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[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.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      Pacifism is a lofty ideal but also an ideal co-opted by violent power structures as a tool to reduce cognitive dissonance in those that would and should otherwise fight for their rights. For example, I believe in peace and wish peace upon the world but I am not a pacifist and believe that a variety of techniques are necessary to prevent the world from becoming a techno-tyranny.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
linsomniac 2y ago
>blood-sucking CEOs have a 1/10 chance of being assassinated. Don't you think that the regular expectation of this might make them a little less blood-sucking? I get the point you're making. But I suspect it might just as easily go the other way: the 10% chance of assassination would justify having your security detail, probably paid for on the company dime, but affordable even if you're "only" making $10M/year. And once you have that candy shell and the "me against them" mentality, you might just go further with the bloodsucking. IOW: Maybe the current situation IS tempered already. :-(
- lazystar 2y ago
  Well personal security isn't a stopgap for healthcare execs, because the personal security staff, and/or their extended families, will be using the healthcare that they provide. the risk of an insider job is high
senko 2y ago
Some live who deserve to die. And many that deserve to live lose their life. Can you give it back to them? If not, don't be so hasty to take it away from others. --Gandalf
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Tell that to the person who acts in self defense when someone breaks into their home.
  - JohnFen 2y ago
    Using lethal force to defend yourself from lethal force is not, in my opinion, "acting hastily". If you're talking about using lethal force as a reaction to just property crime, though, I think that is morally indefensible.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      Well, I think there is also a gradient in terms of acts such as the main subject matter, and it's worth thinking about.
    - itronitron 2y ago
      Where do you draw the line of it being 'just property crime' though?
      - mulmen 2y ago
        It only matters where your state draws that line.
        harimau777 2y ago
        Just because your state draws a line doesn't make that line just.
        2y ago
valval 2y ago
Holding such opinion is fine in my eyes, as long as you’ll be the one enforcing those measures. If you wish to be the one pointing the finger to have people assassinated or worse, I have no sympathy for you and would fight your ideology until the end.
marcuskane2 2y ago
> Or terrorists who kill people Your post is ironically just a pro-terrorism argument. You want terrorism targeted at CEOs to change their behavior. There are a million different viewpoints on what acts are harmful and how to minimize or prevent those harms. It's better that we use things like voting and laws and courts to collectively reach consensus on when to use violence, rather than individuals killing people who disagree with them. You can argue that this CEO should have been arrested for some crime and you can argue that said crime should carry the death penalty upon conviction. But that doesn't mean it's valid for a random person to be judge, jury and executioner based on their own personal concept of justice.
- immibis 2y ago
  Terrorism is political policy designed to make everyone terrified "they could be next". If a random person on the street gets shot that's terrorism, but if Adolf Hitler gets shot that isn't terrorism since most people aren't Adolf Hitler and don't have to worry about being treated the same way. Somewhere between these two points is a dividing line.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Terrorism is a catch-all word. And it's quite an effective one at making blanket statements with no nuance.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    You are literally making the case that if CEOs are scared they will change their behavior. You shouldn’t even have to squint to see how that’s terrorosm.
    - vouaobrasil 2y ago
      Okay then. Provide any definition of terrorism and I will tell you how the system takes part in terrorism against ordinary citizens every day.
- salawat 2y ago
lucianbr 2y ago
If you can fairly and correctly evaluate which CEOs are especially blood sucking, simply taking their money and sending them to prison for a while will have the same effect and be far less ethically dubious. If the evaluation is flawed... do you see why it's not a good idea?
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  What US executives have been so prosecuted in recent memory? And specifically for abuses of the public, not of financial frauds affecting shareholders or lenders. Examples from the healthcare, banking, pharmaceutical (notably Purdue) or petrochemical industries might be particularly appropriate. My read of the street is that the institution of law and courts has been assessed as insufficient and/or terminally dysfunctional.
  - aeonik 2y ago
    I thought of Martin Shkreli, but I think he might fall under your criteria of defrauding investors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli
    - dredmorbius 2y ago
      Good suggestion, but I think it's the investor, not public side, which pushed the needle there.
  - lucianbr 2y ago
