this post was submitted on 31 Dec 2024
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The difference is that Brian Thompson was a willing participant and policy maker of an organization that had twice the industry standard of insurance denials (and therefore deaths). He was willingly participating and aiding in those killings, even if indirect.
Even something as simple as rice and beans can indirectly lead to the death of somebody, but the difference is that buying a bag of rice at the grocery store is something you are unwilling to do because you are forced to eat as a part of your physiology. By buying a bag of rice, you aren't enforcing a policy of deforestation or slave labor. Your only other option is to commit suicide to never burden anyone else for any resource ever again, but that very clearly isn't a morally correct option either.
So yeah, it's pretty easy to have a definition that includes the CEO but not everyone else, an intentional and willing killing of another person.
His killing has overnight launched a nationwide discussion about how bullshit the current system is. There is immense value in that. It ain't a problem.
This was an individual who helped make the system. Brian Thompson was directly responsible for it's creation.
This is backwards. Between the action itself and the national discussion, both the action and result directly confront the actual problem of oligarchs wielding unchecked power. They don't listen to begging for scraps.
So I see what you're saying, and of course there's ways to argue this killing could accomplish something good. But let me ask you this - based on the history of society and the typical results of assassinations, violence, and instability, what do you predict will actually change from this?
When I look at this, I see parallels to past emotional leftist movements like Occupy Wall Street and BLM, that did garner a lot of attention and lead to a lot of discussion, but in terms of policy change were only followed by political defeats for those movements. It seems to me that yes these movements get attention, but it's the wrong kind of attention.
Columbine spawned numerous copy cats, and I think there is a large potential for a similar thing to happen in this case. In terms of the vague revolution you are implicitly asking about, no that's not going to happen as a result of this. If this is a one off event it will not be enough for large scale change. We'd have to see numerous biz execs and billionaires shot to see real change.
Occupy wall street failed because it was entirely peaceful outside of the trespassing and dealing with cops. The George Floyd/BLM protests weren't dissimilar.
Ultimately what made those fail is that neither had distinct and separate factions fighting for the same thing through violence or the threat of violence. MLK had the Black Panthers & Malcom X, Ghandi had freedom fighters in the background.
Peaceful social movements are far more successful with violent factions in the background. And the data supports that:
https://academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/article/1/3/pgac110/6633666?login=false
So now in the present we may potentially have a violent "faction" starting to form. The peaceful protests of the healthcare system are far easier to form.
If the public really wanted change they could've demanded it long ago. This is a democracy (even if FPTP is shitty). Why would you not vote for the party that wants to make healthcare more humane and instead vote the party and guy for president who's a public oligarch and thinks of the working class as beneath him.
Ethically the things Brian Thompson did were bad sure. But if he granted every healthcare request would the investors replace him? Most likely yes.
I believe you also cross a line when you argue that self-justice is right. Are rich people just gonna get murdered now since they're rich? Like bc the capitalistic system favours people that already have wealth? Where is the line. Can I now murder anyone I think is a bad person? I don't think this behaivor should be supported.
You don't even know the guy... you see him as a demonised person and now his family and friends have lost him for no real change to have taken effect. I just hope this discussion just simmer down and the public will ignore the issue again.
Your comment is just boiling over with false premises. You're not (and you won't) make a compelling case that this specific person was "just a dude with a family". Hitler was a dude with a family on some level in a bad faith argument like yours, but that's not the context that matters while discussing him and the atrocities he willingly and repeatedly committed over the course of years.
They have been. Congress doesn't listen:
https://act.represent.us/sign/problempoll-fba/
On paper, sure. But in effect it is an oligarchy.
Because the rulers of this country have systematically gutted the education system, they own the media, and their propaganda is wildly effective. And to top it off, as you pointed out it is a FPTP voting system, which means that the results of elections are worse.
So what? Not being able to do good things in a position of power doesn't mean it is acceptable or that he had no culpability.
I pretty clearly (though implicitly) defined the line already:
Brian intentionally and willingly killed people through his actions, and a lot of them. Thousands at a minimum, though easily tens of thousands as he was the CEO for quite a while. When somebody like him is killed, even if through vigilante justice, it is quite clearly justified. Have you been killing tens of thousands of people through insurance denials? No? Then you have nothing to worry about.
Other people who are rich should simply be taxed out of existence as a class. Not killed, just taxed until they're at the level that would have previously been known as middle class before it was destroyed.
As Snapz pointed out, Hitler had family too. Having a family doesn't exclude you from having your death celebrated. If you're evil, you're evil even if you have family. And mass murderers like Brian Thompson are evil. So boo hoo. He gets his death celebrated. Maybe he shouldn't have killed tens of thousands if he didn't want this.
Then you aren't paying attention, either to the surrounding events, or to what I literally just said:
I don't. And it won't. This is a conversation that needs to and will continue until the problem is solved.