CEOs struggle to process their new reality after the public glee at Brian Thompson’s killing
CEOs struggle to process their new reality after the public glee at Brian Thompson’s killing
232 comments
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“People are in disbelief that they would be making this kid into a hero,” he told Fortune.
Attending a conference for CEOs in New York this week, just blocks away from the site of the shooting, George found that many were shaken and deeply concerned by the reaction to Thompson’s killing. “They’re having plenty of meetings right now to discuss beefing up security,” he said of the business leaders, even as some question how much security coverage is enough. People are asking themselves, “‘What does that say about our society? Where’s our society going?’” George said.
So they've learned absolutely nothing.
Plenty of meetings to beef up security. How about plenty of meetings to understand how your greed has caused this? They sound one logical leap (that they are unwilling to make) away from understanding exactly what the problem is.
They managed to find one and only one CEO quote that reflected anything resembling self-awareness.
“When I was growing up, CEOs didn’t make millions more than everyone else in the company. I think we have to reflect on why there’s so much anger and do something about it.”
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All I can think of is a TED talk I saw where the speaker had given some presentation to a bunch of billionaires and had some q&a, and one of them who had built a bunker for themselves asked him how they could prevent their security team from turning on them in the bunker.
The TED talk guy responded "Be kind to them?"
And the Billionaire said "But where does that end?"
I'll try to find it so I can link it.
EDIT: Found it!
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EDIT: Found it!
Wow, that was actually an extremely insightful conversation. Thank you for going out of your way to share it!
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That video was freakin amazing and insightful!
You should make this it's own post so more people can spread it
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The guy is called Douglas Rushkoff and he wrote a book on the subject called "Survival of the Richest: Escape fantasies of the Tech Billionaires".
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Because CEOs are a symptom.
The problem is our investment economy that focuses only on the stock prices continually going up. It's literally an unsustainable system.
If a CEO puts their personal safety over the investors, the company gets a new CEO.
They're not the one really making the worst decisions, they're the ones who agreed to take a shitton of money to be the face of the company and take all the blame.
CEOs don't get paid for the work they do, they get paid to be the fall guy.
Still absolutely shit people who deserve zero sympathy, but they're not the real problem, just a symptom
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The problem is our investment economy that focuses only on the stock prices continually going up. It's literally an unsustainable system.
Yup, this is the problem right here. Investments are supposed to generate returns, that's the whole point. But Milton Friedman and Jack Welch decided that the sole mission of any company was to increase shareholder value, and the rest of the world rolled with that. So whenever these CEOs point to their Mission and Vision statements, unless they say "Our only priority is delivering returns to our Shareholders", they are lying.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value
Economist Milton Friedman introduced the Friedman doctrine in a 1970 essay for The New York Times, entitled "A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits".[5] In it, he argued that a company has no social responsibility to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders.[6]
Meanwhile, we've decided that these corporations are people. Psychopaths who have no moral responsibilities to anyone but their shareholders, but people nonetheless.
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If a CEO puts their personal safety over the investors, the company gets a new CEO.
How many times will they be willing to get a new CEO before they make changes? How many times will someone accept promotion into that position? I wouldn't take Brian Thompson's job for any amount of money right now, would you?
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Yep, we have a word for continual uninhibited growth - it’s called cancer.
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I don't always agree with what you post, but you're spot on here.
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The "what does this say about society" question bugs the shit out of me. It means that our society is sick and tired of being the only rich nation in the world where getting sick or injured will bankrupt you. If these people were truly concerned about the good of society, they'd quit sucking us dry for every dollar that they can and would advocate for a better system.
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It also bugs the shit out of me because how long have children been being murdered in school in a mass shooting epidemic, but now that the rich are being killed that's what makes them ask this? Our society has been in bad shape for a long time
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We live in a society!!
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Well they did learn one thing though
They finally learned how it is to be a high schooler, having to live under constant fear of murder. I can't wait to watch C level execs having tondo active shooter drills where they have tonhude under bullet proof blankets.
Mind you, murder is bad, and this murder on this CEO was bad, no matter how you turn it. I don't want to live in a world where murdering eachother is the only conversation left.
