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Police. As much as I hate their current incarnation, I. Some form or fashion they are required to handle those that do harm to others intentionally.
Except here’s the thing: in every form and fashion, they don’t actually do anything to the ones doing the most harm
Money. It encourages greed, but it allows us to scale exchange of goods and services far more than we otherwise could
Government.
In an ideal world, everyone would get along and coordinate effectively in a voluntary manner. There would be no need for any government to enforce laws or provide services.
You consider any form of government evil?
HAHAHHAHA yeah
Yeah they are
Violence against fascists.
Luigi mangione
Guillotines
Nah we have machetes
Evil that’s necessary isn’t evil, just painful.
Anyway, my example: a fever? 😅
Existence. It’s also a paradox because without existence it’s impossible to be either evil or necessary.
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.
I’m not sure if you’re comparing SSRIs to castration but I’m gonna assume you’re not.
I dont think any prescriber would consider any of those medicines necessary. a much better example would be steroids like prednisone. it weakens your immune system, but it’s absolutely necessary at times.
SSRIs are rarely necessary, but are a useful tool. too much to say on this.
Benzos are a short term solution to enable more longer term treatments. they’re absolute monsters of a drug class, but really effective for sure.
fentanyl would be a better example of a necessary evil. it’s synthesis revolutionized surgery.
finally, lithium is a funny example – we still don’t even really know how it works!! but it’s a mood stabilizer and can be hugely beneficial for managing bipolar disorder. that said, one can attempt to manage bipolar symptoms without medications, but it’s certainly going to be harder and possibly less effective
Electroshock is still a “treatment” in many countries.
When your only option to make people talk about your cause and occupation is comitting attrocities
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.
Go to your room and close door.
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.
I think it’s the distinction of whether or not it is voluntary. Buying things is a choice, taxes aren’t (outside of voting for certain political candidates who promise to use taxes in different ways).
A lot of people out there have short-sighted mindsets like “Why do I have to pay for schools when I don’t have any kids?” or “I have my own insurance, why do I have to pay into someone else’s public healthcare too?” People can’t be relied on to make the spending choices needed to support a healthy and stable society on their own, so taxes and public spending make it for them.
To add on to that, not all taxes fund things for the public good. In the US at least, and other countries with large military spending, one must accept that a lot of tax money goes to fund the military industrial complex. Taxes are also used to line the pockets of corporations via bailouts and overpriced government contracts.
Now I also believe there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, but taxes are nevertheless different from a voluntary exchange of currency for goods and services that one directly benefits from.
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.
Literally the point of money is to exchange it for something.
You suck
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.
That’s conservatives for you, whine about taxes but are total welfare queens. They don’t see having no income taxes in their states harm them, no schools no physicians.
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 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.
That sounds backwards to me. If companies are paying all the taxes, why would you insert a second company into the chain? Then both companies would be paying a tax portion, and your salary would be that much less than if you just had a job.
Or were you thinking that you could bamboozle the government out of the tax revenue by saying “Oops, no profit! Salaries cost too much!”? I don’t think that would work unless the entire structure was built with one directive in mind: “Reward Hollywood accounting”
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.
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.’
I didn’t read it as the OP expressing their own opinion, but instead sharing what the majority of voters in their area think.
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.
