The assassination of United Healthcare's CEO is a real life trolley problem, and a select few are trying to argue to save all lives while the train is going to kill the masses.

Tbh this is the logical end-state of a poorly-regulated for-profit healthcare system

Poorly regulated economy really
- Capitalism really
- Which is why I predict events like this are about to become a lot more common.
of a *general oligarchy
Man, people really think this is actually going to change things and it's hilarious.
Well, hilarious in that I have to laugh to keep from breaking down in tears. On one side you have people who will do anything to squeeze every last penny from our quickly decaying corpses, and on the other we have a bunch of people who did little more than bitch and moan until someone does something drastic and ultimately futile in which case they... mostly continue to sit back and watch while assuming everything is somehow magically going to fix itself for them.
- Things might change if murdering the CEOs of every company that puts evil into the system becomes the standard in America. But one outlier incident won’t change anything.
- It might not change anything but it certainly raises spirits
- It's the only thing that's ever changed things. Nonviolent movements are great but behind every successful one there is a separate violent movement forcing power to the table. The myth of successful nonviolent movements has been propagated as another tool of control.
- It depends on how many people succeed in offing CEOs quick enough before the state clamps it’s power down. The state reacts relatively slowly so hopefully a lot more copycats (or our smiling hero) get a few more names off the list to really make a fucking point.
  The state is gonna respond with more dystopia.
Yup!

I'd encourage everyone to be careful with this type of thinking, because I'm seeing it a lot. Characterizing situations as having only two unpleasant options ("two tracks" in this case) is a classic strategy to rationalize violence. Gangs use it, terrorist groups use it, and even governments trying to justify wars use it (e.g. remember Bush's "You're either with us or against us").

It's a textbook false dichotomy, and it's meant to make the least unpleasant option presented seem more palatable. This situation is not as simple as "either you're in favor of insurance companies profiting off of denied healthcare of millions or you're ok with murdering a CEO"

I want to live in a world where profoundly evil people receive karma instead of golden parachutes. The third option here is that CEOs be paid less and be held accountable by their employees similarly to a democracy. But that means changing the system - which won't happen until the CEOs are convinced the system doesn't work. Right now, we regular folks are the only ones for whom the system doesn't work. This uncertain future for CEOs is load sharing.
- Precisely. The last few months have been nothing but trolley problem after trolley problem because rich people are never held accountable.
- profoundly evil people receive karma instead of golden parachutes.
  Give them actual golden parachutes and they get both.
- Don't want to be too much of a downer, but if enough rich folk decide the system does not work for them. These rich folks will fight to change the system to function more like China and Russia. Where the peons have limited political expression and swift removal of 'subversive' speech.
Well I'm open to other ideas but I haven't seen any viable ones yet.
- tldr: one idea would be challenging their ability to hide behind licensed MDs who are paid to shoulder liability
  This is actually my field, and I've spent countless hours of my life arguing with these insurance companies on behalf of patients they've denied, (losing more often than I've won, but you have to try). They suck.
  When they're being exceptionally unreasonable, the bridge-burning hail mary I would throw would be threatening the license of the provider that denied the appealed claim. It has worked a surprising number of times.
  Most people don't realize that it's not just paper-pushers at insurance companies who are denying claims. Those folks can routinely deny things that policy excludes, but if it's a judgement call or a challenge that their policy isn't meeting medical necessity, they hide behind doctors on their payroll who are putting their license on the line when they have to say that the insurance company is justified. Those individuals can be reported to their licensing board or even sued. Short of voting in universal healthcare one day, I think this is the most direct route to challenge this nonsense.
- Derail the train
You're absolutely right and I'd argue it boils down to the fundamental error in OP's shower thought:
Killing the CEO doesn't save the lives on the other track. It just adds another dead body to the pile.
- Killing the CEO doesn’t save the lives on the other track
  Why wouldn't it, though? Every CEO makes a profit/loss calculation in their head. Now they've got one more potential entry in their loss column. We're not talking about saving lives already taken by UHC, but future lives that other CEOs might cost.
Whilst I can’t disagree with what you say, and I’m glad you’ve pointed it out, I’d include one caveat. “If” capitalism is heading towards an even more extreme iteration of itself then, perhaps, the (currently false) dichotomy you mention may come to exist. I kinda hope we don’t end up in such a binary struggle but… humans. Shrugs broadly.
Only the Sith deal in absolutes.
- Always two, there are.
Well, in the total picture the best option of all would be Justice System which is Just and hence stop people causing massive numbers of deaths for profit, which is not what we have (especially in the US) and is even getting worse.
Ultimately all Just venues (I was going to say "non-violent", but "lawful" violence is still "violence", so even in a Just system, Force would still be used on the ones profiting from mass deaths) seem to have been closed in the last couple of decades.
The more options get closed, the more people will only see as options to either meekly accept the death of a loved one (or oneself) due to the actions of the people leading Health Insurance companies or vigilante vengeance, since the State has over the years removed itself from enacting Justice against the wealthiest in society, which would've been the best option of all (not least because it prevents the deaths of both the victims of guys like this CEO and of guys like the CEO)
Indeed, dichotomies presented in arguments are more often than not false, but sometimes they're true.
No I think most of us recognize there are a lot of other tracks out there. It's just we've tried most of the other tracks (protests, voting, thoughts and prayers, etc) and most of them haven't made anything better. So... there are only a couple of tracks not tried yet. But already this one sure has made way more waves than 99% of protests ever have.
- If a significant portion the US population went on general strike, things would change quickly.
  The other option, which is slower, is to build up alternative systems in a network of mutual aid, like cooperatively owned insurance, businesses, housing, energy systems, etc. Essentially slowly replace the state with hundreds of interconnected coops.
  also @Kbobabob@lemmy.world
There’s a lot of other tracks out there that haven’t been taken, such as our government regulating health insurance in the form of single payer so this doesn’t happen, or our government using its justice system to go after it’s worse actors, but no, shareholder value comes first (even when shareholder value requires murder).
So this is the track we’re on and I fully fucking support it and hope he’s just the first of many to meet this well deserved fate.
Fuck around find out. We’re the most armed population on the planet and you think they’re gonna continue to get away with this shit? The public is united across the political spectrum in their support for this guy getting shot. I hope his ilk never sleeps another peaceful night again. I’m just surprised it took this long. I hope there are copycats.
These people killed my father. I am living for this right now. If I had less to lose and more skills to do it I’d be copycatting it myself and taking one for the team. These people need to die. They’re overdue to meet their makers and account for the mass deaths they’ve caused and profited from!!! via capitalism.
FBI: I’ve got an alibi, I was at work.
I'm not necessarily disagreeing that it's a false dichotomy, but do you have viable alternatives?
- I don't presume to have the answers, but there are plenty of alternatives if we're comparing them to murder in the street.
  I replied to another comment about one specific way to introduce licensure risk to insurance company doctors as a way to get them to change their policies. It happens all the time, and the more people that know about it, the better. (They rely on people being unfamiliar with how they operate)
  Long term, I think our best bet is to keep pushing for universal healthcare that will effectively make health insurance obsolete. It's a winning message (something like 60% of America already supports it), and we've come close at least twice in recent history.
Problem is that all the other tracks can't be switched to.