Having said that, it is very gratifying to finally see these out of touch assholes having to suffer the same fear as all little kids in America
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Great points!
Mind you, murder is bad
Yes for sure.
and this murder on this CEO was bad, no matter how you turn it.
I don’t want to live in a world where murdering eachother is the only conversation left.
Me neither. Let's see if they are ready for any other kind of conversation now. OP makes me think they aren't. Let's not forget this murder happened because of all the other murders.
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That's a bridge too far for them, especially with particularly oligarch friendly policies of the incoming US administration.
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That’s what makes it sooo good, they think they just got the keys to the kingdom but forgot the all the residents can bite back at any time.
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Elysium
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Have been thinking about that movie quite a bit since all this went down, but don't remember it in great detail. Might be worth a rewatch.
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They literally can't see the light for all their wealth because they're calvinists believing: the greater the wealth, the greater the morality.
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This was a random killing by a mentally ill person. Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.
How fucking tone-deaf is this person? The bigger issues that we care about are things like going bankrupt from getting sick or injured. Those issues are directly caused by their CEOs. This wasn't a random killing, which is why people are so happy about it.
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The bigger issues that we care about are things like going bankrupt from getting sick or injured. Those issues are directly caused by their CEOs.
I think that depends very much on where you live. Here in Germany we don't usually go bankrupt from getting sick. I at least worry much more about the climate catastrophe or right wing propaganda on social media. Issues that in a funny coincidence are also caused directly by CEOs.
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If he is mentally ill, the majority of the US might be as well and they are tired of the system that makes them ill.
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Here’s an idea, make human life more important than line go up. I’m pretty sure that would get alllllll of your asses off the firing line.
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What if the line going up wasn't money, but the value of human life? 🤔
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We measure what we treasure!
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You mean, it’s all just about the lines we meet along the way?
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Okay but what if we just sent everyone some stickers with our logo on it?
I mean EVERYBODY loves stickers. Then w we can keep making money, you can keep dying and you’ll have some great bling for your toddlers coffin!
Everybody wins!
Think of how few stickers are on the average toddler’s coffin?
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I was thinking pizza party myself, all our employees (except the ones we fired for being negative nancies) love pizza parties.
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But my capitalism!
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But the cult of the line goes up says the line must go up, are you even paying attention to the line and whether it's going up?
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“Journalists look for heroes and villains; life is not that simple. Why is the killer getting 10 times as much press as the person who was killed?”
I agree with the last part of this quote, but probably not in the same way they wanted.
Why aren't we hearing more about the policies the CEO supported that caused so much pain and suffering?
Why did I have to learn about them having double the industry-standard claims denial rate through a meme and not through news articles everywhere?
Why am I not seeing more articles about how much money these people made by denying coverage? Why am I not seeing articles about their political contributions to keep healthcare privatized?
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You know why, we all know why. Modern corporate journalists are more narrative drivers than journalists. They attempt to control the talking pints and conversation, and steer clear of anything that would promote asking the right questions.
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Because if they show all that shit, then they're going to be agreeing with everyone else....and won't be able to pull a "why did this happen" routine
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One part of the response is that since the 80s, the media were financialized. One consequence is that the media quality dropped and medias reports go in the way of the finance.
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Most people don’t hate CEOs.
Uhhh, that actually might not be true.
If you were to do a poll in the US I think you can crack 51%, especially if you phrase it by mentioning that they have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit regardless of morality.
Edit: just had a thought. Given how much more money they make than the average worker, and that the average worker puts their health at risk by sitting at a desk so much, this might actually make sense in terms of risk/reward structure.
If the ultra wealthy make more than 1000 than me, shouldn’t they take 1000 times more risk of dying (I’m not supporting violence).
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Why would anybody hate CEOs?
(Btw this is just in the past month)
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For the curious: https://musictech.com/news/industry/the-musicians-club-ceo-fires-99-employees-reddit/
This guy ran an online musical instrument business, exploiting unpaid remote workers. There is nothing of value lost here.
