One of the World’s Richest Women [Truong My La Lan] Sentenced to Execution

You can tell this is written by an American because it keeps bringing up the war for no reason.

Also just a very inefficient use of language, they really waffle on.

I applaud holding rich people accountable, yet I'm militantly opposed to the death sentence.

I think there's quite some no wage labor left in them, let them try that out for a change.

The most difficult argument to argue against against the death penalty is that you cannot repair for the damages of executing a person you've wrongly convicted, if new evidence appears too late.
This doesn't even mean there aren't people who deserve to die, or who deserve suffering. Rather, it's an acknowledgement of the fallibility of human institutions.
- That's why death penalty shouldn't exist for crimes like a wife killing a husband. You might be 99.9% sure she poisoned him, but you cannot know for sure.
  However, a school shooter caught red handed shooting a school?
  Some crimes and scenarios can warrant the death penalty in my mind
  Next argument is "what if the government framed people to execute them?"
  Why in the world would the government point out that they are executing someone?
  If the government (the rich controlled government) wants you dead they would do it quietly.
  Even something as simple as cutting your brake lines. You really think local police are going to figure out that the government had soldier 65478 tamper with your brake lines?
Sending someone to a work camp is more humane than taking their life?
- It's reversible at least. I'm not for unusual punishment, just got the exact conditions of a Vietnamese laborer at the bottom rung.

The lifestyle of Vietnam’s nouveau riche elite was exposed during the devastating trial in Ho Chi Minh City that convicted Truong My La Lan of stripping the country’s biggest bank huge sums of money in a scam worth $44 billion. (...) She broke down in tears as she battled for her life before the sentence was announced. It was “due to my lack of understanding of legal matters,” she said, that she “did the wrong things.”

Watch me boombling and bamboozling my way around with my eyes closed and absolute zero awareness of my general environment as I accidentaly scam billions of dollars. Whoopsies.

Lack of understanding of legal matters....
She didn't realize the law applied to her!
- To be fair I feel like Kevin O'Leary just used this excuse for trump. He essentially said we do it all the time you normies never say anything I don't see the problem, I'm paraphrasing but here's a Jon Stewart piece about it

Thoughts, prayers, and most importantly: redistribution!

Rare Vietnamese W

They had a pretty big W in 1975

Concise writing is a dead art, isn't it?

I guess the death sentence is one way to deter people from similar offences.

Maybe she didn't bribe them well enough? She should've been buying officials rather than property like we do in the west.

How can multibillionaires even exist in a communist country!?

Hint: communism doesn't work in practice on scales the size of nations. The ideology is too fragile and susceptible to corruption and outside influence and you end up with shit like this.
Before anyone says "it's not real communism" that is the point. It's useless if it's too weak against other ideologies to be properly implemented.
- That's because communism was never supposed to be a thing you just implement and was never meant to exist alongside other ideologies.
  Communism as first described by Marx and then later expanded upon by other theorists is merely the inevitable outcome of a global society that has overcome scarcity, moved away from late stage capitalism and values things like workers rights, equality and standards of living.
  The biggest divide between communists is usually how we get to that end state. Do you try to ignite a global violent revolution against capitalism, seize the means of production by force and then use dictatorial power to try and force society towards it, like the Soviets did? Or should we make incremental changes over time though existing Democratic channels like democratic socialists? Or do you seize the power for yourself, run the country like a monarchy and claim you've achieved communism?
- But even if communism was an ideology and an unreachable standard that a community or country was striving to active, you would expect it to be harder to even become a millionaire
- Socialism works. Workers can democratically direct production at scale. Communism is the goal, but Socialism isn't some sacrifice to get through, it's a marked improvement on Capitalism. Capitalism itself is the sacrifice.

The cognitive dissonance in the hive mind is as strong on lemmy as it ever was on reddit, which I find interesting.

'The death penalty is brutal, primitive, unjustified; corrupt billionaires should be put to death by the state.'

These two completely incompatible sentiments have been expressed just in the last few days on this same instance.

It's about balancing principles....
On the one hand, I feel somewhat strongly that the state shouldn't execute criminals. On the other hand, it's more important that billionaires face the consequences of their actions like normal people do.
In this instance, justice demands death.
- It's a very hard line to tow.
  I think the death penalty should really only be allowed for mass murder / enslavement.
  However, I doubt any billionaires are innocent of enslaving people, even if it's "I paid them ($0.07 / day, which is slave wages)!" So, fuck the ultra rich. They didn't get there by hard work; they got there by exploiting people and the system. Finances are not unlimited, so funneling that much money to yourself means you are directly depriving whole communities of livelihood and, almost always, actual life.
- It's about balancing principles....
  Nah, it's more about having no principles.
It's pretty basic harm reduction. We support harm reduction. A terrible person being killed is harm reduction even if a terrible person being imprisoned and being rehabilitated if at all possible and made to be as productive of a member of society as possible in prison would be better harm reduction. The world is too big and too awful to look at everything in absolutes.
And it's nice to see awful rich people actually get the real punishments they often deserve instead of poor people get those punishments that they often don't deserve.