this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 152 points 6 days ago (9 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 51 points 6 days ago (4 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Yeah but in this town, they kill bakers . Don't listen to this guy y'all, he's just trying to up his baker tally so he can look cool eating bread. It's a trap, don't bake bread.

Edit:

Don't do it, really guys, I'm not joking.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I'm not a baker I'm a patisserie.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 5 days ago

Guys i found the baker who only bakes expensive bread for rich people, get him!!

[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Idk dude that sounds a little like capitalism or at least economics

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Division of labour is not capitalism, trying to do everything by yourself is not anti capitalist (and in fact that extreme individualist fantasy has more to do with capitalism than anything else)

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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.)

Hoarding is a strong word. Rather than blaming a baker that is producing something that benefits other people, why don’t we focus on the people who are starving. Why are they starving? How do we help them make enough to afford bread?

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

They're starving because they bought too many lattes.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

They're starving because they refuse to eat anything other than avocado-toast

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago

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

[–] [email protected] 17 points 5 days ago (7 children)

Yeah. Meanwhile killing CEOs has no drawbacks because they do nothing of value and horde all the money which can be used for better than just choking the economy for everyone else.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

"Human dragon" is in perhaps a better descriptor for the analogy

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[–] [email protected] 20 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 23 points 6 days ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 days ago (1 children)

or you take over operations, adulterate the bread with sawdust while selling the good stuff only to the 1% who can afford it. Also, maybe make it an overpriced subscription, where in order to have the privilege of buying bread, you also have to pay per loaf, too.

If that sounds like corpo-shit... that's because it is.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Then you might as well lightly poison the regular bread to keep the poor feeling like shit and preventing them from improving their life. You can still sell the premium, non-poisoned bread to the rich.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago

Now we're making progress towards a plan.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 days ago

Killing the baker isnt the best thing you can do

Start a cult where no one is allowed to eat bread, having to make all bread poisonous and placing it in a line

You would waste more resources compared to just killing the baker and reduce the risk of another person becoming the baker

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

Don't you mean "what's even better"?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago

And poison his bread.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

I know how to make bread. It's not fucking hard.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 5 days ago

KILL HIM, HE KNOWS HOW TO MAKE BREAD!

[–] [email protected] 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

So, in this world. Once you become the baker, guess who is next?

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 5 days ago (2 children)

But do you want to start work at 5 am every day, and bake bread all day, or do you want to go to the bakery and buy a loaf of bread?

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[–] [email protected] 39 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

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.

Killing the baker may lead to a problem where the bread runs out, but I suppose it’s also a good example of how baking is not magic and we could figure it our well enough to not need to put up with someone who would willingly let people starve.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

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). He hordes the excess funds but builds himself a nice big house.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 5 days ago (1 children)

A baker ≠ a rich CEO.

The baker works for a living, if nothing else.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago

The Baker provides a service for a fee, the CEO denies service to inflate wealth (at least the ones that should be worrying).

[–] [email protected] 21 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I dunno, I think the baker might already give you their bread if you threaten them with death

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (3 children)

The premise is that you want to kill the baker, not that you want their bread.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

If I want to kill someone, I do not care about whatever consequences or effects it will have. That fucker is as good as dead.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 5 days ago (3 children)
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[–] [email protected] 7 points 5 days ago

That's kind of how ethical thought experiments already work.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

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

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

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.

Edit: Apparently this is an old comic, so the inferred modern subtext is not the artist’s intent. I was trying to think of a better scenario for what the artist was trying to convey. You want to kill a child but the child has O- blood and is registered for organ donation upon death?

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