Also, if 50% of people are unemployed there will be a lot of people who are employed who sympathise with them, so we are really talking about 80% plus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...
The OP said he "can't even believe that anyone could think of [mass murder]."
Think!
Lack of imagination, lack of historical awareness, or just plain willful ignorance?
Or perhaps I was just chose the wrong turn of phrase? No need to go on a pedantic nerd rage.
Of course people could think about it. Of course people have killed millions of people in the past.
What I was trying to say is that any sensible leader in a industrialised nation would not choose exterminating 50% of their population instead of than trying to affect social change.
Of course we could have another Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot who tries for genocide again. But killing 50% of your population is much different to killing 5%. Those 50% are going to have friends so you'd be up against 80-90% of the population. It would just be more sensible to try to redistribute wealth at that stage.
But yes, I'm sure whack jobs can think about these things and with modern weapons you could probably do it etc.
The "rich" people need the poor people. Without other classes, there is no rich. If everyone is in jail, who buys the goods?
What is money worth if there is no one to compare it to? If everyone is poor or in jail...why do you want money? For what? To do what? To drive a nice car that no one cares about because they can't afford food?
People are too quick to overestimate robotics and artificial intelligence. 100 years ago we were supposed to have flying cars, laser guns and teleportation. These were exaggerated views, just as ours are now.
Robots do not just make better workers, they are also better warriors. How many Chinese peasants does it take to kill a single UAV? How many protestors can modern riot police crowd control using sophisticated psychological warfare combined with advanced nonlethal weaponry?
Once the violent, unskilled, uneducated, unmoneyed lawbreakers are rounded up by the riot police and thrown in jail... then what? The Chinese are not shy about executions. How about humane lethal injections for everyone?