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I'm not really all that clued up on all of this, but overall seems like a Shinzo Abe-type situation: no, we shouldn't be assassinating people. But also: you can

by arp242 2y ago

I'm not really all that clued up on all of this, but overall seems like a Shinzo Abe-type situation: no, we shouldn't be assassinating people. But also: you can't just wreck people's lives for a living and expect no consequences. This seems just as much of a failure of society in dealing with these kind of nihilistic parasites sucking our society dry as anything else.

thelastparadise 2y ago
What do you should be done with him then?
- eptcyka 2y ago
  Relieve him of his worldy posessions.
- coldpie 2y ago
  Wealth tax. Increasing tax on wealth, capping at a 100% tax for wealth above $10M. Exact numbers negotiable, but that's where I'm starting the bid. When you've hit your wealth cap, it removes the motivation to drive up your bank account's high score (or at least makes it much more difficult) which is what drives most of this evil.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  > What do you should be done with him then? Unemployment. Render the entire concept of being an executive for a for-profit healthcare organization moot. This can be accomplished with legislation. There's already plenty of established laws that prohibit non-profit organizations from doing (or not-doing) certain things[1], so it's not a stretch to have laws that prohibit for-profit organizations from doing other certain things. ...I'm only saying "legislation" because, by all reasons the free-market cannot support a for-profit health-insurance company: how can they exist at all when they're competing with non-profits for the same customers but who (like BCBS) don't have shareholder dividends to pay; so for UnitedHealthcare to somehow be both more-attractive to customers than BCBS (presumably by being cheaper) and still being able to pay dividends with whatever's left leads me to some very dark conclusions about how they operate internally. There's gotta be something the SEC can find and charge them with? [1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exempt-purposes-internal-revenue-code-section-501c3 https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
- arp242 2y ago
  Have a society where people like this can't get a foot-hold in the first place. And organisations like Uber, Microsoft, etc. flagrantly broke the rules, got hugely rich off that, and all they got was ... a corporate fine. No personal consequences at all. Corporations aren't a force of nature, it's run by people and those people looked at the rules and said "fuck those rules, I'm going to break them for my personal enrichment". Bill Gates and that Uber asshole are still hugely rich. We're letting the exploitive nihilists run the world, and all the lawmakers do is shrug.
  - rakejake 2y ago
    "Have a society where people like this can't get a foot-hold in the first place" - How does one build this society? This is not meant as snark. Building a system that prevents sharks from getting a hold while also not preventing well-meaning people from building seems incredibly hard.
    - arp242 2y ago
      Things I'd start with include: - Don't shoe-horn "free market" into absolutely everything, recognizing that in some areas you need more regulation than in others. - Reasonable anti-trust with reasonable enforcement. - Personal responsibility instead of corporate responsibility (which is very rare today except in cases of outright fraught such as Enron, VW Diesel, etc.) You can argue a bit about the details, but I don't think any of this is hugely controversial and has broad support across the political spectrum.
    - orwin 2y ago
      Remove limited liability to 'all asset paid by undue selling of share and dividend received, pierce the corporate veil _systematically_ in every fraud cases. Bilzerian have a famous son who squandered the hundred of millions he stole and put in a trust before getting arrested, but I'm pretty sure defrauding people and putting the money in a trust, getting out of low-sec filled with other people like you after 5-10 year then living like a king shouldn't be possible.
    - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
retinaros 2y ago
What Abe did?
amazingamazing 2y ago
But nothing, lol. Should everyone working at meta be killed due to their contribution to social media? If there’s a problem people should be tried in court, not killed
- zeofig 2y ago
  Nobody's saying they should be killed. But I can't deny, at least to myself, what emotions might inadvertently well up within my soul (does Meta believe in souls?) if an unthinkable event like that you are hypothesising about were to happen. It's outside of my control.
- onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
  > Should everyone working at meta be killed due to their contribution to social media? Not one of them - but you might be shocked by the amount of people that would say yes. > If there’s a problem people should be tried in court, not killed. Agreed - but what happens when the courts are corrupt? At least the thinking among these types is that the rich are above the law, so the only way to achieve justice, is to take it into your own hands. Maybe our problems are only perceptive, or maybe there's something to them. I don't know. But what I do know is there's a pretty big divide.
  - porridgeraisin 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - edanm 2y ago
      You are advocating for the killing of random people just for where they work. Many of them also happen to frequent this forum. I don't think this is something you should say out loud, and I definitely don't think it's something that belongs on HN.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  There are plenty of people who do wrong in society and are not tried in court. They are just killed by the authorities because there is no recourse to try them in court. For example: if some person takes a hostage, the police will kill them if there is no other way. And for some very rich people with a lot of power and causing damage, what is the other way?
rakejake 2y ago
Correct me If I am wrong but Abe was assassinated because the killer thought he was associated with a church that left his family destitute[1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Assassination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Assassination
- Philpax 2y ago