I see what you're getting at, but this isn't the trolly problem. The trolly problem is predicated on the idea that killing one will save many, but it's assumed that everyone involved is innocent. It's a philosophical question about moral choice; is inaction that allows many to die more moral than an action that directly kills one? If the one person being killed is somehow culpable for the deaths of the other people, that changes the entire equation.

Also, that's not even what happened here. One person was killed, but just as many people are going to die today because United Healthcare. No one was saved. Maybe if dozens of CEOs were gunned down in the streets, that would change something, but one dead CEO isn't going to do anything.

(And, to any moderators or FBI agents reading this, I'm of course not advocating for that. Can you even imagine? The ruling class that has been crushing the American working class for decades suddenly getting put down like rabid dogs? With the very weapons that the gun manufacturers allowed to flood our streets in order to maximize their profits? Makes me sick just to ~~fantasize~~ think about it.)

Maybe if dozens of CEOs were gunned down in the streets,
How do you think it starts?
- ...well, again, I definitely think that would be a bad thing. Truly terrible. Definitely wouldn't be happy to see the billionaire class living in fear of the people they're exploiting. Oh no. Stop. Police. Murder.
- It starts with one ...
- Methinks you missed the point.
but it’s assumed that everyone involved is innocent.
The Wikipedia article for Trolley Problem states that there is a version called "The Fat Villain" so I think that fits here and is still a version of the trolley problem.
but one dead CEO isn’t going to do anything.
You are right about that. But if CEO deaths started matching school shooting numbers things would likely change.
- Fair enough, but that's a variation of a variation, and pretty obscure (I'd heard of the Fat Man variation, but not the Fat Villain).
  But if CEO deaths started matching school shooting numbers things would likely change.
  I mean, that's basically what I'm saying, but that's not really the Trolley Problem. That's basically the French Revolution. (And, again, should any law enforcement agents happen to read this, I'm definitely not trying to incite violence against the billionaire class, no matter how badly they deserve it or how much better the world would be for it).
- 1/20th of school shooting numbers and we will get it
- Gun laws would change
Maybe if dozens of CEOs were gunned down in the streets, that would change something, but one dead CEO isn't going to do anything.
Let’s fucking goooo

Ah, the anti- student loan forgiveness argument.
Conservative American boomers in a nutshell.

Oh so this will save thousands of lives then? And here I thought they just hire a new CEO while making their services worse to fund the bonuses for the new one. Silly me.