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I would think that the title of CEO might not be appropriate to every organization either. I know a rather big org where the CEO is basically someone who begs for investors, and the CAO does what a CEO usually does. There are orgs where that's the CFO, or the COO. Regardless of the title, it's all executives we're angry about because of the incredible income disparities versus actual responsibilities.
The executives I've met are essentially hype men or thumbs up thumbs down types. All of them were finance types or management types. To me, if your only qualification is many years of managing with barely any experience in the actual product/service your org provides, then that's a problem.
Hospitals run by management types? Engineering services run by accountants? It's all middlemen extracting piece of the pie from the people actually doing the work.
As a society we need to purge the system of middlemen period. The internet made middlemen obsolete, yet they are still exploiting labor in ridiculous ways.
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I don't hate somebody just because they're a CEO.
I hate all rich people though that aren't using their wealth to improve the lives of others as much as possible.
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I mean, the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could end world hunger with a snap of their bony fingers, and they're not doing it, despite the fact that they would still be wealthy beyond comprehension if they did.
We're asking them to do the bare minimum and utilize their wealth in a responsible manner, and they're not even doing that much.
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Most, if not all, CEOs are rich though and I'm sure most people follow your sentiments too. It's just that CEOs are currently the flavour of the month.
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especially if you phrase it by mentioning that they have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit regardless of morality.
Also regardless of mortality.
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United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot on Dec. 4, 2024. The public response was generally not sympathetic.
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The public response was generally not sympathetic.
The words they use are an attempt to weaken the impact of the hit. The public response wasn't sympathetic, it was generally celebratory.
The elite cannot fathom being anything other than better than those below them. Deserving. They "got theirs."
Maybe it was the significant amount of lead in the atmosphere for a long time that caused widespread brain damage, but it's so obvious how disconnected from reality they are. Thompson's death highlighted that reality applies to them too, and they can't handle it.
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I would like to believe people are poisoned and that excuses their idiocy, but approximately 15% of humans seem to be hardcore authoritarians by genetic lottery. They will believe that wealth and power are evidence of merit, no matter what. We just have to learn to work around that.
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"Our industry is built around devaluing human life for profit. Why aren't these people valuing our lives?"
It's like a sketch comedy show. They can't be this dumb.
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It is a comedy routine, and they aren't dumb, but blind. They see most humans as worthless animals. They could not give a fuck what happens to you, because your existence is irrelevant to their lives.
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— “My challenge is keeping employees engaged. How do you maintain a sense of purpose if you think your customers hate you?”
Your customers DO hate you. It's not just what you think, it's reality.
Maybe rather than trying to maintain a sense of purpose for what you're doing, you should take a step back and question WHAT you're doing, and whether it has any purpose in society at all other than making you money?
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if you think your customers hate you?”
They were under the impression that the customers didn't hate them? How out of touch are they?
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Classic narcissist trait. Complete and funnily honest bewilderment at how it is possible that some people don't love and admire then. My dad who is estranged from the whole family (because of that) was one level below the C suite at a huge corporation. Treated everyone like shit, surprised Pikachu face when one by one the family abandoned him. I guess it takes to be such a psychopath to make it that far on the corporate ladder.
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Even more out of touch to phrase this as a new development for the employees. Guaranteed the people on the bottom have fully understood this for an eternity.
Helping them come to accept this thing they've always known is "my challenge".
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keeping employees engaged
Not the problem.
if you think your customers hate you?
They do not hate them. They hate you. The C level.
Hoy fuck the disconnect in those people.
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Hoy fuck the disconnect in those people.
Amen to that.
Listen to these guys talk about how they're proud of what they did... NO recognition that all those 'denials' are denying real people the care they need.
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Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.”
Bigger issues? Like the health care bills they are drowning in? Also, I think most people loathe CEOs, these bitches have zero awareness.
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"I keep taking more from them and they don't like it?!"
Hate is the cost of squeezing those extra dollars. Extra profit isn't free, they're lowering another game slider for it, and that slider is how much your customers support your actions. They're only still around as a customer because all the other options have been bought out or run out of business.
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The only reason customers are engaged is because the service sucks, the product sucks, the support sucks, the tos sucks, the sneaky fees suck, the greed sucks, the CEOs suck.