  Not "thought", known to have: > Abe and his family were known to have long-standing ties to the Unification Church, dating back to his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi; Abe himself had held speeches in support of the religious movement. from the same article
  - rakejake 2y ago
    Yes, I worded that incorrectly. What I meant was Abe didn't directly wrong the killer (AFAIK), he just happened to be the most public supporter of the church and paid for it with his life.
    - tasuki 2y ago
      No you didn't word it incorrectly! > the killer thought he was associated with a church that left his family destitute The killer certainly thought that. Also it was true!
- arp242 2y ago
  Yes, that is correct. It's kind of a similar situation in the sense of "person does bad things with zero consequences and no one seems to care, until someone is fed up and takes action".
  - rakejake 2y ago
    The difference is that UH CEO's decisions did have consequences. His policies resulted in people not getting the care they were supposed to get (allegedly as per online media, I do not have any direct information or source for this). Going after Abe is like going after Tom Cruise if you want to take revenge on the Church of Scientology.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
[flagged]
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  The CEO is only causing trouble and death for poors (while actually making money for people that matter), so it doesn't count.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    That is right. Our society is plenty violent, but the violence is only acceptable when it flows from those with greater power to those with lesser power.
    - delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
      I feel a lot of the pacifist 'we are civilised, violence should not be the answer' is a very wishy-washy opinion that comes from a position of privilege. Violence works—or at least, the threat of violence works. This is what keeps many people in line; it's how laws work. Imprisonment is inherently violent; physical force is used to restrain people and curtail their rights. Mutually-assured destruction (it's literally in the name) kept the superpowers from actually lobbing nukes at each other (and they still ended up fighting dozens of proxy wars anyway). Vietnam recently sentenced someone to death for embezzling ~$12 billion[1]. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd753r47815o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd753r47815o
      - wholinator2 2y ago
        I agree, lots of, "my health insurance is fine! And besides wouldn't they try to kill me since i made insert relatively shitty technology for a decade". Reads like privilege of not having had these difficulties (because money), lack of empathy to read the room and maybe learn that far more people have far more problems than you might experience. And finally a suddenly realized guilty conscious(?) about their own roles in little pains and problems they created for people. Of course the person who built the claim denial system is going to be opposed to this discussion, because they're afraid. But, shouldn't they be? Shouldn't people be afraid to participate in evil systems? Otherwise what stops evil systems from continuously being spread into every aspect of everyone's (poors) lives.
InsideOutSanta 2y ago
Shinzō Abe was an (indirectly) elected politician, though. The consequences for his actions should be people not voting for his party again. Murdering him because you disagree with people who voted for his party is not just an attack on one person, it's an attack on democracy. What the recourse should be for those at the top of corporations whose decisions negatively impact millions of people is far less clear. "Voting with your wallet" isn't really a thing if you only have bad choices.
- secstate 2y ago
  sorry for the downvote, but you misunderstand the motive of his asssasin. Abe and his family were directly involved in a church movement that had harmed the assassin's family. Strangely, it had very little do with politics, and so elections could not have righted the perceived wrongs.
  - InsideOutSanta 2y ago
    Fair enough.
heaterwedge 2y ago
> This seems just as much of a failure of society in dealing with these kind of nihilistic parasites sucking our society dry as anything else. While nobody's shedding a tear here, we should be cautious about even softly embracing or downplaying vigilantism. Worth remembering, and we've already seen it happen frequently: Vigilante justice can be wielded against controversial personas you support, and there will be just as much applause from the sidelines (from the other side). That feeling can even extend to people you might consider innocent: See one of the other comments where someone is noting they wouldn't shed a tear over a particular company's *employees* being murdered.
- soco 2y ago
  Fully agree with you, vigilante justice should not happen because we have a system protecting the citizens and doing them justice. Wait, do we actually have such a workable system? Because if not, vigilante justice is just around the corner.
  - heaterwedge 2y ago
    Just be careful what you wish for :). Vigilante justice doesn't have a great history of being actual justice.
    - lazystar 2y ago
      How's France looking these days? still under bourbon rule?
    - soco 2y ago
      I wish those working laws and law system, can I get them pretty please? No? Which party in power does something for it? Instead of trying to scare people with the threat of vigilante, I'd rather appease them with the lure of a healthy system.
      - heaterwedge 2y ago
        The answer to "X doesn't work" usually isn't "let's do the exact opposite of X because X isn't working". There's just scads of historical evidence to support what a bad idea that usually is.
surgical_fire 2y ago
> no, we shouldn't be assassinating people. "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure"
- jeegsy 2y ago
  Nearly fell out of my chair with that one. Who said that? Seems familiar
  - tfandango 2y ago
    Often misattributed to Mark Twain but actually from Clarence Darrow, a lawyer I've never heard of: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-obituary-pleasure/#:~:text=Twain%20reportedly%20said%3A%20%22I%20have%20never%20wished%20a,originate%20with%20the%20%22Adventures%20of%20Huckleberry%20Finn%22%20author https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-obituary-pleasu....
    - JohnFen 2y ago