If it was a random death you might have a point. I would still say it makes sense that people would celebrate the death of a villain, but that's beside the point.
This was an assassination, a message on its own even if there weren't literal words carved into the casings. This may well give a person about to make an inhumane decision on behalf of a company's bottom line pause. It's a reminder that those decisions have real consequences, even if not always legal ones.
- They'll pause to call up more private security to keep themselves safe while they raise your premiums even more.
  A Christmas Carol was just a story, not reality. You're not going to scare CEOs into doing the right thing, especially not with threat of death.
- Lmao, you honestly think any executive heard any message other than 'i need to spend more on corporate security and body guards'?
I hear we produce a lot of bullets compared to the number of MBA’s out there
- Yeah, and they're mostly bought by bootlickers.
Not immediately, but hopefully the next CEO will learn a lesson from this and have more consideration on how the company affects people’s lives. I feel like CEOs of large corporations have lost the fear of the masses because they think they’re powerful. But they’re not, they just have a lot of money, a bullet can still kill them.
- First time seeing a CEO get replaced for whatever reason?don't worry, we've all been there.
Blue cross just backflipped on time limits for anaesthesia, so
And now security services
This hit is probably more about a “pound of flesh” than saving (future) lives. (Source: pulling theories out of the air)
Do you have a solution to help the situation, or do you just like to complain?
- If I don't have a solution, I have to agree with murdering people?
  That's like if, in order to drive down the price of diapers I just started killing babies, then when you said that was evil and ineffective I just responded with, "oh yeah, well do you have a better idea, or are you just here to crap all over mine?"
  All that said, yes, I do have plenty of common sense suggestions for reforms to the healthcare system that don't involve me murdering someone in cold blood, as it turns out.

This is America, so unfortunately gun crime is just something there's no fix for. 🤷

The problem with the trolley problem is that this event isn't a trolley problem. Killing one CEO doesn't save lives, hell just be replaced and more guarded now.

We need proper reform and regulation.

In America, the right to bear arms goes hand in hand with its dislike of regulation. Maybe the system is working the way it was intended for the first time?
- When 1A fails, 2A has to save the day. I think we are seeing this first hand.
  Tyranny over played its hand.
- Worth remembering that people died from Tar and feathering.
If you were to continue killing CEOs, eventually the CEOs would call for change themselves. One dead CEO isn't going to change that. Hypothetically, of course.
I actually agree with you, but I don't see the regulation playing out in our favor. If anything, any future regulation will only increase the despotism against the 99%, which will in turn result in more of this. The other comments regarding the right to bear arms, and the founding concepts of throwing off despotism seem to be at play here. Instead of killing the lawmakers, this assassination went right to the source, corporations.
It wasn't "right" for the continental army to shoot and kill british soldiers either, but it was also very very right to wage that war.
Baby steps.
Yeah I’m sure there’s a new CEO now, but consider that whatever schmuck ends up in that chair next knows he’s taking over from a predecessor that was deposed for wildly unpopular policies at the helm to hold profits over people.
Mr schmuck will definitely be sweating it when faced with similar decisions because fear of it affecting him personally, e.g. catching a bullet, is a real possibility. I guarantee you that thought has never crossed any of these CEOs minds before this happened.
All the assassin did was force them to understand they have skin in the game.
How badly do they want more money? How does the calculus shake out with this new variable of self preservation? Is it worth looking over your shoulder every time walking down the street?
This is why people are arguing it’s the trolley problem

No.

this will save precisely zero lives
you ignore the broader impact of allowing brazen broad-daylight murder to be endorsed by the public under any conditions. It is not just this one life
insurance is a mess and I am sure this guy was a dick, and that UHC denies plenty of claims that should be accepted. But at risk of pointing out the obvious, an insurance company that never denies any claims will go bankrupt immediately, and would therefore result in many more deaths since nobody would be covered.

Number 3 is the best argument for national insurance. (Saying public might imply it's tradable, this isn't what I've meant)
- The health insurance industry is an abomination. It's completely across the purpose of keeping a population healthy to try to extract and concentrate wealth out of the process, and they're dug in like a tick.
- Health care is not compatible with the free market as health care is logically something people would pay anything for.
- National insurance denies claims all the time as well in some form.
- Wish more people talked about reform than violence tbh. Thinking about leaving lemmy since associating myself with some people here makes me sick
this will save precisely zero lives
Not if it starts a movement
It is not just this one life
See above
an insurance company that never denies any claims
Ideally that's called free universal healthcare, which we should have
allowing brazen broad-daylight murder to be endorsed by the public
Are you proposing to not allow people to voice support for the murder?
- You can't be serious 😂
you ignore the broader impact of allowing brazen broad-daylight murder to be endorsed by the public under any conditions. It is not just this one life
Yes, it's a shame the system failed to deliver justice. The solution isn't that justice shouldn't be served, it's that the system needs to be fixed so people like this are killed lawfully and by the state are not in a position where they profit off of human misery.
If he was no longer a threat, I'd endorse rehabilitation, the last emperor of China, who collaborated with the Japanese in WWII ended up living out his years working menial jobs and making real connections with people.
His wife said on the news that he loved life...
- Just his own
insurance is a mess and I am sure this guy was a dick, and that UHC denies plenty of claims that should be accepted. But at risk of pointing out the obvious, an insurance company that never denies any claims will go bankrupt immediately, and would therefore result in many more deaths since nobody would be covered.
Insurance companies in other countries survive just fine by paying out what they are expected to. Only in America is insurance as screwed up as it is.

Regardless of if it saves lives, if hopefully means those at the top of these murder companies never sleep another night peacefully again, always looking over their shoulder, always wondering when it’s their time to meet their maker for their misdeeds.
This guy is a fucking hero.
- Lol, they will just have more private security now and guess who's going to pay for it? I can assure you it won't be coming out of their own compensation packages.
It's not about removing the ultra wealthy. It's about scaring them with consequences.