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Well, corporate America is made up of hardworking Americans who do their best to reward the investors, and many times those investors are pension funds
Ah yes, every day I wake up to go to work just to do my best to reward the investors. Not because I need to pay for living expenses, just because I love pleasing the investors.
JFC these people are living in a fantasy world.
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It’s fortune magazine, so yeah they’re full-on delusional in their pandering to “business leaders.”
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Just wanted to comment on these two.
“I have to wonder if the demonization of corporate America and the wealthy over the last four years planted a mind virus in the assassin’s mind.”
Fuck you! You have the mind virus. A virus which leads you to believe that the rest of us should suffer because you’re better. Eat shit anonymous CEO.
“If you walk by the place where it happened, it’s business as usual, which gives me some perspective. This was a random killing by a mentally ill person. Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.”
Then light some candles and put out some flowers you fucking cowardly parasite. Hold a vigil, gather your CEO buddies and sing Kumbaya. Be sure and post the date online so all of the healthcare CEOs know when to be there.
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Most people don’t hate CEOs.
The public reaction to this event disagrees with this claim.
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Social media is used by a tiny minority of the population.
Thinking you can extrapolate what you see on social media into "the public" at large is the chief reason people on Reddit and Lemmy were so baffled when Harris got her ass kicked in the election.
Be more mindful of what's true of "the public", and what's true only in the echo chamber.
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I hate CEOs, landlords, royal families, and anybody else perpetuating the status quo.
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Why don’t you love your oligarchy overlords? All our surveys say you’re happy to have no choices other than the ones our questionnaire leads you to. You didn’t cancel your subscriptions after we jacked the prices up a half dozen times in the last five years and/or shoved ads at you, so you must be happy.
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The disconnect between public perception and personal humanity has been striking, with some commentary bordering on dehumanizing.
Yeah it's a lot easier to humanize someone who makes six figures than someone who makes seven. Why don't you start there?
Or maybe just make it so the CEO doesn't make 700x more than the lowest paid worker. You don't even have to reduce the CEO pay to do it! Just lift up those other people.
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What infuriates me is that there are those that make 6 figures as being able to potentially make 7. And sure, some of them might.
But are they brain surgeons that have such a specialized life saving surgery that by the nature of economics pushes the value of their skill exceptionally high? Nope.
Hell, I make 6, and I'll admit, I have a lot more than a lot of people. I'm 2-3x the median of my area. I can't buy a house. I own a 7 year old RAV4. If I was better managing my money and not having to pay out my ass for my ex wife, sure, things would be better.
It's not at all difficult to find how just a little less income makes life much harder. It is VERY difficult to see how someone who has so much money can be remotely ok with people having it harder than them.
Those pulling in 7 figures without highly valuable skills should be dehumanized. Because they have abandoned what has helped humans survive at all. Each other.
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That's actually been studied. Turns out that about 40 is the tipping point for most people, as in CEO earnings 40 times more than the lowest paid workers. Up to that point people think they boss earns it, above that resentment starts to grow.
They're at 700. Yeah, that's dangerous. People are very sensitive about relative earning for work. Fairness is just hard wired into all animals and it's dangerous to ignore this, although humans react a bit later and that gives a false sense if security for those at the top.
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But it's inevitable as a successful business grows, and the population grows. A CEO of a company of 100 people does not have the same level of responsibility as the CEO of one employing hundreds of thousands (Google says UHC employs 440,000, for example).
Working conditions were inarguably much worse a century ago, but the gap wasn't anywhere close to 700x back then, was it? The gap was smaller not because the CEOs were more generous, it was just because the largest businesses were much smaller.
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Also, as if many CEO's and upper managements humanize their customers and not see them as numbers in a spreadsheet.
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Awww poor billionaires. So sad.
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Good. Money can't buy happiness and if they try, we need to take their happiness. Billionaires already have everything, they don't need peace of mind.
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US income distribution is on the same level as fucking Russia. Bring back the tax brackets from the 1950's and 60's.
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It's different people. Those in US still own real things and do something with them to get such incomes.
Those in Russia steal.
