I would say most of the Hinkley posts but that could just be me.
The killing is the pressure for reform, not the reform itself. At least one rather hopes so.
At any rate that argument again runs into the problem; why is it bad to kill for politics, but not for profit? IMHO one reason a lot of people don’t care or actively approve of the killing is because they don’t buy into the argument that it’s somehow justified when a CEO kills thousands of people for profit but immoral when somebody kills them for politics or personal vengeance.
The phrase “live by the sword, die by the sword” comes to mind. The CEO certainly did nothing to encourage people to consider human life to be of value or to consider killing wrong.
Because many people, probably most people, draw a distinction between actively causing a death and allowing a death to happen by inaction. Even the worst health insurance generally does the latter.
No, it’s status. A CEO is our version of an aristocrat and is killing people for profit, therefore all the deaths he causes are justified and his person is not to be harmed under any circumstances. The people he kills deserve to die because he’s the one killing them. Killing him is the commoner scum raising their hands against their betters, and is not to be tolerated.
That’s true, but is it actually worse to cause a death by murder rather than by neglect? The victim is still just as dead, and arguably suffers more in the run-up to death.
And another fair question is this:
Is there ever a time when it’s ok for a repressed population to start attacking its oppressors?
If the answer to that is yes, then we move on to whether oppression can be only physical.
And just because we have to repeat the mantra, no I do not support the killing of Thompson. BUT- I don’t think anyone here believes our current political system is capable of addressing the issue. So at some point, what options are left for the oppressed?
There is no “inaction” here. It is their actions that kill people. They explicitly try their hardest to be better at killing people. Killing people is their goal.
That’s simply not true. In a hard-core capitalist system, there is a systemic goal of removing unproductive people, i.e. people who are not contributing to the economy. Arguably, people who are undergoing medical procedures are, in fact, active contributors to the economy. You generate more economic activity as a vegetable than as a corpse. What they’re not doing, though, is using their labour: they are consumers, and to be used up and replaced.
As far as the humans embedded in the system, their goal is merely to avoid thinking about humans and be thinking about numbers, increase thereof. The banality of evil and all that.
Sure, at a macro level. But UHC’s perfect insured is someone who uses very little insurance.
We are not talking about the entire “hard-core capitalist system”, we are talking about the health insurance industry. They make money by not paying for necessary treatments leading to people dying. That is not inaction, they are not passive observers, they are the ones who decide who lives or dies and they try their hardest to make sure they have to pay as little as possible.
So you decided to completely ignore @puzzlegal 's attempt to distinguish between active malevolence and passive neglect. Are you merely claiming that the two are functionally indistinguishable, or do you actually believe that corporate CEOs are motived by sadism?
It is not passive.
The topic does practically cry “Godwinize me, you big lug! Pull my hair and call me a unnützer esser!”
Both. Not that they restrain themselves to neglect of course; but in the end killing is killing.
And yes I consider sadism to be a common motive for human behavior, especially among those who have or seek power. I expect most CEOs are not only aware of how much misery they cause, but actively enjoy it and seek to maximize it for their own pleasure. Power tripping is a thing.
The problem with murder as an instrument of social change is two-fold:
First, that the removal of individuals, or even multiple individuals, virtually never changes a system. As de Gaulle said “The graveyards are full of indispensable men”. Most people are fungible as far as systems go, and short of armed revolution there are far more efficient methods of attacking a system. Attempting to kill a well-protected leader almost always fails, and on the rare occasions that it succeeds usually doesn’t bring about changes worth the risk and effort. Similarly, random potshots at the system’s expendable low-level stooges are useless unless you can do it on the scale of mass warfare. (I have wondered about figuring out where in the hierarchy of a system the cost-benefit ratio maximizes for assassinating mid-level functionaries).
Second, murder as a tactic could be done for useless and even counter-productive purposes as easily as it could be done for a targeted strategy. CEOs might be killed in retaliation for their policies, or they– or anyone else– might be killed by someone who felt “dissed” by them, or by someone who insisted that the CIA’s mind control rays forced them to do it, or a random mugger looking for meth money, or a spouse who felt that murder was quicker and easier than divorce, or even a rival within their own organization. As a tactic, murder simply opens the floodgates. (I wonder if the Vietcong and other revolutionary movements had to suppress predators and opportunists within their ranks using the revolutionary struggle as a mere excuse to indulge their bloodlust).
Personally, I don’t think it’s sadism, it’s depraved indifference. It is exactly like that jerk who bought up the production line for a cheap life saving drug and jacked up the price by 1000%, or whatever it was.
It’s “I want more money and I don’t care how many people die so that I can get it.” People like that belong in jail, but we put them in the C-Suite.
I mean, I don’t really disagree with any of that. But it doesn’t really answer the question. You’re arguing effectiveness. I’m asking, given a hypothetical lack of nonviolent options, is it morally acceptable.
I’m inclined to disagree. As I said upthread, you advance in a career and you’re slowly shaped by the business you’re in. And my example was my business- lots of people think pharma is evil. And in some aspects I won’t disagree. But I know CEOs and board members, and while they talk about maximizing profits, I’ve never once heard someone say anything that sounded intentionally evil. And just a level down where you have the researchers, they really do believe in what they do. And sometimes, they get promoted to the executive level.
I’m not defending the healthcare industry, just saying that many of the people who do these things have been conditioned and may not even realize how evil their actions are.
ETA: I’m not denying that there must be some evil executives; there are some evil people in all professions; Sacklers perhaps?
Besides Sacklers, others have bought up drugs, epipens, etc… and jacked prices for greed and malevolence.
Posters here keep stating the there are huge numbers of deaths as the result of denials. Anyone with some actual facts to bring on that?
I can find lots on denials that are shared after services are provided causing huge stress. When upheld causing financial ruin. And doing such when people don’t know they can appeal or how. I can find evidence that the denials are frequently idiotic as 90% of them are reversed on appeal. And a handful of stories about delays of care that had horrible consequences. No question in my mind that UHC is worst of class. But boy solid evidence supporting claims of so many being killed by CEOs shouldn’t so hard to find.