It's more like "We found the guy pulling the lever on the trolley problem, only his trolley problem is 'people die or I get less money', and he has the trolley run over the people every time"

Unfortunately, there's a long line of twats behind him drooling over their chance to make the trolley run over human beings in exchange for money, so killing him doesn't really have the 'trolley running over people averted' effect that the trolley problem is usually based around. You're just punishing a shithead killer by killing him. Which, while hilarious, lacks the moral quandary that the trolley problem is meant to highlight, since no one is actually saved.

It's one of those things where the institutions of society can and must genuinely pursue the killer (albeit not at the level they actually are, expending a disproportionate amount of resources compared to if one of us commoners was killed), but if I saw the person who killed the CEO, I didn't.

I mean, if this was some dictator of a poor country slowly squeezing his citizens for money so they were hungry, some dying of starvation, and had shitty infrastructure so he can jaunt off to holidays in his private jet and live in a mansion with private guards, nobody would be saying this guy deserved to live. But a CEO squeezing sick people and their families for money, actively shortening lifespans and QoL... he's fine, let him off the hook?

We don't need to be talking about the US election in every thread...
- Sadly this trend is worldwide

It’s not a real life trolley problem, because there is no mechanism by which killing this CEO saves lives.

There is. There's reason to think the CEO was targeted specifically because of his shitty policies. If enough CEOs were eliminated for the same reason, the rest might start remembering they have a duty to society.
(This is not a call for violence, and I am not advocating for it, this is answering a direct question about how and why the mechanic might exist)
- If enough CEOs were eliminated for the same reason, the rest might start remembering they have a duty to society.
  No. They'll hire private security and reduce their public exposure. Ironically, this will end up costing the company more and potentially increasing prices as a result.
  The last thing they'll do is suddenly become introspective and sympathetic.
- If enough CEOs were eliminated for the same reason, the rest might start remembering they have a duty to society.
  ...Or they could go the way of prison gang status, where the system selects its leaders based on their willingness to not only do violence to others but also sacrifice their own safety and wellbeing for power. That seems way more likely to me than CEOs suddenly growing a fear based conscience and throwing profits/shareholders under the bus and somehow still being allowed to remain in their positions.
  And all that is assuming that would-be assassins are in general coherent and reactive to the relative badness of corporate leaders and credibly applying danger relative to harm caused, which doesn't seem likely either; rationality and being a killer tend to not usually go together, even if this incident seems like an outlier just from its most obvious narrative.
- It’s just not a good solution to the agency problem. Coercing someone with a gun to get you $300 from the ATM requires constant presence and the gun sticking into their back continuously. Trying to use the threat of possible assassination to get someone to act in a CEO role in a way beneficial to their millions of customers, that’s just not stable.
  Using threat of punishment to motivate behavior is extremely unstable even in the tightest, simplest circumstances. Like you gotta be on the ball to get that person to punch in their ATM code and hand you the bills. Even that straightforward action is barely stable in terms of the incentive structure.
  You simply can’t coerce a class of people with targeted assassinations. It’s too loose, too abstract, to unstable as a mechanism of control.
CEOs have faced zero consequences for their actions, the people they've harmed have exhausted all reasonable peaceful options. This incident alone will probably not change anything for the better but if those in power have no fear of the masses idk what else they expect to happen.
- It's worse than that- they've been rewarded for their actions

[off topic]

Back in the day, I heard a lecture on the tactics of terrorist groups.

The IRA was particularly effective in assassinations. People thought they had an vast army of trained killers on hand.

Actually, the number of shooters was small, maybe fifty in all.

What made them so dangerous was that they had a powerful 'rear echelon.'

When the shooter arrived in town, he'd have three or four drivers waiting for him, a choice of safe houses, and more than one doctor to go to if he were to be injured.

What ultimately made the IRA win and get the Good Friday agreement was they targeted (ironically) high insurance properties. Take away human lives? Meaningless. Take away the money? You get a response.
- IDK, the "we only need to be lucky once" is a hell of a message.
- Almost as if you need a military wing and a smart political wing.

The patterns of behavior between shareholders, boards of directors, and executives is what's killing people. The same role can be re-cast with different actors.

It's not that CEOs need to die, it's that that larger pattern of behavior that gets rich by killing people needs to end. Maybe this spooks other people who are part of that larger pattern into stopping, maybe it makes them do it more, stealthier, and with bodyguards. It's hard to say.

At the very least, we should all jump at every chance to help things without hurting anybody, wherever we do find it. "Necessary violence" comes with a big ol heap of plausible deniability, and it's a pretty big ask for somebody to handle it responsibly.

The justification will be alluring even in circumstances where it is not legitimate.

