer” is not a figurative statement at all, but a literal one.

It is a metaphorical statement rather than a simile, but both metaphors and similes are figurative, not literal.

So, billionaires are not “literally” cancer, but “billionaires are literally cancer” is supposedly a correct use of “literally”?

That is my point. Literally can be used correctly in a statement that is not correct,

This is generally true, but in this particular sentence, the reason the sentence is false is specifically because of the meaning of “literally”.

“The sky is literally purple” is a correct use of “literally” in a false statement. This is what you are trying to argue.

“Billionaires are a cancer” is a correct, figurative statement.

“Billionaires are literally cancer” is false specifically because “literally” does not mean “figuratively”.

You are refuting an argument that I did not make.

I am refuting the argument that would need to be made in order to support your position. I clearly specified that necessity in my refutation. “Cancer” and “billionaire” would have to be synonymous, not analogous, for “literally” to have been used correctly.

What type of cancer are billionaires? Carcinomas are cancers of epithelial tissue, but “society” does not have epithelial tissue. Sarcomas are cancers of musculoskeletal and connective tissues, but “society” does not have bones, muscles, tendons, ligaments, etc. Myelomas are cancers of the plasma cells in bone marrow, but again, “society” doesn’t have bones. Leukemias are cancers of the various blood cells, but society doesn’t have “blood”. Lymphomas are cancers of the lymphatic system, but society doesn’t have one of those either.

In fact, “society” does not have biological tissues or organs that could even become literally cancerous. (Members of society do, indeed, have these various organs and tissues, but no member of society has been diagnosed with a “Bezosma” or “Muskaemia”.)

“Billionaires are cancer” is a metaphor. “Billionaires are literally cancer” is simply a false statement, unless “literally” was used, incorrectly, as hyperbole.

My point is that I believe OP was using the word “literally” to mean what it literally means,

You can only rationally make that argument if you are claiming that “society” is a biological organism, like an amoeba or a babboon, presumably evolved from other common ancestors of all life on earth. When you can tell me the scientific name of this organism, and what organs have been affected by tumors, we can start talking about the literality of the “cancer” OP referred to.

As the underlying logic was metaphorical, “literally” was used as figurative hyperbole, not literality.

I don’t think you’re understanding me. I’ll see if I can rephrase.

There is no “jail them for life” option without the law. If you try to imprison them without the law, the law will just come in and free them. You’re suggesting a middle option that is simply not feasible.

I’m asking you to choose between:

• “Guillotine Party”, a political party, much like the Tea Party, dedicated to stripping the problem-class of their excessive political power, perhaps by creating laws to justify their permanent imprisonment. We politically, figuratively decapitate them. This approach can (theoretically) jail them for life, by creating the law that would allow it to happen.

• “guillotine party”, where we solve the problem-class in much the same way that 18th century France solved their aristocracy problem. We literally decapitate them. This approach will not jail them for life; this approach will execute them for anti-revolutionary activities.

While the specific details will vary wildly, these are the only two general options we have available to us to effect reform: politics, or force.

No, actually, it doesn’t make you liable for manslaughter. It probably doesn’t even rise to the level of civil liability for wrongful death. They are compliant with the law, and they make sure of that by having their lawyers write the laws. The “anyone involved in the deaths” includes the deceased themselves, who is determined to bear primary responsibility.

We can override the laws they are writing (Guillotine Party) or we can suspend the laws to hold them accountable (guillotine party). But jailing them without a conviction just isn’t feasible.

I think OP used literally correctly here.

Then you do not understand what the word “literally” literally means.

While several treatments would work for either, (such as carving up the offending subject with a knife, or sufficient application of chemical or radiative agents), billionaires are an economic problem, not a biologic one.

There is no law providing for such a sentence, so what you are talking about is either “make billionaireism illegal” or “extrajudicial punishment”. In the case of the former, we need a Guillotine Party to take over the DNC much like the Tea Party took over the GOP. Or, we need a guillotine party, French Revolution style, to resolve the problem-class at its source.

I remember as a kid, hearing the phrase “Don’t think about elephants” and elephants being the only thing I could possibly think of.

I don’t know when exactly, but by 40, I had learned to shut off my inner monologue. I realized it when I came across that phrase again, and realized that I could, indeed, consciously stop thinking about elephants.

My pajamas:

Umm… There is one glaring flaw here:

3.4 million data points visualized from several data breaches.

We are only looking at the pin codes of people whose data has been compromised.

Fuck that. First come, first serve. Get it if and while you can.

The reality is that “tactical” and “strategic” are functionally meaningless adjectives when applied to weapons or systems.

Theoretically, “tactical” refers to how a military unit engages another military unit. It is how a commander wins a battle against an enemy unit.

“Strategic” refers to how a nation engages another nation. It is how a government wins a war.

The term “tactical nuke” referred to something that a lower level commander could have been authorized to use under his own judgment. If Soviet tanks were rolling across Europe during the cold war, commanders may have been granted the discretion to use small nuclear weapons to halt their advance.

Since the the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction was established, there has been no such thing as a “tactical” nuke. Any wartime use of a nuclear weapon of any kind demands an escalation to total annihilation. I used the term “tactical” ironically, to refer to a pre-“MAD” doctrine that can no longer exist.

In declaring that conventional bombs cannot penetrate this fixed bunker, it seems that someone is pushing for unconventional warfare. The reality is that this bunker is not impenetrable. It shares the same weakness as any bunker: getting into and out of it. Bomb the entrances to the bunker, and it will take months or years to tunnel back in. Whatever they are doing inside it, they won’t be doing until they manage to dig it up again.

Coreium.

We drop an overloading nuclear reactor on top of the complex, and let the radioactive core China-Syndrome itself straight through, rendering the entire area uninhabitable for thousands of years.

Sounds to me like someone is trying to justify actually using a tactical, atomic bunker buster.

Does it do scan to FTP? For my Brother MFC device, I spun up a write-only FTP server to drop scanned documents into a network share. That made them immediately accessible to any machine on my network.

Shit just worked.