      Clarence Darrow is one of the most famous lawyers in US history, and is widely considered to perhaps be the best attorney in US history as well. The main way normal people have heard of him was that he was the defense attorney in the Scopes monkey trial.
lurking15 2y ago
Wait so there was near universal outcry on the left about “Jan 6 insurrection” but assassination of public figures is actually fine if they have a low approval rating and allegedly negatively affect people’s lives? Guess what? Congress is lucky if 10% of people across the board think they AREN’T screwing up the country.
- ttyprintk 2y ago
  Yup. One was a revolution in which the government was justified to defend itself. Maybe responding with overwhelming force would have been better. The other is more like a school shooting. Unless we really want to talk about the causes and access to guns, thoughts and prayers are enough.
- valval 2y ago
  I think this is a subject that tends to bring the absolute lunatics out of their holes.
- bdangubic 2y ago
  Not to get into political aspects and you putting "quotes" around Jan 6 insurrection (attempt) but this is a big country and there will always be someone who thinks that public figures are screwing them (or not). In Congress however, the people have ability to replace such figures, every two or six years. Those are there are elected by the majority of their constituents and the minority which "lost" will have opportunity to change the direction for their district/state in two or six years. You cannot compare that to this tragedy in any way/shape/form...
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
- wholinator2 2y ago
  Oh yeah. I agree that all powerful people which most people hate should be scared. What other incentive is there for them to not screw everyone over forever? They're certainly not gonna just decide to care about other people. However, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and fired up his base on the lie that it was stolen from him and they'd need to storm the government to take back power if they didn't want to be completely disenfranchised forever and hunted down like dogs in the street. All of which was obviously a lie. Even funnier how they screamed about being disenfranchised after 2020 and just won the next election, guess that was a lie too? If Donald Trump really had the 2020 election stolen from him i'd support the jan 6 people because they'd be right. But they're not, they voted and they lost, it was not stolen from them. On the other hand, who exactly is disagreeing that this health insurance company is hurting all of us? What evidence do we have that they're not actually denying necessary care and, in fact, are actually the only person that can save us from the evil other insurance companies that actually provide insurance to their members? I don't see that rhetoric here. The situations are very different.
braza 2y ago
> you can't just wreck people's lives for a living and expect no consequences The problematic aspect of this argument is that if expanded to the whole society, it can lead to a very dark place. I come from a place that has 40K+ murders per year [1]. People literally dies all the time there, and as much everyone is so fed up with corruption and inequality, I strongly believe that institutions, law, and order are the best solution once I experimented it in another place. People all over the internet are using the narrative related to the insurance industry that let people die, and this CEO was the sacrificial lamb of this narrative. Its an easy thing to do since it's a direct cause and consequence thing. But expanding the same logic, should politicians have the same treatment since their decisions have way more consequences [2]? Of course not. As someone who saw civilization and savagery, I would choose the first in a heartbeat, and the main issue here is the incentive structure that rounds the health system in USA and why the political class does not take action to change it. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/312455/number-homicides-brazil/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/312455/number-homicides-... [2] - https://www.metropoles.com/brasil/eleicoes-40-candidatos-morrem-antes-da-metade-da-campanha-veja-lista https://www.metropoles.com/brasil/eleicoes-40-candidatos-mor...
- antifa 2y ago
  > The problematic aspect of this argument is that if expanded to the whole society, it can lead to a very dark place. then don't be the CEO leading society to a dark place?
- bathtub365 2y ago
  Is anyone arguing that this form of justice should be expanded to all of society?
  - wholinator2 2y ago
    While I'm not defending the CEO in any capacity, there are many places on the internet simply gleeful to watch this man die. These people feel that way because his company killed their loved ones and harmed them directly. I think a lot of the terror and push back were seeing in these comments and discussions is just how completely detached rich and privileged people are from the lived experience of the majority of the country, and a corresponding lack of empathy that comes with simply not being aware of the class war that's being fought. I think these privileges people did not understand how much of the populace actively despises them for being so privileged and umempathetic. Most people working at wendys or target simply can't understand how this ceo could've lived knowing he was destroying people's lives. And now rich tech workers are looking at their own track records, seeing a few unsavory things, and terrifying themselves over a slippery slope that makes them the victim, when the real ground truth of what's actually happening is that poor people are victims every single day, they're being walked on by huge corporations and abused to feed corporate compensation packages for executives that were fired for embezzlement. It's easy to try to make the story about ourselves and make up something that makes us feel scared and vulnerable, like we're next. But that's theoretical, and imaginary. There's real harm being done to thousands of people every day, done by massive corporations. If you're willing to attempt to turn the conversion to suit your imaginary persecution scenario, why aren't you willing to shift the conversation to the real death and depravity that real people face every day? If you're so scared, why haven't you done anything yet? Don't wanna be one of the targets? The fix your shit and start working to better the world instead of extracting from it. That's the power of this assassination. The legal system is only scary to the poors, Healthcare is only fucked for the poors, job security and stable income and housing and for prices are only fucked for the poors. Everyone is scared to die. Don't wanna be, better start giving the poors other ways to communicate, cause they're gonna get their message across one way or another.
