njdas

Good point. I get a sense of conflict from the author, and his reaction to 'ignore' may be due to difficulty with this hard question. He has some good points, but they don't warrant his conclusion.

It's difficult to tell if there is any wrong-doing without more evidence, which I guess the DOJ will find in time. It looks like their profits ebb/flow, and they are also set to pay a record of $313m in taxes on $991m income.

| Year | Net Income Common Stockholders | Tax Provision |

| ---- | ------------------------------ | ------------- |

| TTM | 990,814 | 312,872 |

| 2024 | 277,888 | 83,689 |

| 2023 | 758,024 | 241,818 |

| 2022 | 132,650 | 33,574 |

| 2021 | 2,060 | -12,009 |

There is a major important nuance. It is just some people, who happen to control the government (ie: use of force) to achieve their ends. "The people" are diverse and have different opinions, and the "government" represents a small portion of them. I've certainly donated to charitable organizations that are not my friends, but have a proven track record of effectively using money for specific goals. The government rarely meets this criteria.

No, you are framing it as a binary "you either fund the government or only your friends." I deliberately stated it was a straw man, just as your position is. Instead of dealing with that and engaging in constructive discourse, you challenged the strawman anyways. You really believe there is no in between? You are framing this as if you're on some high ground and we either have to agree with your opinion or we are selfish. That's childish. There are other ways to advance humanity than your opinions. The whole framing is absurd and likely hypocritical since you probably don't even live up to your own ideals. Are you voluntarily contributing excess earnings to the government? Also, government is not some benevolent entity. You are operating from a purely theoretical perspective that has no basis in data from present reality or history. As one example, see government killing its own people as the leading cause of death in the 20th century, mostly big governments of the same root ideology for which you seem to be advocating.

I'm trying to reconcile how https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM is 'helping out your friends.' See, we can all create straw-men. It's not very useful for discourse. The vast majority of us want what is best for humanity, but we have different views on how to deliver it.