In other words, in USA connections are means to help actual power and tools to actual power. In Russia it's the other way around, actual power is all dependent on connections, which ultimately all go to one ruling group.
It's nowhere as bad. But it will get as bad as Russia, of course, if Americans don't learn something.
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Hahaha. Just because it's "legal" here doesn't mean it's not stealing. Taking billions in insurance premiums and then spending it to lobby to make it harder and harder to qualify to receive money for a claim is "legal" but so unethical and morally bankrupt that a guy just killed a CEO because of it and the entire country just shrugged and said "Yeah that's about right."
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Dude, you have a self selecting Elite in the US and most other countries. It is the same shit. How many "rags to riches" stories still happen? And these ultimately also involve the right connections at the right time.
Look at the lauded "started in a Garage" tech billionaires.
Bill Gates?
His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors of First Interstate BancSystem and United Way of America. Gates's maternal grandfather J. W. Maxwell was a national bank president.
At age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school.[14][15] When he was in eighth grade, the Mothers' Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School's rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the students.[16] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest.
Zuckerberg? Haward student
Bezos? Princeton and then various banks, albeit his family background actually was lower/middle class.
Musk? Fucking apartheid mine owners.
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If you walk by the place where it happened, it’s business as usual, which gives me some perspective. This was a random killing by a mentally ill person. Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about
I hope this guy gets it next. How fucking out of touch can you be that you dismiss this as "a mentally ill person doing mentally ill things"? What a fucking loser!
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I love the last line. They do indeed, like how to pay for chemotherapy treatment after their claim got denied.
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It's insulting toward, what I believe to be, a plurality of the population. Luigi was a gift of a wake-up call. They'd do well to listen. Though, only government could really remedy the situation, and that's not likely to happen. So we lurch forward toward instability. The powers at be seem more intent on transfixing the masses with fictions, distractions, and eventually: war.
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"...
We are quoting anonymously those who did respond, to allow them the freedom to give us their most candid answers. These have been edited for length and clarity. Some have previously been reported by Fortune.
**Personal responses to the killing **
— “The disconnect between public perception and personal humanity has been striking, with some commentary bordering on dehumanizing. This highlights the critical need to humanize leadership and address the pressures faced in high-visibility roles.”
— “My challenge is keeping employees engaged. How do you maintain a sense of purpose if you think your customers hate you?”
— “I have to wonder if the demonization of corporate America and the wealthy over the last four years planted a mind virus in the assassin’s mind.”
— “If you walk by the place where it happened, it’s business as usual, which gives me some perspective. This was a random killing by a mentally ill person. Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.”
..."
Wow. 'demonization', 'need to humanize leadership'... Are these human people that were interviewed? Did these human persons speak anyone outside their immediate circle in the last three decades? I can hardly believe that, this is so out of touch that these folk may have never been touched by anything in their lives. I wasn't prepared for this speedrun worldrecord to definitively prove total lack of empathy and understanding.
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Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about [that the CEOs created for them to distract them].
In this current discussion, people are trying to open each others eyes about that silent part.
Also: Most people don’t hate CEOs. But we do think CEOs have no right to be making more than a thousand times what an honest working person should make, actually sacrificing lives for their profit. And when that kind of stealing and mass murder is sanctioned by the law, then what are the options?
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The limit of 4 years is what's making me laugh.
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Because of course everything is tied to who the president is, in their mind. Democrats bad for business, mmm-kay?
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The woke mind virus lmao
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Did these human persons speak anyone outside their immediate circle in the last three decades?
After late 90s and early 00s it seems that this has become rare.
First "speaking outside your immediate circle" has moved into interwebs. Second the interwebs have changed to no longer inconvenience those who don't want to see contradicting worldviews.
Just saying. CEOs are, of course, more isolated than many people. But their delusions are not unique by any measure.
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This was at the end of the article Forbes presented me with:
Do you have what it takes to make it to the C-suite? Learn how Fortune 500 CEOs overcame surprising obstacles on the road to the corner office...
I don't want to make it to the C-suite. That sounds awful. I want to help specific people solve problems they have helping other people.