slibhb 2y ago
70%+ of Americans are happy with their healthcare. I have UHC and I'm happy with my coverage. The comments in the article and your post bring to mind nihilism more than some CEO none of us knew. Edit, source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/327686/americans-satisfaction-health-costs-new-high.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/327686/americans-satisfaction-h... https://i.ibb.co/CzZhS40/image.png https://i.ibb.co/CzZhS40/image.png
- antisthenes 2y ago
  These kinds of tone-deaf comments try have no place in 2024 when discussing Health Care. It's almost as tone deaf as telling someone who'd just been in a car accident that "I'm fine, and you'll be fine too". Imagine if I wrote "70% of Americans don't really experience racism or discrimination, so it's all fine" ?
  - slibhb 2y ago
    Racism is nothing like health care. Health care is a good or service that depends on other people's labor. People do not have a right to other people's labor (no matter how much they insist otherwise). It's entirely reasonable to bring up the fact that most Americans are happy with their health care.
    - harimau777 2y ago
      I disagree that people don't have the right to other people's labor. Society is effectively a system where people pool their labor, resources, ability, etc. for mutual benefit. If people can't reasonably expect to gain some of the benefits that other people can provide, then why would they enter into the social contract in the first place?
    - c0nducktr 2y ago
      >People do not have a right to other people's labor Oh god not this nonsense "you're enslaving the doctors" argument. By the way, insurance companies don't provide health care. They're a financial layer set to extract profit from those who need it, and United Healthcare seems to be the best at it.
daft_pink 2y ago
I’m pretty sure that people around the world had a lot more empathy towards Shinzo Abe.
kamaal 2y ago
>>you can't just wreck people's lives for a living and expect no consequences. Just wondering how will people react to mass unemployment resulting from AI/Automation. There better be lots of affluence going around. Food, Healthcare, and Fun. Or things will get ugly fast.
- wholinator2 2y ago
  Yes there will, and i think it will be a terrible thing, helped by a terrible precedent we're setting now. If you don't want death to be the precedent, give people another option. He needed to be punished for what he did. None of us can put him in jail, he has too much money for that. Violence is the only recourse we're allowed, that's a terrible thing but it's true. I wish it wasn't like this
  - disqard 2y ago
    Well, the tax rate for people making (say) more than 2 million / year could just be 50%, and then increase by 10% for every 0 added. $20 million -> 60% $200 million -> 70% $2 billion -> 80% I think that would bring things under control without resorting to extrajudicial means. But apparently, that's completely impossible to achieve in the US, so here we are...
    - dgfitz 2y ago
      Are you aware that wealthy people sometimes employ the act of a “modest” salary and live off collateral loans from their 100s of millions to billions in stock, so as to not pay taxes?
r00fus 2y ago
I mean, it's pretty logical why we don't punish/deal with these nihilistic parasites - it's because they control the levers of power. In places like China people in power who enable massive fraud have been executed or imprisoned for life.
- NoGravitas 2y ago
  I guess this is substantially because there are two power structures in China: the capitalist class, and the Communist Party, and the Party periodically finds it necessary to remind the capitalist class under whose sufferance they are being allowed to get rich, and why.
hintymad 2y ago
I saw discussions about the killer's gears. The shoes cost more than $1K. The backpack $200. The hoodie $200. The silencer $800. And etc. If this were true, it didn't look like a vengeance by someone with nothing to lose, but by some professional.
- ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
  Did you see a "steal his look" meme and think it was real?
  - hintymad 2y ago
    I had no idea there was a meme. And given my zero knowledge in attire and fashion brands, I wouldn't know if what was said was real either.
- sudosysgen 2y ago
  If you were going to do something like this, you have very very little hope of ever living under your original identity (you'd probably have to be without papers or flee the country), so getting some kind of very high interest loan to buy gear would be rational no matter what you had to lose. While the weapon itself was certainly expensive, I don't know how anyone can tell the price of the fairly generic clothes from the blurry footage.
ThrowawayR2 2y ago
> "...you can't just wreck people's lives for a living and expect no consequences..." Considering how many people have had their identities stolen and suffered considerable financial damage thanks to sloppy programming and IT practices, I really would not cheer on the pursuit of that line of thought if I were you. The software industry is not exactly loved by the public right now.
GuB-42 2y ago
The problem is that it is systemic, the CEO is just part of it, killing the CEO will just cause a new CEO to be appointed, maybe one who is even worse. If it becomes common for unpopular CEOs to get killed, this will select for CEOs who don't mind risking their life if the pay is worth it, essentially the profile of a crime lord. Killing the system is much harder. If you want to go the murderous route, the idea would be to murder random shareholders, not necessarily the CEO, based on how much share they have. It may include the CEO, directors, or maybe you if that company is part of of your portfolio, directly or not. The most effective way may actually be the most boring and frustrating: financial sanctions or outcompetition by a government elected by people who actually care. A systemic solution for a systemic problem. Society has no shortage of nihilistic parasites, in fact normal people can act like this in the right circumstances. And by normal people I literally mean you and me. The problem is addressed by avoiding such circumstances.

