I thought we say: we need more flesh for the prison-industrial complex.

Although, sentence length doesn't seem to be correlated to deterrence, that doesn't mean the inevitability of imprisonment isn't a legitimate deterrent at all. For example, the belief that there's a high likelihood of getting caught does increase deterrence.

Meh, I don't know about anyone else, I don't think you're being antagonistic, you just have a different perspective. You certainly haven't hurt my feelings, and I hope I haven't hurt yours.

But I think literally two days ago there was front page post about a billionaire who gave away his fortune and died with something like 200M

The problem with this is that society doesn't get to choose where his money went, he did. When it comes to the mega-rich, what they think will help people versus what will really help people is often leagues away. Further, a lot of what they leave their money for is stuff that is just part of society in other countries.

I don't care about some guy leaving a trust so low-income kids in his state can attend college for cheaper when other countries have higher education just as accessible as basic education and it's all paid for by taxes already. It even makes the colleges more strict on accepting applicants, because they don't want to be wasting money on students who will fail.

Our system says "fuck the student, let them take the risk financially, and if they fail, fuck em, their own fault."

Anyway, the point being that those billionaires have "pet projects" and often those pet projects don't align with what actually helps people... which is why people advocate for higher taxes for the wealthy, so we do have input on where that money goes, instead of letting some billionaire fuckwad decide that only his ideas are good enough. Especially when other countries have shown all you have to fucking do is tax people appropriately, then you don't have to rely on the good graces of the obscenely rich.

Musk is a perfect example, actually.

https://truthout.org/articles/musk-pledged-6b-to-solve-world-hunger-but-gave-it-to-his-own-foundation-instead/

The WFP took Musk up on his challenge and issued a report just three days later detailing how it could use the funds to feed 42 million of the people across the world who were most at risk of starvation for a year. Of course, the money from Musk, who is notorious for pledging to do good with his money and influence and then backing out, never materialized — not for the WFP, anyway.

Instead, the money went to the Musk Foundation, which appears to be set up in a way that is similar to other foundations started by billionaires; essentially, the sole purpose of these foundations is allowing the rich to dodge taxes while painting themselves as charitable.

Oh and after giving himself some money, then he spent $44 billion to buy Twitter instead of helping people.

It's mind-blowing to this day that he was given a plan, and because it wasn't perfect and wouldn't solve world hunger permanently, he thought spending 7 times the amount to help alleviate world hunger to buy Twitter was more important. His values are out of whack with regular society.

Further, right now, Musk has been on a tear of attacking the homeless and promoting the idea that homelessness is a moral and ethical failure... not just a lack of cash. He literally hates the poor. He attacked them as "drug addicts" but his addiction to ketamine is fine actually.