    I thought the original argument was that they should be prosecuted and condemned to death. And against this, I say if you are able to prosecute and condemn the right people, sending them to jail is enough to get a useful result. What's the view you're defending? That CEOs should be murdered when some arbitrary citizen ready to do murder thinks the CEO is guilty enough? I totally think law and order is dysfunctional. I don't know if people will actually resort to murder, but I could understand why they would do it. (It's far easier to talk about it than to do it.) But it is not a good solution to the problem. The system of "murder people when we are upset" will certainly be at least as dysfunctional as the current one, if not more. Law being taken into the hands of whoever has weapons and the will to do it is what happens in narco states. Who prefers that?
dredmorbius 2y ago
NB: Saddam Hussein was, at least nominally, tried and executed, not assassinated: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein> I'm not claiming that the trial / execution adhered to any particular standards, just that as an example of an extrajudicial killing the story's a bit shaky. There are other examples to choose from, including the utterly nonjudicial killings of Osama bin Laden (by US forces) or Muammar Gaddafi (by Libyan rebels with at least notional US support). There's a long list of US targeted assassinations as well, from Anwar al-Awlaki (2010), with another 35 intended targets and 200 killed, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing#Use_by_United_States_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing#Use_by_United...>. (I'm also not litigating the appropriateness of those actions, rather they're offered as instances where the US government has acted within recent memory to kill designated enemies without judicial process.)
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  Thank you for the information -- those are indeed better examples.
JohnFen 2y ago
> there are plenty of cases where people break the law in a socially regulated way and society doesn't enter into some sort of chaos. You're talking about civil disobedience here, which typically doesn't involve murder. > (how is lethal injection different than assassination? I think it's basically the same) I'm opposed to capital punishment, but I see a huge difference between the two even though they both involve killing someone. The death penalty only comes after a legal process and court deliberation. Assassination is unregulated. That's a pretty large distinction. > Don't you think that the regular expectation of this might make them a little less blood-sucking? No, I don't. It would make them do their bloodsucking differently in order to minimize their risk, but I don't think it would make them cut back.
- vouaobrasil 2y ago
  > I'm opposed to capital punishment, but I see a huge difference between the two even though they both involve killing someone. The death penalty only comes after a legal process and court deliberation. Assassination is unregulated. That's a pretty large distinction.' True, there is a distinction but in some cases since there is no alternative, it might be the next best thing.
mulmen 2y ago
> Theoretically and philosophically speaking, why shouldn't we? Because what you are describing is literally anarchy. It’s antithetical to our foundational principles as a society. > I bet not many Americans would object to taking out terrorists, especially some who have caused a lot of damage like 9/11. Opposition to the war on terror is not a fringe position in the United States. > What about Timothy McVeigh? The U.S. assassinated him basically (how is lethal injection different than assassination? I think it's basically the same). Well you’re wrong. Timothy McVeigh was tried and convicted. That’s literally the difference between assasination and the death penalty. Opposition to the death penalty is also not a fringe position and many states no longer practice capital punishment. > And what about this? Imagine a world where the especially blood-sucking CEOs have a 1/10 chance of being assassinated. How do you identify the 1/10? > Don't you think that the regular expectation of this might make them a little less blood-sucking? I don’t know what the effect would be, why are you so confident you do? > I wonder why it's morally acceptable for a country to send an army to assassinate some guy causing trouble or for the police to kill a terrorist holding hostages, but when another rich guy takes charge of a machine killing many more people than the average terrorist, assassinating them is taboo? Do you really wonder? Do you really, honestly not know the difference? I find that very hard to believe.
- harimau777 2y ago
  > It’s antithetical to our foundational principles as a society. I'm not sure it actually is. The foundational principle of society is basically the social contract "Individuals give up the right to exert violence in exchange for society providing safety and benefit." If society fails to uphold its end of the bargain, then it seems logical that the individual is no longer obligated to hold up their end.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    You don’t get to kill people when you don’t get your way. I can’t believe I even have to explain that. If assassination is acceptable behavior society is doomed. And the people carrying out those murders aren’t going to build anything better than we have now. Yes, the healthcare system has flaws. But those flaws are fixable. In living memory we have seen dramatic improvements in the healthcare industry. Murder isn’t the solution here.