by arp242 2y ago

thelastparadise 2y ago

What do you should be done with him then?

eptcyka 2y ago
Relieve him of his worldy posessions.
coldpie 2y ago
Wealth tax. Increasing tax on wealth, capping at a 100% tax for wealth above $10M. Exact numbers negotiable, but that's where I'm starting the bid. When you've hit your wealth cap, it removes the motivation to drive up your bank account's high score (or at least makes it much more difficult) which is what drives most of this evil.
DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
> What do you should be done with him then? Unemployment. Render the entire concept of being an executive for a for-profit healthcare organization moot. This can be accomplished with legislation. There's already plenty of established laws that prohibit non-profit organizations from doing (or not-doing) certain things[1], so it's not a stretch to have laws that prohibit for-profit organizations from doing other certain things. ...I'm only saying "legislation" because, by all reasons the free-market cannot support a for-profit health-insurance company: how can they exist at all when they're competing with non-profits for the same customers but who (like BCBS) don't have shareholder dividends to pay; so for UnitedHealthcare to somehow be both more-attractive to customers than BCBS (presumably by being cheaper) and still being able to pay dividends with whatever's left leads me to some very dark conclusions about how they operate internally. There's gotta be something the SEC can find and charge them with? [1] https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organizations/exempt-purposes-internal-revenue-code-section-501c3 https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/charitable-organiz...
arp242 2y ago
Have a society where people like this can't get a foot-hold in the first place. And organisations like Uber, Microsoft, etc. flagrantly broke the rules, got hugely rich off that, and all they got was ... a corporate fine. No personal consequences at all. Corporations aren't a force of nature, it's run by people and those people looked at the rules and said "fuck those rules, I'm going to break them for my personal enrichment". Bill Gates and that Uber asshole are still hugely rich. We're letting the exploitive nihilists run the world, and all the lawmakers do is shrug.
- rakejake 2y ago
  "Have a society where people like this can't get a foot-hold in the first place" - How does one build this society? This is not meant as snark. Building a system that prevents sharks from getting a hold while also not preventing well-meaning people from building seems incredibly hard.
  - arp242 2y ago
    Things I'd start with include: - Don't shoe-horn "free market" into absolutely everything, recognizing that in some areas you need more regulation than in others. - Reasonable anti-trust with reasonable enforcement. - Personal responsibility instead of corporate responsibility (which is very rare today except in cases of outright fraught such as Enron, VW Diesel, etc.) You can argue a bit about the details, but I don't think any of this is hugely controversial and has broad support across the political spectrum.
  - orwin 2y ago
    Remove limited liability to 'all asset paid by undue selling of share and dividend received, pierce the corporate veil _systematically_ in every fraud cases. Bilzerian have a famous son who squandered the hundred of millions he stole and put in a trust before getting arrested, but I'm pretty sure defrauding people and putting the money in a trust, getting out of low-sec filled with other people like you after 5-10 year then living like a king shouldn't be possible.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago

retinaros 2y ago

What Abe did?

amazingamazing 2y ago

But nothing, lol. Should everyone working at meta be killed due to their contribution to social media? If there’s a problem people should be tried in court, not killed

zeofig 2y ago
Nobody's saying they should be killed. But I can't deny, at least to myself, what emotions might inadvertently well up within my soul (does Meta believe in souls?) if an unthinkable event like that you are hypothesising about were to happen. It's outside of my control.
onlyrealcuzzo 2y ago
> Should everyone working at meta be killed due to their contribution to social media? Not one of them - but you might be shocked by the amount of people that would say yes. > If there’s a problem people should be tried in court, not killed. Agreed - but what happens when the courts are corrupt? At least the thinking among these types is that the rich are above the law, so the only way to achieve justice, is to take it into your own hands. Maybe our problems are only perceptive, or maybe there's something to them. I don't know. But what I do know is there's a pretty big divide.
- porridgeraisin 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - edanm 2y ago
    You are advocating for the killing of random people just for where they work. Many of them also happen to frequent this forum. I don't think this is something you should say out loud, and I definitely don't think it's something that belongs on HN.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
There are plenty of people who do wrong in society and are not tried in court. They are just killed by the authorities because there is no recourse to try them in court. For example: if some person takes a hostage, the police will kill them if there is no other way. And for some very rich people with a lot of power and causing damage, what is the other way?

rakejake 2y ago

Correct me If I am wrong but Abe was assassinated because the killer thought he was associated with a church that left his family destitute[1]. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Assassination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shinzo_Abe#Assassination

