Existence. It's also a paradox because without existence it's impossible to be either evil or necessary.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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Violence against fascists.
Killing hitler and the nazis. Not just the top guys. Also the bottom layers of the system.
Killing is bad. But...its nazis.
Same also goes to all other dictators and their helpers. Stalin, Mao, Mussolini, Putin, Assat, Lenin
These control freaks keep popping up, and so we’ll have to do it again.
Maybe the way isn't just killing and incarcerating the past generation of murderers without a demolition of the ideologies and attitudes that led to it, in order to rebuild a society that 'naturally' abhors violence, that enjoys <-> tolerates other tribes while always recognising that people are people, that our differences are basically superficial and nobody is born evil, that life is 'sacred' and money is secondary... Maybe then, we could better prepare for rich fuggs who seek to profit from war and disunity and will use the 80% of unthinking sheep for their benefit. You can't just kill ideas like racism, like vacuous consumerism, like "Crusades good! Lebensraum! God wills it!", people need to give them up willingly before. If not for the sake of doing what's right, at the very least for the sake of long term safety.
We shall see in the next 20 years how this plays out through the decline of the US and EU, and the eventual total collapse of at least one of those.
Yes. And maybe also rework all our democracys that its not one person with power* but a council like in switzerland and rework it that these kinds of people have no chance of ever poping up aka ENSURE THAT PEOPLE HAVE NO LIVING PROBLEMS aka make sure everyone has housing, food, water, education no matter how much money it costs. Oooh nooo that would hurt the shareholders. Nawww too bad. LETS HURT THEM MORE!
Tax. Noone wants their money to be taken away. But it's probably a good idea to have at least some government funded stuff.
I mean, corrupted administration aside, is it really even "evil" to fund a institution that forsee the development of your surrounding? If anything it's simply quid pro quo, and people who generally against any taxation is always fishy to me.
It's evil to take someones money. It's necessary because it funds the surrounding. A necessary evil, as op asked for.
It's evil to take someones money.
Except when you are buying things? Look at it as living in society with roads, fire fighters and clean water requires a purchase.
There is nothing morally wrong with paying people who provide a service.
It is only if it's taken without something in return though, akin to stealing or robbing, else taking someones money in return for a service or goods would count as evil. Taxation always come with expectation of something in return, it's in some way similar to paying for service.
For the general masses that lack fucking brain cells. Some people actually comprehend the value of society and central public resources and WANT their money collectively put to good use.
Polarization is causing a lot of people to doubt that the collective money actually will be put to good use. In a lot of places (like my country, Israel) they're damn right, it's not.
I might be wrong but I think people would gladly pay 50% of their income as tax if it meant they would get their basic needs met and see the money be put to a good use. Imagine getting just half your pay but be able to fully use it on whatever you want and not have to worry about food and rent. Or at least that's what I'd like to believe.
The Blackfoot nation on which Maslow based his hierarchy of needs would actually have a celebration each year where they'd give everything they'd amassed away.
The actual basis for the "hierarchy" of needs is essentially that a community takes care of each other so that all needs are met, and this is found not just in Blackfoot but along the majority of indigenous cultures. (I write in quotes because it was never really a hierarchy, it was more of a cyclical chain of getting needs met)
There's a really good read on what inspired the Hierarchy of Needs here. Most of the changes that Maslow made to his findings were actually due to him wanting to make it more palatable for his individualistic colonial audience.
The tax being on your income and not entirely on corporations always felt like a fairly biased distinction. If companies paid the entire income tax long before it got to you, and you were simply paid ~2/3rds as much, I feel like people’s opinions would be different despite not much changing.
Tax laws are usually made to make it easy to collect, hard to dodge taxes.
If companies pay all the tax I could create a company, invoice my current employer, pay myself a salary that is equal to the entire profit margin. There is nothing left to tax.
You could try to patch the loophole but then you'll break down something else.
Where I live a majority of the voters are generally okay with high taxes (35%-50%) as long as it's only shared with other people who works and pays taxes.
And what about the less fortunate? The infirm and disabled? They can rot?
Plenty of people think they're already getting more than they need and anyone who says otherwise is just pretending to be ill to get a free ride at the taxpayers' expense, and could just get a job if they wanted. The right wing press pushes this narrative and people fall for it.
Agreed, just wanted to see if the OP would admit to it as well. Fully expect either no response or a passing of the buck along the lines of ‘I want to help who need it, but people hypothetically could take advantage of the system so let’s just scrap the whole thing.’