Do other people think like this? Like they want a corner office and a big car? Am I that fucking abnormal that this sounds like a death sentence to me?
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"suprising obstacles" lol as soon as it gets hard these fuckers just fuck off to a new ceo position at a different company.
And the only thing hard about being ceo is making decisions that suck for your own employees like cutting back homeoffice or fire/rehire and not have a bad conscience. But since these fuckers dont have any moral or loyalality anyways it isnt hard for them at all.
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People who read Forbes do.
I think large parts of humanity still desires enormous amount of money and are willing to spend their lives focusing on it.
It's because money gives what people actually want - safety, respect, admiration, power, freedom etc.
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Lemmy tends to have skewed perception of such things. Truth is, most people want money. As much as possible in as short time as possible. There's a multitude of reasons, from wanting a luxurious life, to simply wanting to not have to worry about the money or to retire early, but pretty much everyone wants money. Look at how many folk join the lottery.
Hell, most of Lemmy wants student debt to be forgotten. That's gaining money, just in reverse order. Same with distributed wealth etc.
World spins around money, no matter how you look at it.
But sure as hell I wouldn't like to be in a place I hate to earn it. :/
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Of those people who want more money to afford a comfortable life, it is much more rare to be mentally ill enough to want to be a billionaire and that is what is being discussed here really.
And on the topic of wanting more money to afford a comfortable life, that mostly exists also because achieving this comfortable and fear free life is made more harder by these billionaires who view services which should be basic social rights as sectors that they can squeeze money out of.
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Truth is, most people want money. As much as possible in a
It's not unreasonable to aspire to not having money worries, the stess of it is literally a medical issue eg not having to worry about meeting mortgae or rent payments, a mechanical breakdown on a car, or paying for a dental emergency, a broken limb, or buying a new pair of shoes, replacing your laptop etc.
Much past that is based on envy and that's where it becomes toxic with wealth inequality. It's human nature to feel envy, you can fight it but its inate in all humans, the ONLY solution is to recognise that and to remove it by removal of inequality. The inevitable end result of not doing that is the guillotine, social instability, or in this case a bullet.
However... :) theres a whole other issue of the people in the first paragraph, who see themselves as the "everyday volk", being incredibly unequal to the other 90% of the world. So there's an irony there that they need to use force to preserve thier own status quo, much like the C-suite rely on force to protect their status quo (police, army etc) . You see this play out in anti immigrant and refugee hostility, build a wall etc
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They’re calvinists believing: the greater the wealth, the greater the morality. Taking it to its extremes is the point as is the cruel structural violence.
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Do you have what it takes which is also known as inherited wealth
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I don’t want that. I want enough to live my life and nothing extravagant.
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Every time I get a promotion I've had more and more distance between me and doing the actual work I get paid a lot more but I hate it. I have very little job satisfaction because the time scale of the things I'm working on has gone from days to months. Most of the time I just feel like I'm getting nothing done and it's incredibly frustrating.
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I want that.
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“When I was growing up, CEOs didn’t make millions more than everyone else in the company. I think we have to reflect on why there’s so much anger and do something about it.”, said someone who will do absolutely nothing about it.
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its not a new reality dudes. you just did not know.
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The biggest fear is that the hatred expressed in social media posts about Thompson—and glorification of 26-year-old shooting suspect Luigi Mangione—will lead to copycat attacks, says Bill George, a former Medtronic CEO and executive fellow at Harvard Business School. “People are in disbelief that they would be making this kid into a hero,” he told Fortune.
Fortune reached out to dozens of CEOs this week to get a sense of how they’re reacting to this moment. The majority declined to comment. We are quoting anonymously those who did respond, to allow them the freedom to give us their most candid answers. These have been edited for length and clarity. Some have previously been reported by Fortune.
— “The disconnect between public perception and personal humanity has been striking, with some commentary bordering on dehumanizing. This highlights the critical need to humanize leadership and address the pressures faced in high-visibility roles.”
— “When I was growing up, CEOs didn’t make millions more than everyone else in the company. I think we have to reflect on why there’s so much anger and do something about it.”