Philpax 2y ago
Not "thought", known to have: > Abe and his family were known to have long-standing ties to the Unification Church, dating back to his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi; Abe himself had held speeches in support of the religious movement. from the same article
- rakejake 2y ago
  Yes, I worded that incorrectly. What I meant was Abe didn't directly wrong the killer (AFAIK), he just happened to be the most public supporter of the church and paid for it with his life.
  - tasuki 2y ago
    No you didn't word it incorrectly! > the killer thought he was associated with a church that left his family destitute The killer certainly thought that. Also it was true!
arp242 2y ago
Yes, that is correct. It's kind of a similar situation in the sense of "person does bad things with zero consequences and no one seems to care, until someone is fed up and takes action".
- rakejake 2y ago
  The difference is that UH CEO's decisions did have consequences. His policies resulted in people not getting the care they were supposed to get (allegedly as per online media, I do not have any direct information or source for this). Going after Abe is like going after Tom Cruise if you want to take revenge on the Church of Scientology.

vouaobrasil 2y ago

[flagged]

ElevenLathe 2y ago
The CEO is only causing trouble and death for poors (while actually making money for people that matter), so it doesn't count.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  That is right. Our society is plenty violent, but the violence is only acceptable when it flows from those with greater power to those with lesser power.
  - delta_p_delta_x 2y ago
    I feel a lot of the pacifist 'we are civilised, violence should not be the answer' is a very wishy-washy opinion that comes from a position of privilege. Violence works—or at least, the threat of violence works. This is what keeps many people in line; it's how laws work. Imprisonment is inherently violent; physical force is used to restrain people and curtail their rights. Mutually-assured destruction (it's literally in the name) kept the superpowers from actually lobbing nukes at each other (and they still ended up fighting dozens of proxy wars anyway). Vietnam recently sentenced someone to death for embezzling ~$12 billion[1]. [1]: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd753r47815o https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cd753r47815o
    - wholinator2 2y ago
      I agree, lots of, "my health insurance is fine! And besides wouldn't they try to kill me since i made insert relatively shitty technology for a decade". Reads like privilege of not having had these difficulties (because money), lack of empathy to read the room and maybe learn that far more people have far more problems than you might experience. And finally a suddenly realized guilty conscious(?) about their own roles in little pains and problems they created for people. Of course the person who built the claim denial system is going to be opposed to this discussion, because they're afraid. But, shouldn't they be? Shouldn't people be afraid to participate in evil systems? Otherwise what stops evil systems from continuously being spread into every aspect of everyone's (poors) lives.

InsideOutSanta 2y ago

Shinzō Abe was an (indirectly) elected politician, though. The consequences for his actions should be people not voting for his party again. Murdering him because you disagree with people who voted for his party is not just an attack on one person, it's an attack on democracy. What the recourse should be for those at the top of corporations whose decisions negatively impact millions of people is far less clear. "Voting with your wallet" isn't really a thing if you only have bad choices.

secstate 2y ago
sorry for the downvote, but you misunderstand the motive of his asssasin. Abe and his family were directly involved in a church movement that had harmed the assassin's family. Strangely, it had very little do with politics, and so elections could not have righted the perceived wrongs.
- InsideOutSanta 2y ago
  Fair enough.

heaterwedge 2y ago

> This seems just as much of a failure of society in dealing with these kind of nihilistic parasites sucking our society dry as anything else. While nobody's shedding a tear here, we should be cautious about even softly embracing or downplaying vigilantism. Worth remembering, and we've already seen it happen frequently: Vigilante justice can be wielded against controversial personas you support, and there will be just as much applause from the sidelines (from the other side). That feeling can even extend to people you might consider innocent: See one of the other comments where someone is noting they wouldn't shed a tear over a particular company's *employees* being murdered.

soco 2y ago
Fully agree with you, vigilante justice should not happen because we have a system protecting the citizens and doing them justice. Wait, do we actually have such a workable system? Because if not, vigilante justice is just around the corner.
- heaterwedge 2y ago
  Just be careful what you wish for :). Vigilante justice doesn't have a great history of being actual justice.
  - lazystar 2y ago
    How's France looking these days? still under bourbon rule?
  - soco 2y ago
    I wish those working laws and law system, can I get them pretty please? No? Which party in power does something for it? Instead of trying to scare people with the threat of vigilante, I'd rather appease them with the lure of a healthy system.
    - heaterwedge 2y ago
      The answer to "X doesn't work" usually isn't "let's do the exact opposite of X because X isn't working". There's just scads of historical evidence to support what a bad idea that usually is.

surgical_fire 2y ago

> no, we shouldn't be assassinating people. "I've never wished a man dead, but I have read some obituaries with great pleasure"

jeegsy 2y ago
Nearly fell out of my chair with that one. Who said that? Seems familiar
- tfandango 2y ago
  Often misattributed to Mark Twain but actually from Clarence Darrow, a lawyer I've never heard of: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-obituary-pleasure/#:~:text=Twain%20reportedly%20said%3A%20%22I%20have%20never%20wished%20a,originate%20with%20the%20%22Adventures%20of%20Huckleberry%20Finn%22%20author https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/mark-twain-obituary-pleasu....
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    Clarence Darrow is one of the most famous lawyers in US history, and is widely considered to perhaps be the best attorney in US history as well. The main way normal people have heard of him was that he was the defense attorney in the Scopes monkey trial.

