It appears that in every thread about this event there is someone calling everyone else in the thread sick and twisted for not proclaiming that all lives are sacred and being for the death of one individual.
It really is a real life trolley problem because those individuals are not seeing the deaths caused by the insurance industry and not realizing that sitting back and doing nothing (i.e. not pulling the lever on the train track switch) doesn’t save lives…people are going to continue to die if nothing is done.
Taking a moral high ground and stating that all lives matter is still going to costs lives and instead of it being a few CEOs it will be thousands.
murdering the CEOs of every company that puts evil into the system
How would that work, in practice? Who decides which companies are putting evil into the system? Who decides which CEOs to kill? Why not kill the board of directors and VPs as well? Why not kill the nurses and doctors who refuse to treat a patient unless they have health insurance? Why not kill the investors that provided the funds? Why not kill the politicians who made the laws? Why not kill the people who voted for those politicians?
Yeah, that’ll definitely work.
Yeah you’re right, CEOs should just be able to destroy the lives of Americans without any repercussion and anybody who tries to do anything about it is bad and wrong. Man, thank you for showing me my error! You truly are the only intelligent person here. You are the chosen one.
The argument to ask who casts justice and decides the barrier is a legit one. You are using a strawman argument against him by saying they are in favor of allowing destruction of the lives of Americans happen. Such tactics are mostly used by populists and we do not need to stoop to such levels
anybody who
tries to do anything about itperpetrates an extrajudicial contract killing is bad and wrong.
FTFY
Go ahead and do anything you want, nobody is stopping you. Protest, boycott, don’t pay your bills, be my guest. But when you use a silenced handgun to shoot a man in the back who had not been convicted of any crimes, you are unequivocally bad and wrong.
The false dichotomy in this conversation is insane. What in your addled brain indicates to you that I was suggesting that CEOs should be able to ruin people’s lives without repercussions? You don’t need to be particularly intelligent to understand that anonymous masked gunmen assassins are a bad thing, it’s common fucking sense.
The judicial system is designed to favour these people. It has already failed, and cost countless lives. You’re suggesting something that is already in place and failing at a catastrophic level. I’m not going to sit here and pretend you have some kind of greater intelligence or moral high ground for pushing an idea that is proven to not work and costing endless human suffering. That would be fucking idiotic.
I feel like you are thinking about this wrong. From where I sit I think it’s more likely that you’re expanding the target list than helping put the brakes on this kind of vigilante behavior.
You aren’t wrong in a lot of what you’re saying though. Street justice rarely stays just for long. This may also be an isolated incident. However, some kind of pushback against this system is inevitable. If the people you listed don’t help improve the situation then yes, they probably should be worried for their safety, and to be honest I don’t think meaningful change is possible until they are. Strikes, sit-ins, and protests have only ever been effective when paired with the implied threat of physical violence if demands are not met. Greed needs to be deincentivized in one way or another. Governments and corporations don’t seem interested in making that happen so action like this seems increasingly likely to me.
I don’t have any aversion to physical violence, if it is directed towards a rational goal with defined objectives and limits to its usage. This is an example of the opposite, an arbitrary and chaotic usage of violence that only serves to exacerbate social dysfunction.
If the people you listed don’t help improve the situation then yes, they probably should be worried for their safety
I listed everybody. Every single human being on this planet is, in some way, responsible for the current state of society. There is no line that you can draw between yourself and people [who] don’t help improve the situation. We are all, by definition, a part of that group, for as long as it takes until the situation does improve. And that’s why I’m trying to explain that this kind of action is taking all of us further away from whatever improved version of society you envision.
I listed everybody. Every single human being on this planet is, in some way, responsible for the current state of society.
Being intentionally obtuse doesn’t add anything to the discussion. Your average person, especially those in other countries, don’t view themselves as responsible for healthcare costs in America. Whether or not that is technically true is irrelevant as their contribution is not nearly as important as the others on your list. Take away the line about voters and maybe the doctors and nurses, though some would likely disagree with that part, and you’ve got a pretty accurate list of the people most responsible for the situation. They oversee these systems and are therefore seen to be responsible for associated outcomes.
It doesn’t create good outcomes directly. It’s indiscriminate, highly subject to individual biases and extremely destabilizing to society. It’s definitely not a good thing if it keeps happening over a long time.
But when the workers and the owners are fighting at a large enough scale (beyond one or two murders), it forces the government to come in and mediate between the two sides. They must reach a compromise in order to quell the violence. Which means the owner class has to give something up in exchange for the worker class to stop the violence. It’s how we got unions and worker protections when voting and political pressure failed. It’s never the right answer, but at some point it’s the only answer left.
But when the workers and the owners are fighting at a large enough scale (beyond one or two murders), it forces the government to come in and mediate between the two sides. They must reach a compromise in order to quell the violence.
This has never occurred historically. What historical period of workers and owners fighting at a large scale are you alluding to? That hasn’t ever occurred in America. What usually happens is that people vote, and that’s what causes the government to act.
Which means the owner class has to give something up in exchange for the worker class to stop the violence. It’s how we got unions and worker protections when voting and political pressure failed. It’s never the right answer, but at some point it’s the only answer left.
We got unions and workers protections because of voting and political pressure. The modern framework of labor rights in the US was almost entirely created by FDR, who was swept into office by an overwhelming majority of voters as a result of the Great Depression. He passed a ton of legislation as part of the New Deal and utilized political pressure on the Supreme Court when they tried to strike down the legislation. It was strengthened and expanded by JFK and LBJ, two more presidents who were elected with strong mandates from the American people.
There is no scenario where gunning down healthcare CEOs applies any sort of political pressure to anyone. I know that it feels like it means something to the common person who doesn’t understand much about the functioning of government or business. But I can promise you that it means very little to the people with the power to make decisions, aside from reminding them of the necessity of private security.
This has never occurred historically. What historical period of workers and owners fighting at a large scale
The battle of cripple creek involved shootings and dynamite explosions between workers and mine owners and was only stopped once the governor stepped in and helped negotiate a compromise.
I wasn’t trying to imply anything close to a full on war, but violence was a lot more common in early clashes for worker rights. Protests and strikes much more frequently were backed by violent behavior including several deaths.
We could start with health insurance and pharmacy benefit manager companies, and then we can move onto “defense” contractors. If that’s not enough we can then move onto real estate investment companies and if there’s still time to make an even stronger point we can go after the greedflation grocery conglomerates. If that’s still not enough there’s the technofascists running the big tech companies and spying for the government. There’s plenty of targets out there who have it coming and I hope none of them every sleep peacefully again.