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Surgery, especially on animals.
In any other context, someone cutting you open, slicing bits out or rearranging them, them sewing you shut would be considered horrific, but we do it because we know that the short term suffering out weighs the long term harm of not doing it. When you choose it for yourself it might not be too 'evil', but an animal would not understand, even if you know it will mean they get to live a long, happy life, free of the pain and suffering that issue would otherwise cause.
Prison seems the obvious one. It's obviously (to me, that is) not desirable to deprive anyone of their freedom, but for persistently violent people I don't think there's a better solution, unfortunately.
I agree that separating people who do not abide by the contract of society is necessary, but I think we (America) are wrong to make it a punitive experience. Separate them and let them live their lives as comfortably as they can. Causing additional suffering does not seem to be necessary.
Currently trying to lock up as many of the populace all the numbers show cause less crime. At some point we are going to have to question if there is a higher percentage of psychopaths out of prison than in.
Edit: note, a large group of people would say "we need to lock up more people to solve it" and a large group of people would say "we need to let out all the not-psychopaths who aren't a threat to society and then only arrest those who are a threat". And somehow both would think they were humane. And propoganda would role out to convince the first group they should lock up the second group. Because compassion or empathy is a threat
Agreed. I don’t even believe in free will, so prison makes even less sense to me - in the sense that we’re punishing people for doing something they couldn’t not have done. That said, I have no doubt that the fear of imprisonment acts as a deterrent - at least to some extent. And just because someone can’t help themselves doesn’t mean they should be allowed to roam free, harming others.
Ideally, we’d place people like that on a private island with no one to harm, where they could still live a good life. But since that’s not realistic, prison it is. I still think prisoners should be treated well, no matter the crime. Punishment itself doesn’t make much sense to me - but the fear of punishment does. And that fear isn’t credible unless we follow through.
I remember listening to an episode of hardcore history about capital punishment, it detailed public executions throughout the ages, and the takeaway is this:
You could literally publicly rip people limb from limb with horses and rope, people are still going to steal, assault, and rape.
If seeing someone getting skinned alive isn't enough of a deterrent, I don't know why prison would be.
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Evil that's necessary isn't evil, just painful.
Anyway, my example: a fever? 😅
I bought a Pixel so could install a degoogle OS on the phone. This largely removed Google from my life.
Shame they're making that harder going forward by removing pixel specific info from the build tree
I considered that risk before getting a Pixel 8 and it burns a little yeah. I'll use it like every other phone that stops getting updates for a few more years in the worst case scenario, then move to FairPhone I guess.
The updates will take a little longer that is all. GOS is not in the same boat as other custom rom devs - they don't have build trees either.
GOS is talking to a couple of OEMs about getting a GOS phone produced.
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Mosquitos.
Fuck them. But without them most ecosystems would fail
But without them most ecosystems would fail
a minor hiccup, at most. Many ecosystems wouldn’t even notice.
Is there any evidence for that?
I can't think of a single one.
Lobotomy, electroshock and castration are historic treatments for various extreme mental disorders that were, probably mistakenly, considered necessary evils lacking other treatments.
These days prozac, benzos and lithium fall into a similar category.
Conscription.
Not sure why anyone's downvoting this. If someone you've never met thinks that you have to put your life on the line, and therefore may possibly die, to further a cause - let them explain that cause. If they can't convince you it's more important than your life, then maybe it isn't.
See: Vietnam, etc.
Edit: My bad, I was thinking, "What's a good example of evil?" - Conscription should never be "necessary". The only thing conscription does is protect the status quo. Keep the upvote - it was an honest mistake on my part.
Vietnam is a good example of a bad example. WWII is a better example of the necessary evil part, especially countries that were invaded.
When your only option to make people talk about your cause and occupation is comitting attrocities
Necessary for what? The word necessary implies a goal. Evil also implies a religious type objective morality. I don't think though, that for the goal of living a happy life, any harm is theoretically necessary.
I don’t think though, that for the goal of living a happy life, any harm is theoretically necessary.
Whose happiness are we talking about? Surely if one person's happiness conflicts with someone or something that already exists, they can't both have happiness and harmlessness. (Also, what are you considering harm? Just harm to people? What about animals? Plants? The planet as a whole?)
Modern human life is inherently very harmful to a wide range of things.
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