lurking15 2y ago

Wait so there was near universal outcry on the left about “Jan 6 insurrection” but assassination of public figures is actually fine if they have a low approval rating and allegedly negatively affect people’s lives? Guess what? Congress is lucky if 10% of people across the board think they AREN’T screwing up the country.

ttyprintk 2y ago
Yup. One was a revolution in which the government was justified to defend itself. Maybe responding with overwhelming force would have been better. The other is more like a school shooting. Unless we really want to talk about the causes and access to guns, thoughts and prayers are enough.
valval 2y ago
I think this is a subject that tends to bring the absolute lunatics out of their holes.
bdangubic 2y ago
Not to get into political aspects and you putting "quotes" around Jan 6 insurrection (attempt) but this is a big country and there will always be someone who thinks that public figures are screwing them (or not). In Congress however, the people have ability to replace such figures, every two or six years. Those are there are elected by the majority of their constituents and the minority which "lost" will have opportunity to change the direction for their district/state in two or six years. You cannot compare that to this tragedy in any way/shape/form...
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
wholinator2 2y ago
Oh yeah. I agree that all powerful people which most people hate should be scared. What other incentive is there for them to not screw everyone over forever? They're certainly not gonna just decide to care about other people. However, Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, and fired up his base on the lie that it was stolen from him and they'd need to storm the government to take back power if they didn't want to be completely disenfranchised forever and hunted down like dogs in the street. All of which was obviously a lie. Even funnier how they screamed about being disenfranchised after 2020 and just won the next election, guess that was a lie too? If Donald Trump really had the 2020 election stolen from him i'd support the jan 6 people because they'd be right. But they're not, they voted and they lost, it was not stolen from them. On the other hand, who exactly is disagreeing that this health insurance company is hurting all of us? What evidence do we have that they're not actually denying necessary care and, in fact, are actually the only person that can save us from the evil other insurance companies that actually provide insurance to their members? I don't see that rhetoric here. The situations are very different.

braza 2y ago

> you can't just wreck people's lives for a living and expect no consequences The problematic aspect of this argument is that if expanded to the whole society, it can lead to a very dark place. I come from a place that has 40K+ murders per year [1]. People literally dies all the time there, and as much everyone is so fed up with corruption and inequality, I strongly believe that institutions, law, and order are the best solution once I experimented it in another place. People all over the internet are using the narrative related to the insurance industry that let people die, and this CEO was the sacrificial lamb of this narrative. Its an easy thing to do since it's a direct cause and consequence thing. But expanding the same logic, should politicians have the same treatment since their decisions have way more consequences [2]? Of course not. As someone who saw civilization and savagery, I would choose the first in a heartbeat, and the main issue here is the incentive structure that rounds the health system in USA and why the political class does not take action to change it. [1] - https://www.statista.com/statistics/312455/number-homicides-brazil/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/312455/number-homicides-... [2] - https://www.metropoles.com/brasil/eleicoes-40-candidatos-morrem-antes-da-metade-da-campanha-veja-lista https://www.metropoles.com/brasil/eleicoes-40-candidatos-mor...

antifa 2y ago
> The problematic aspect of this argument is that if expanded to the whole society, it can lead to a very dark place. then don't be the CEO leading society to a dark place?
bathtub365 2y ago
Is anyone arguing that this form of justice should be expanded to all of society?
- wholinator2 2y ago
  While I'm not defending the CEO in any capacity, there are many places on the internet simply gleeful to watch this man die. These people feel that way because his company killed their loved ones and harmed them directly. I think a lot of the terror and push back were seeing in these comments and discussions is just how completely detached rich and privileged people are from the lived experience of the majority of the country, and a corresponding lack of empathy that comes with simply not being aware of the class war that's being fought. I think these privileges people did not understand how much of the populace actively despises them for being so privileged and umempathetic. Most people working at wendys or target simply can't understand how this ceo could've lived knowing he was destroying people's lives. And now rich tech workers are looking at their own track records, seeing a few unsavory things, and terrifying themselves over a slippery slope that makes them the victim, when the real ground truth of what's actually happening is that poor people are victims every single day, they're being walked on by huge corporations and abused to feed corporate compensation packages for executives that were fired for embezzlement. It's easy to try to make the story about ourselves and make up something that makes us feel scared and vulnerable, like we're next. But that's theoretical, and imaginary. There's real harm being done to thousands of people every day, done by massive corporations. If you're willing to attempt to turn the conversion to suit your imaginary persecution scenario, why aren't you willing to shift the conversation to the real death and depravity that real people face every day? If you're so scared, why haven't you done anything yet? Don't wanna be one of the targets? The fix your shit and start working to better the world instead of extracting from it. That's the power of this assassination. The legal system is only scary to the poors, Healthcare is only fucked for the poors, job security and stable income and housing and for prices are only fucked for the poors. Everyone is scared to die. Don't wanna be, better start giving the poors other ways to communicate, cause they're gonna get their message across one way or another.