The patterns of behavior between shareholders, boards of directors, and executives is what's killing people.
Sooooo… the target space has expanded?
At least the population of sociopaths would decline.
It's not that CEOs need to die
But they do.
Honestly these companies need to see this as a warning. They are actively toying with the worlds most well-armed population. This was inevitable. Watch them push gun control even harder now.
- Do I really need to explain that not voting and believing you can always just shoot your way to a more equitable society is exactly what those in power want? As long as a third of society stays home and the third with the most guns keeps voting for more hellhole, we're all fucked.
  That's why we're stuck in this capitalist meat grinder to begin with.
You may think it doesn't need to be done like this, but it seems many do
as a society we can do two things

is multi track drifting possible?
Haven't you effectively just added a second side track and lever? It's still the same choice.

I’m of the opinion that shooting CEO’s that make decisions to deny insurance claims that cost peoples’ lives is the moral high ground.

The problem isn't that they deny claims, the problem is that they exist in the first place. The industry has evolved from a nice-to-have to a downright necessity, because its existence has changed the entire concept of market economics.
The existence of an industry of competitive, for-profit middle-men means that scrutiny must be applied to all charges to increase margins. This ends up spiraling the cost of care up to the point where it's unobtainable without it, necessitating its existence.
Tying it to employment also means that changing jobs can be a significant risk to the health and wellbeing of your entire family. Even worse, your employer cutting costs by changing providers could do the very same at any point.
The combination of "money is speech" with this means that their profits must also be "invested" in protecting potential profits, by means of government lobbying.
This is why for-profit health insurance industries are unsustainable. The only solution is a non-profit entity in the marketplace that has such a large risk pool that the level of scrutiny isn't necessary because they have the negotiating power to drive costs down to acceptable levels. This is government single-payer or Medicare-for-All. There is nothing saying it can't compete with private insurance, but private insurance should not be necessary for life.

Multitrack drifting? I'm sorry someone had to say it. Eat the rich.

Could you imagine if he ate the guys arm on the camera or something?

What do you call an American health care CEO dead on the street in Manhattan?

A tragedy.
Have some simpathy for the poor bystanders that had to witness the horrible sight of an American Health insurance CEO...
- Yeah, him being dead only makes it slightly better
A good start?
- Holy fuck. Not saying I agree (also not saying I don't) but I laught at that answer.
Preventative services?
You can call him anything. It's not like he's gonna come anyway.
What do you call an American health care CEO dead on the street in Manhattan?
Your comment is about a past event.
My post is using that past event to comment about how if insurance industry reform doesn't happen the people who believe "all lives matter" in every possible scenario are not going to see more lives saved. In effect, if there was a trolley problem before them they would opt out from doing anything at all.

No, they could stack the bodies of executives high enough to build a retaining wall, and the current system will still refuse to learn any fucking lessons. Our country has an extreme addiction to profits over people.

The solution is single-payer not-for-profit nationalized health care. The stuff that mature, rational nations do as a matter of daily routine.

Socialism is not a dirty word. We need to learn that lesson, first.

Unfortunately, the new administration will make things much worse. And the incompetent reality show cast of an administration will blame Biden and the "deep state" for all the misery and suffering they cause. And the morons in the Cult of 47 will believe them.

The USA is more broken than a folk hero with a gun can fix. Though, at least he has us all talking about it.

That’s only if this becomes a trend and many rich people die.

Even then, it’s not a guarantee that the rich won’t manipulate the masses with scapegoating.

Just like with a lot of thought experiments, you have to assume people will react rationally, so far they have which is kind of rare.

AFAIK it is actually a trend in more oppressive countries like Russia. I do suspect this will be a rising trend in the US. Especially with the rise in gun violence. I mean heck it was only a few months ago there were several attempts on Trump's life.
- But in Russia they like to defenestrate themselves
  ^{Sorry I just really wanted to use that word in a sentence}
- But then, as you can see, media will try to paint the hero as a crazy/nazi/whatever bad person.

A nurse sub, because they always seem to have the inside healthcare scoop, posted active litigation on the guy. Something about stock dumping in advance of stock value drops, I know very little about trading or the lingo, such that shareholders lost money. And then he died outside a shareholder meeting. Speculation, but so is all of this.

That said, social contagion factors still apply. The idea is sticking with people, as scary as that thought is.

That CEO isn't on either of the tracks. He's the engineer who got shot for choosing mass death himself.

Not at all, he's the guy drinking brandy in a plush chair by the fireplace, raking off 90% of the value created by the engineer's work.

Don't worry he'll be replaced with someone just as bad by the end of next week and they still have the same policies in place now that they did on Tuesday, it's like the trolley problem but the "diversion" split the train so it could kill both sides of the track and they'll recouple the cars on the other side.

No, it sends a clear message that people are becoming willing to use force to stop injustice. When we did it in the late 1800's, we got the weekend, the 8 hour work week, and we kept (white) kids out of the factories. They are not omnipotent, this killing is what the rich have been paranoid about for ever, they are terrified of this becoming a trend.
Only when the powerful fear the people they relinquish their privilege.
- The tree of liberty be thirsty
Don't forget with a signicant pay bump

This has been reported a few times for inciting violence. While it is walking a line, I don't see OP asking for anyone to be harmed. It was presented in the context of a popular thought experiment. Other posts with the trolley problem often include wealthy people in the scenarios, so I think there is good precedence for keeping this post up.

