> If you think a terrorist blowing up a market full of kids and women is cool

I don't think they meant it as "cool", but it's usually more complex than that. Most terrorists have a cause and reasons for joining it sometimes it's brainwashing by a local trusted person ( e.g. priest or whatever), sometimes it's directly suffering against something and wanting to fight back - e.g. the IRA, the Chechen's against Russia, and many people against the US. When your market was bombed, and your wife, kid and neighbors got exploded because someone is playing empire, is it really that insane to want to blow up their wife and kids in retaliation, to bring the fight to them? I don't consider it so, even if it remains despicable and wrong.

However, a billionaire that knowingly sacrificed even hundreds of civilians purely out of greed, is worse. They weren't brainwashed to believe there will be virgins as reward, they knew killing people ( either through negligence or overworking or marketing drugs) will get them money and they do it. There are no mitigating circumstances, no excuses. Of course that doesn't mean they should all be executed. Making them pay hefty taxes and better regulating the ways they made their money is a better way to deal with the issue. (However i understand how a person could look at the current situation, decide it's hopeless and think violence is the only possible way forward)

There's a form of discrimination where you justify or hold someone to a lower standard because you believe they are less capable. A common form is "racism of lower expectations" but it can of course be due to classism, nationalism, etc.

"Well, Terrorists are brainwashed and therefore aren't culpable." When you are about to press the plunger of a detonator in a market full of women and kids, that's a pretty universally bad thing - whether you're Muslim or Christian, rich or poor. You can wrap it up in this romantic story of how this young man was misled by promises of virgins but even very religious people have doubts and are logical beings. More than a few suicide bombers have backed out (or attempted to back out), and it's common for suicide bombers to be told there are punishments (of the earthly variety) for not completing their task.

It seems like you're holding a person responsible for a very complex web of events, to a very high standard and demanding extra punishment for them then you are for someone who is responsible much more directly for an event. If the billionaire was going around shooting people we would be much more likely as a society to condemn them to death, but we understand the more complex the casuality, the lesser the guilt. We do not condemn propagandists to death either.

The best I can figure it, it comes down to envy. Nobody envies the goat herder who blows up a market. Lots of people envy the rich. If you can't beat them, then make them suffer. Historically, people have also tied wealth to morality - being wealthy is good/evil, not simply an outcome of being skilled at making money.

I didn't want to get into terrorists, but both sides of the conflict are killing innocent people, including women and children. If you tallied them up, I'm not sure which side would have higher numbers. One side can shoot people from the sky, the other uses a more manual approach.

If one side is (kind-of) hailed as heroes while the others are called terrorists, how could I pass judgement on one of them, without passing the same judgement on those we tend to call soldiers or commanders?

I don't think they are doing something unprecedented - in pretty much all wars atrocities were committed and wars are atrocities themselves. When they don't have other realistic ways to fight back, while not condoning, I cannot judge them.

Back to rich folks: If someone kills 10 people for whatever, another provokes a war for profit, killing many thousands, yet another organizes mass addiction for profit, killing many thousands, who has most and least guilt? Please answer.

Only one of them is a candidate for hanging in western world. Do you think it's proper?

> "Well, Terrorists are brainwashed and therefore aren't culpable

That's really not what i said. There are terrorists who were just brainwashed, but there are those who personally suffered and want to avenge that. Both scenarios are much more understandable reasons to make people die people than greed, at least for me.

And i think the reason for that is empathy, not envy. I can emphasise with the person who lost their land(whose ancestors lost their lands) and is living in an apartheid state; the person who had friends and family killed by an invading power for profit; the person who is treated as a second class thing, with his fellow second class things murdered at will, in his own land by an occupying power; and the poor confused youngsters that was brainwashing to believe in magical people, righteous justice, how great things used to be, etc. They are wrong to kill civilians, but there are underlying issues that need to be fixed.

I can't emphathise with somebody like the fuckwits at Boeing sacrificing human lives with incompetence and negligence to abide by an arbitrary deadline for money, or a fossil fuel executive lobbying against climate change and for his people-killing planet-destroying oil or coal. I can't put myself in their shoes and I wouldn't be able to sleep at night if i were at there place.