slibhb 2y ago

70%+ of Americans are happy with their healthcare. I have UHC and I'm happy with my coverage. The comments in the article and your post bring to mind nihilism more than some CEO none of us knew. Edit, source: https://news.gallup.com/poll/327686/americans-satisfaction-health-costs-new-high.aspx https://news.gallup.com/poll/327686/americans-satisfaction-h... https://i.ibb.co/CzZhS40/image.png https://i.ibb.co/CzZhS40/image.png

antisthenes 2y ago
These kinds of tone-deaf comments try have no place in 2024 when discussing Health Care. It's almost as tone deaf as telling someone who'd just been in a car accident that "I'm fine, and you'll be fine too". Imagine if I wrote "70% of Americans don't really experience racism or discrimination, so it's all fine" ?
- slibhb 2y ago
  Racism is nothing like health care. Health care is a good or service that depends on other people's labor. People do not have a right to other people's labor (no matter how much they insist otherwise). It's entirely reasonable to bring up the fact that most Americans are happy with their health care.
  - harimau777 2y ago
    I disagree that people don't have the right to other people's labor. Society is effectively a system where people pool their labor, resources, ability, etc. for mutual benefit. If people can't reasonably expect to gain some of the benefits that other people can provide, then why would they enter into the social contract in the first place?
  - c0nducktr 2y ago
    >People do not have a right to other people's labor Oh god not this nonsense "you're enslaving the doctors" argument. By the way, insurance companies don't provide health care. They're a financial layer set to extract profit from those who need it, and United Healthcare seems to be the best at it.

daft_pink 2y ago

I’m pretty sure that people around the world had a lot more empathy towards Shinzo Abe.

kamaal 2y ago

>>you can't just wreck people's lives for a living and expect no consequences. Just wondering how will people react to mass unemployment resulting from AI/Automation. There better be lots of affluence going around. Food, Healthcare, and Fun. Or things will get ugly fast.

wholinator2 2y ago
Yes there will, and i think it will be a terrible thing, helped by a terrible precedent we're setting now. If you don't want death to be the precedent, give people another option. He needed to be punished for what he did. None of us can put him in jail, he has too much money for that. Violence is the only recourse we're allowed, that's a terrible thing but it's true. I wish it wasn't like this
- disqard 2y ago
  Well, the tax rate for people making (say) more than 2 million / year could just be 50%, and then increase by 10% for every 0 added. $20 million -> 60% $200 million -> 70% $2 billion -> 80% I think that would bring things under control without resorting to extrajudicial means. But apparently, that's completely impossible to achieve in the US, so here we are...
  - dgfitz 2y ago
    Are you aware that wealthy people sometimes employ the act of a “modest” salary and live off collateral loans from their 100s of millions to billions in stock, so as to not pay taxes?

r00fus 2y ago

I mean, it's pretty logical why we don't punish/deal with these nihilistic parasites - it's because they control the levers of power. In places like China people in power who enable massive fraud have been executed or imprisoned for life.

NoGravitas 2y ago
I guess this is substantially because there are two power structures in China: the capitalist class, and the Communist Party, and the Party periodically finds it necessary to remind the capitalist class under whose sufferance they are being allowed to get rich, and why.

hintymad 2y ago

I saw discussions about the killer's gears. The shoes cost more than $1K. The backpack $200. The hoodie $200. The silencer $800. And etc. If this were true, it didn't look like a vengeance by someone with nothing to lose, but by some professional.

ThrowawayTestr 2y ago
Did you see a "steal his look" meme and think it was real?
- hintymad 2y ago
  I had no idea there was a meme. And given my zero knowledge in attire and fashion brands, I wouldn't know if what was said was real either.
sudosysgen 2y ago
If you were going to do something like this, you have very very little hope of ever living under your original identity (you'd probably have to be without papers or flee the country), so getting some kind of very high interest loan to buy gear would be rational no matter what you had to lose. While the weapon itself was certainly expensive, I don't know how anyone can tell the price of the fairly generic clothes from the blurry footage.

ThrowawayR2 2y ago

> "...you can't just wreck people's lives for a living and expect no consequences..." Considering how many people have had their identities stolen and suffered considerable financial damage thanks to sloppy programming and IT practices, I really would not cheer on the pursuit of that line of thought if I were you. The software industry is not exactly loved by the public right now.

GuB-42 2y ago

The problem is that it is systemic, the CEO is just part of it, killing the CEO will just cause a new CEO to be appointed, maybe one who is even worse. If it becomes common for unpopular CEOs to get killed, this will select for CEOs who don't mind risking their life if the pay is worth it, essentially the profile of a crime lord. Killing the system is much harder. If you want to go the murderous route, the idea would be to murder random shareholders, not necessarily the CEO, based on how much share they have. It may include the CEO, directors, or maybe you if that company is part of of your portfolio, directly or not. The most effective way may actually be the most boring and frustrating: financial sanctions or outcompetition by a government elected by people who actually care. A systemic solution for a systemic problem. Society has no shortage of nihilistic parasites, in fact normal people can act like this in the right circumstances. And by normal people I literally mean you and me. The problem is addressed by avoiding such circumstances.