I agree that this post is uncomfortable and possibly insensitive due to timing as someone has actually died and this post is questioning the value of that death. Many fields of economics assign a monetary value to human life, which similarly makes people feel uncomfortable, but those are valuable conversations to have.

I thought this through a bit and try to error on the side of keeping posts up, but I make mistakes and I am open to feedback. If you want to give anonymous feedback you leave a report (I can't see who writes reports but presumably admins can).

EDIT: Deep breath everyone. Just to be clear, I greatly value people that make reports, I think we all should, its an important part of the ecosystem.

It wont save any lives. The next ceo will be a scumbag as well. the scum floats to the top of any organization.

Just once, will save no lives, make this a pattern, and lives will start to be saved

not a terrible point really, but it's also important to remember how quickly "kill bad guy to save many good guy" can turn into some government just labeling anyone who disagrees with them a bad guy and killing them, or can turn into anarchy. either way preventing murder from taking place, however justified, is an important part of what keeps society from collapsing.

But society is collapsing. The system is completely failing to prevent murder on an industrial scale.
We just elected Trump for a second time. The next four years will make the problems that let that happen even worse. This is what societal breakdown looks like. We're just in the slow phase right now.
- in other words, we are in the phase where we can still save it
Bro.. People die daily when parasite earnns his salary, I don't see you pontificating stopping collapsing society then lol
IRL joker sent a clear message and peasants voting online
Regime whores won't even condemn it because they are now scared haha
Get fucked parasites.
- get some reading comprehension buddy, I don't disagree with OP. I'm just urging people to remember the potential consequences of something like this becoming too common.

Imagine thinking there's a "right" answer to the Trolley Problem.

They’re being manipulated. I lost my dad to these fucking ghouls. I texted my mom a message making fun of this dude getting shot and my mom took the side of the CEO and said I’m terrible for wishing death on someone.

He is one of many in the system who killed father and my moms defending him? All she does all day is watch liberal mainstream media who are all slobbing his knob about how this is a tragedy. She’s toast, she’s totally brainwashed by them.

There's no brainwashing, obviously the mainstream opinion would be that killing someone is bad, regardless of why.
- No, it goes further than that. They’re trying to paint a sympathetic portrait of this asshole talking about his family. Boo fucking hoo.
  They killed my father, what about my family?
- Hence, the concept of jury nullification
- Given the ratio of laughing emojis on the company's Facebook post about the incident, I'm not sure that's mainstream opinion at all.
- These idiots are too stupid ID their enemies... Hence why we lived in this clown ass dystopia
  But this dead parasite has shown that Americans are waking and they are noticing who the enemy is!
  I hope they live in fear going forward. So fee of them, so many of us...
  Slimm shady lurking...

This isn't a trolley problem. Killing CEOs is not going to save any more lives or "fix the system" in any way.

There's no guarantee that the new CEO will be better or worse, and if they feel threatened enough they'll just hire security.

The secret service can't even be 100% effective, and most would be assassins have been remarkably incompetent. Trump still got hit.
- That fat sack of trash did not get hit by a bullet.

This isn't technically the trolly problem, sorry to be pedantic. But the trolly problem is not in the deaths either track would cause, but in the decision to actively pull the lever and make yourself responsible for the outcome. Inaction means allowing what will be to be.

Eg, if the train is heading towards three people, and you can pull the lever to send it towards one, congratulations, you saved two lives. BUT you just made yourself responsible for the murder of one. Whereas before, you would not have been responsible for the death of the three.

Doesn't matter how dressed up the problem is, involvement means making yourself responsible for murder.

In choosing to do nothing, you still made a choice, which arguably makes you responsible for those deaths too. That's why the trolley problem is such a great morally ambiguous thought experiment.

All lives are sacred? Tell that to the healthcare industry in the USA, it is a massive shit show and an out of control dumpster fire. The number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the USA is directly related to healthcare. Someone buy the shooter a ticket to Brazil or a decent country without extradition to the USA. The health insurance companies has more blood on their hands.

eat the rich

Anyways, I started blasting.

... do you think killing a few CEOs is going to stop the shitty healthcare system we have? It's nowhere near that easy to fix this broken system. There are thousands of MBAs just waiting in the wings to take over and do the exact same things.

It's not a solution, it's a reaction, and it doesn't fix shit. Just escalates an already volatile situation.

do you think killing a few CEOs is going to stop the shitty healthcare system we have?
Even if it doesn't, what is there to lose?
- Your humanity.
  You know, the thing you're claiming the CEO doesn't have
France survived the Reign of Terror.
- People survive lots of heinous shit, that doesn't mean it helps.
- It only took a couple more civil wars, thousands of political arbitrary executions, 2 empiralist dictatorships and 2 monarchies to get a stable democracy about a century later.

That's a nice intellectual way to package the immediate thrill people feel when someone does something really violent they wish they had the guts to do. No, no, no, we're not like that, we're the enlightened ones, just rationally weighing one life against many! But be honest, it's like Spock backing off from his emotion outburst of happiness when he realized Kirk was still alive after thinking he'd killed him. No, I'm simply gratified that Starfleet didn't lose a valuable officer!