— “I think we’re living through very seriously dangerous times where we’re normalizing antisocial behavior and normalizing violence on both extremes—on the far right, and on the far left. We basically moved, over the last 10 to 12 years, to a world that I don’t recognize. It’s very scary … I do understand that there’s enormous amounts of injustice and that we need to bring everybody along, and there’s a lot of things that we do, but I don’t think revolution is the answer to solving problems.” (a former CEO)
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"critical need to humanise leadership"
What about humanising your customer base? Humanising employees?
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Yeah, I mean the quotes I pulled were the most self-aware wolves nonsense in the article, but the rest were basically either "we need more security" or "oh no the poors are onto us".
I've never met a CEO or member of the ultra-wealthy that wasn't either a sociopath, narcissist, or completely detached from reality. I've only met about a dozen of those kinds of folks but they all had that same vibe.
Are you surprised?
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The biggest fear is that the hatred expressed in social media posts about Thompson—and glorification of 26-year-old shooting suspect Luigi Mangione—will lead to copycat attacks
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People are in disbelief that they would be making this kid into a hero
Last time I checked, he was a full grown 26 year old man who made his own decisions, not a "kid."
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I don’t think revolution is the answer to solving problems
It's easy to say that when you're not living out of a shelter while working full-time.
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It's also easy to say that when you're the living embodiment of the luxury and excess of the establishment/status quo.
Like... dude...of course you don't want to see revolution... every single fucking element of the system tilts not only in your favor but also in favor of perpetuating and furthering your absolute stranglehold on wealth, power, security, etc.
The more interesting answer would be to the question: if, as a society, we became so united in our acceptance of this that it literally became commonplace for CEOs to get whacked and then for juries to nullify the charges and for the killer to walk free...and it was happening dozens of times every year, or month...
...would you support a revolution to change the status quo that was literally killing people like you with zero repercussions?
If not, you're an absolute idiot, or you're actually on our side in this.
If yes, then you know damn well what's going on and, shocker, you're playing dumb for a cheap attempt at sympathy.
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Its the same reality as before except they realize how close they are to the edge separating the game where they abuse us from the part where they don't get to play the game.
All of us play the game daily...go to work, do some good stuff, come home, eat, sleep. The good stuff. Why do we get so little and they get so much?
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There's a storm coming, Mr. Wayne. You and your friends better batten down the hatches, because when it hits, you're all gonna wonder how you ever thought you could live so large and leave so little for the rest of us.
Selina Kyle
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I can't get inside the head of any of the crazies who go on a rampage and shoot up a school or a house of worship, but it gives me comfort to think that such people now know that if they shoot a CEO instead of a classroom full of children they will be regarded as having made a positive contribution to society. I really hope school shootings will go down after this, and I think they may well.
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I know a school shooting up which wouldn't be a huge crime. Back then, that is. Now I can't be certain.
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This is how disconnected they are from the rest of us.
Truly living in their ivory towers.
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— “You’re never stopping anyone who wants to get to you.”
All my life I've tried to make sure people don't want to kill me and I'm still alive, it seems like a winning strategy.
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It's interesting to see that we may be flirting with a new era in which being kind has actual benefits.
My whole life I've watched kind and generous people be taken advantage of and punished by our societal systems. Trump is the best public example of how the antithesis gets you everywhere in this country.
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Careful, that sounds suspiciously like socialism!
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“I have to wonder if the demonization of corporate America and the wealthy over the last four years planted a mind virus in the assassin’s mind.”
Plot twist: the virus was actually the billionaires
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Bill George, a former Medtronic CEO and executive fellow at Harvard Business School. “People are in disbelief that they would be making this kid into a hero,” he told Fortune.
Which "people"? Who are "they" in this context?
Actually most of those quotes read as completely disconnected from normal people's reality...
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Assholes who do the least amount of work and take 95% of the profit can't figure out why the people who actually make the company money see them as parasites.
Maybe have your Private jet fly you up a few thousand feet higher for a better view and you might be able to figure it out. Fucking assholes.
It won't be enough to eliminate the CEO's. You've got to get the whole c suite and their kids. That should give them the perspective they need.
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Ah.