Killing a CEO is still doing nothing about the deaths caused by the insurance industry. How would it save lives of people harmed by privatized healthcare? If anything, it makes that anti-private-healthcare crowd look like a bunch of murderous zealots and will drive away any sympathy, making the problem worse. See: effect on indian raids on views of Native American rights, effect of Hamas attacks on views regarding Palestine, etc.

This is more like you let the train go and kill 5 people, or you pull the lever and kill one person, but that track loops back around onto the same track and kills the 5 people anyway, and then keeps going and kills 5 more people just tied on the part of the track the train already passed.

Let's be real, many would pull the lever anyway because they just want to feel like they did something about it.

If it goes off the rails, yeah I agree with you -- it's gonna turn the CEO assassins into a group of murderous zealots.
If it's used sparingly and effectively, well.... uh, didn't the IRA boost Sinn Fein's popularity which led to the Good Friday agreement?

Yeah, no way this was like normal cases where estranged wives or business rivals hire hit men.

The political system needs to change, killing CEOs will change nothing. They are just some random corpo people with a good work history and education that get paid well to act in the interest of shareholders. Nothing will change with this death. The US public just seems too ignorant about this massive issue. The US is a democracy and if the public actually pushed for strong healthcare reform and didn't vote for someone who wants to cut healthcare benefits they could get improvement. All I see is radical violence LARPing that leads to nothing and some people acting all high and mighty acting self just which argue to kill like the top 1% and redistribute it and demonize them ignoring the fact that the masses aren't behind them. This is lemmy, this is not real life! The chaos this causes just leads to more suffering without a solution. And a random guy who had the job of CEO died because he acted as he was supposed to in his job. Returning value for shareholders, since if he doesn't he gets replaced with the next guy.

🤡

Gonna leave this here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dkq7WZTzkLQ

This smells like the second amendment argument about defending against a tyrannical government. Please, take inventory of materiel and finances before you go down that road.

I would argue there's another deep hypocrisy lying with people who insist such figureheads should be killed, but the only action they take is blathering about it on public forums.

Be the change you seek, go set an example if you think you know what's right.

But pitting us against the ruling class in this way isn't going to be a winning proposition. The best you'll get is a massive and severe security clampdown.

Translation:
It's morally wrong to fight back against your abuser, lest he take it out on your kids as well. Just lie back and try to enjoy it.
- I think that the health insurance industry is profoundly immoral.
  When it comes to strategy, however, morality doesn't even factor in.
Nobody should advocate for them to be killed... well besides spooks online to entrap people.
Nor should any sane person go this route but we clearly get shooting... every week?
This is the first one I have seen people openly an mass cheering. Everybody is civil too, mainly mocking the dead exec while others cheer on the anti hero.
Appears to be genuine sentiment in the world of narrative spinning. Media can't even formulate the proper narrative and sitting in the corner while socials are on fire and mods can't delete shit fast enough.
As for security clap down, the infrastructure is being built out as we speak and it is coming either way. Be from this or mass shootings or 911... this dead guy barely moves a needle in the grand scheme.

This is not a trolly problem. Insurance companies are companies ir they are designed to maximize profit. That is the problem. The objective of insurance companies is to make a profit not save people's lives.

This thread is refreshing. The healthcare system needs to be completely reworked but killing executives isn't gonna do it. They'll replace him, set up security services, and change absolutely zero features of their business.

It aint about the dead parasite, it is about sending the message
- And when other groups you don't agree with start sending "messages"?

I'm arguing that death squads of one v one are like death squads of fifty v one.

That is not a country that I want to live in. That country, the death squad country, will kill more than thousands.

But whatever, OP. It is just one must actually occupy the moral high ground to claim it. And assassination is not a moral choice. But you do have a funny picture.

Haha.

Slippery slope.
Historically, the kinds of deaths you're referring to are done at the stroke of a pen by dictators, not angry customers.

This is brutally flawed and simplistic thinking that doesn't survive real world scrutiny.

First of all, it is not a trolley problem because killing one CEO doesn't change anything, and you're not about to start a big enough wave of CEO killing to make a difference. He will be replaced with a different CEO, who will be just as greedy, who will now expense bodyguards and charge them back to your copays.

Secondly, we still don't know why he was killed. Have you considered that this could literally just be a case of corporate espionage and assassination for money? Even if he was killed by a disgruntled patient, that doesn't mean that patient did it on their own vs having their grief taken advantage of and manipulated by a corporate rival.

Thirdly, I really can't express how much this isn't a trolley problem given that you also literally saved zero lives by doing this. Really feels like you don't understand what the trolley problem is at a fundamental level.

It's just poor taste to comment on someone's personal tragedy that has nothing to do with anon, more so gloating as if that event is instigating real reform and anon adding their precious opinions is a necessary part of the public discourse or whatever. It's not a trolley problem because anon can realize they don't have to give their two cents on every news item (the processing costs are higher these days) and that's the equivalent of "there's no trolley"

Lol wat?
I love all these "reasonable" takes that are never around when when parasite profit off plebs death.

This is the most Lemmy ass thread imaginable. A bunch of terminally online tech geeks going philosophy 101 to boost their own ego, by attaching themselves to someone who is and was willing to actually do something.

Shit posters came out in force to support the anti hero to let the regime whores and their owners know where we stand...
Thoughts and prayers denied...
Lemmy is super tame compared to reddit. Surprisingly tbh

No

Killing the evil fuck doesn't save any lives. The board (?) still had the meeting he was on his way to and they are still going to continue to deny basic human rights to the people who pay them for it.

The reality is that this is just yet another sign of immaturity and arrested development. I forget where I first heard it but... folk been watching WAY too much Steven Universe and similar warm and cozy shit. They think that by always taking the high road they are better people and the world will be a better place because if you do the right thing everyone else will.

When the reality is that people like the dead fuck prey on naivety like that.

If we ever find out who did it we are sure to find out they are also a pretty monstrous person. But, as satisfying as this has been, it changes nothing.

The reality is that this is just yet another sign of immaturity and arrested development. I forget where I first heard it but… folk been watching WAY too much Steven Universe and similar warm and cozy shit. They think that by always taking the high road they are better people and the world will be a better place because if you do the right thing everyone else will.
I'm confused, didn't you just agree that killing him has no effect? If so, why are you seemingly condemning the people who are condemning the people who are celebrating the killing?
I can assure you that I have no illusions about the brutality of human existence, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't oppose senseless violence when I see it.
- Its the idea that "Oh, they are a human being with loved ones just like you". When the reality is that he was a leech upon humanity who caused internally measured suffering and death. And his family benefited from that.
  But, because the power of friendship and candy cane sandwiches, he is still a human being and we need to feel bad. It doesn't matter how many people they murder for a buck, they are still a person and you are the bad person for not feeling bad for their death.

I love this "greater good" end-run-around the law that we follow as members of society; like premeditated murder of a soulless CEO is somehow okay.

How is ambushing ever not weak and cowardly? Swords at dawn if you're going to make it personal.

This is not how we solve this. Killers are tried and punished in accordance with laws we all agree on, here.

What you're missing, I think, is that ambushing isn't weak or cowardly. It's just setting up the most favorable conditions for the "fight" as possible.
If you're engaging in an unbalanced war, and anyone targeting a rich target would be since the ability to hire security means you'll be going against superior numbers from the beginning, you use the tactics available to you.
You may or may not agree that it's a war. You might not agree that the shooter is justified. But the shooter most likely is at war in their mind, or (assuming it is part of things) someone that hired them does.
We aren't allowed to duel, and someone challenged to one has no obligation to agree to it. You can't usually even make the challenge without running into legal barriers. You send a letter to someone saying "hey, let's have a sword fight", expect a knock on your door. It simply isn't an option. You can't even arrange trial by champions, where you would face off against a chosen opponent and the other person would be bound by the outcome.
Again, regardless of whether or not you agree or like it, class warfare can be literal, at least in the minds of the people willing to wage such a war. Further, when one person uses their weapons to cause death and misery to non combatants, you can't be surprised when those non combatants find weapons of their own and fight back any way they can.
That's the thing you're missing. From the state of mind of the populace, the CEO I question has a track record of causing death and misery by using the weapons of wealth and power. This means that the question isn't one of peace time, it's a question, for that frame of mind, of using the best tactics to achieve a goal.
Like it or not, the shooter achieved the goal of disrupting the machinery of that company, at least temporarily. They achieved the goal of making it known that wealth is not bulletproof, which is a very strong idea when the populace feels disempowered. That isn't cowardice, that's just good tactics. It may or may not end up being good strategy, but only time can show that.
If people are in a state of war, and I promise you that a shit ton of people do view the current assault on humanity by financial means as war, then ambush is a perfect tool for asymmetric warfare. It's a tool to magnify your forces.

I honestly cannot believe how fucking stupid the reaction to this has been. I did see that reddit reacted similarly, so at least y'all are on par with the average redditor when it comes to intelligence. It relieves me to know that this is less an issue with Lemmy extremism and more an issue with basic reasoning skills.

How about you name one single human being, not even thousands, who has benefited from this contract killing? Whose life has been saved by "pulling this lever"? Explain yourself.

It helped my mood considerably. Stress can be deadly.
- It worsened my mood drastically. So that seems like a net negative so far.

It's funny how voting for a pro-genocide government was trolleyish and so had a moral imperative, while approving of this killing meant that people were irredeemable monsters.

The trolley argument was always nonsense with regards to the presidential election.
In a hypothetical trolley problem, you will know the consequences of each choice. That is not something anyone is able to say when it comes to which president will cause most harm. They clearly wanted to harm different people, but noone will know which one would have hurt the most of those people.
So the trolley problem changed to one track with one set of victims, and another with a different set of victims, and people would argue back and forth that each other got the set of victims wrong.
Arguing over nothing in my opinion, and I did it myself.
As for this assassination, its as simple as feeling good when your enemy is hurt/loses/dies/fails. Its a reaction and is entirely reasonable for it to happen. I do think though, that the best thing that could have happened was that the CEO realized his mistakes and spent his time and money thereafter working vigorously to fix them.
He had amassed quite a lot of money and power, it could have been used for a tremendous amount of good if he had the will to do it suddenly.