As an ADHD person. Generalizing, strategizing, finding critical points and all that are too very important tasks. Many people seem to think these are equivalent to "doing the least amount of work". That's simply not true and you can compare a group where everyone linearly and with great effort always does something and where nobody does the generalizing and strategizing or even failure finding tasks, inevitably spending a lot of time chilling looking at the clouds or just thinking, to a group built normally. A hint - the latter will perform much better.
And as an ASD person. You heavily underestimate the importance and uniqueness of skills for the political part. People who become CEOs are usually incredibly gifted in that direction. I'm impaired in that direction even compared to most people, so I can see just how important it is.
And in general about assholes and not being able to figure something out ... humanity works by Darwin's laws. No matter what morality you preach in schools, no matter how much you talk about love and helping each other, the people on top are very capable. If you want something to change in any order of things, you should first accept the fact that their power is perpetually challenged and they win against those challenges preserving that power. They are quite smart.
They may see some things with aberrations. We all do.
But looking at those people and saying they understand something worse than you is similar to Soviet propaganda talking about Western world as something which is going to rot on its own, because its strategy for the future is so much dumber than the Soviet one. The weaker side does not win by being arrogant in addition to weakness.
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Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.
"...and that's a good thing, so we'll see to it that it remains that way. Divide and conquer."
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That's almost the exact qoute in my clipboard, and pretty much my response.
Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.
They will have bigger issues to care about. the quiet part said out loud.
How can you be so oblivious? When you're the biggest issue people have, then you get to act all indignant when people deals with their issues.
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And the bigger issues are to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. Because of said CEOs.
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"A-are we the baddies?"
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I'm glad they're afraid.
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"Well, corporate America is made up of hardworking Americans who do their best to reward the investors, and many times those investors are pension funds."
Ah hahaha. The CEO who got $h!tpwn3d was investigated for insider trading. He fucked the shareholders right in the nose.
But even if he hadn't, the investors are mostly the super rich. Giving them more money is in no way respectable or decent, knowing that the money is coming from the rest of us.
But even if shareholder supremacy were admirable, we still don't have it. CEOs who receive company stocks routinely inflate the value so they can sell them. It's 100% legal, and I didn't see any of the anonymous folk speaking out against the practice.
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“When I was growing up, CEOs didn’t make millions more than everyone else in the company. I think we have to reflect on why there’s so much anger and do something about it.”
Only one of the 11 anonymous CEO responses gets it. There's constant brainwashing in America (fortune.com is a literally part of it), that wealthy people made good decisions and were smart so they deserve every penny they make off the backs of everyone else.
This ruse might work in an economy of the past with fairer tax rules, better social mobility (for cis white males at the time), and industries where the consumer-company relationship aren't counter to each other. With healthcare, it is plainly obvious that the money going to the executive is from people dying and sick people being denied care, forced into debt and bankruptcy, exploited for this product with extremely inelastic demand. Every minute they waste of your time keeping you away from your treatment is more dollars to them. That's why people are upset at United, and aren't upset about CEOs of these types of industries being murdered.
The country's residents' health should not be a commodity to be sold.
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This is their new reality:
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May they never feel safe as long as they live
If they want to actually be safe, they can give it away, now
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Fuck em
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's what they get for looking down on everyone for so long.
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A.I. CEOs here we come
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I betcha the server the AI ceo is hosted on can be shot up.
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Nah, just get a hose
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I’ve been struggling to process my reality for as long as I can remember.
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I'm positively giddy
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It is paywalled.
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On the house, internet stranger❤️
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This thread is an #ad.
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I'm happy to interpret. I've lived in-between long enough to know, you really can be that dumb a shit. Some folks really don't have a clue. Bless their stupid hearts. Or damn them to hell, much nicer than the rest of us meant.
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Its the same reality as the old one but now they know something they didn't.
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I'd like to see one of these publications post recipes for CEO stew.
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I hear there is currently an active volcano in the Philippines. Just throwing that out there.
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Gleefully looking forward to the US not learning anything from this and moving on to the next gotcha moment! Seriously, the ship’s slowly sinking and I’m buying stock in popcorn and booze.
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