[flagged]

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.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    Pacifism is a lofty ideal but also an ideal co-opted by violent power structures as a tool to reduce cognitive dissonance in those that would and should otherwise fight for their rights. For example, I believe in peace and wish peace upon the world but I am not a pacifist and believe that a variety of techniques are necessary to prevent the world from becoming a techno-tyranny.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]

linsomniac 2y ago

>blood-sucking CEOs have a 1/10 chance of being assassinated. Don't you think that the regular expectation of this might make them a little less blood-sucking? I get the point you're making. But I suspect it might just as easily go the other way: the 10% chance of assassination would justify having your security detail, probably paid for on the company dime, but affordable even if you're "only" making $10M/year. And once you have that candy shell and the "me against them" mentality, you might just go further with the bloodsucking. IOW: Maybe the current situation IS tempered already. :-(

lazystar 2y ago
Well personal security isn't a stopgap for healthcare execs, because the personal security staff, and/or their extended families, will be using the healthcare that they provide. the risk of an insider job is high

senko 2y ago

Some live who deserve to die. And many that deserve to live lose their life. Can you give it back to them? If not, don't be so hasty to take it away from others. --Gandalf

vouaobrasil 2y ago
Tell that to the person who acts in self defense when someone breaks into their home.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  Using lethal force to defend yourself from lethal force is not, in my opinion, "acting hastily". If you're talking about using lethal force as a reaction to just property crime, though, I think that is morally indefensible.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    Well, I think there is also a gradient in terms of acts such as the main subject matter, and it's worth thinking about.
  - itronitron 2y ago
    Where do you draw the line of it being 'just property crime' though?
    - mulmen 2y ago
      It only matters where your state draws that line.
      - harimau777 2y ago
        Just because your state draws a line doesn't make that line just.
        2y ago

valval 2y ago

Holding such opinion is fine in my eyes, as long as you’ll be the one enforcing those measures. If you wish to be the one pointing the finger to have people assassinated or worse, I have no sympathy for you and would fight your ideology until the end.

marcuskane2 2y ago

> Or terrorists who kill people Your post is ironically just a pro-terrorism argument. You want terrorism targeted at CEOs to change their behavior. There are a million different viewpoints on what acts are harmful and how to minimize or prevent those harms. It's better that we use things like voting and laws and courts to collectively reach consensus on when to use violence, rather than individuals killing people who disagree with them. You can argue that this CEO should have been arrested for some crime and you can argue that said crime should carry the death penalty upon conviction. But that doesn't mean it's valid for a random person to be judge, jury and executioner based on their own personal concept of justice.

immibis 2y ago
Terrorism is political policy designed to make everyone terrified "they could be next". If a random person on the street gets shot that's terrorism, but if Adolf Hitler gets shot that isn't terrorism since most people aren't Adolf Hitler and don't have to worry about being treated the same way. Somewhere between these two points is a dividing line.
vouaobrasil 2y ago
Terrorism is a catch-all word. And it's quite an effective one at making blanket statements with no nuance.
- mulmen 2y ago
  You are literally making the case that if CEOs are scared they will change their behavior. You shouldn’t even have to squint to see how that’s terrorosm.
  - vouaobrasil 2y ago
    Okay then. Provide any definition of terrorism and I will tell you how the system takes part in terrorism against ordinary citizens every day.
salawat 2y ago

lucianbr 2y ago

If you can fairly and correctly evaluate which CEOs are especially blood sucking, simply taking their money and sending them to prison for a while will have the same effect and be far less ethically dubious. If the evaluation is flawed... do you see why it's not a good idea?

dredmorbius 2y ago
What US executives have been so prosecuted in recent memory? And specifically for abuses of the public, not of financial frauds affecting shareholders or lenders. Examples from the healthcare, banking, pharmaceutical (notably Purdue) or petrochemical industries might be particularly appropriate. My read of the street is that the institution of law and courts has been assessed as insufficient and/or terminally dysfunctional.
- aeonik 2y ago
  I thought of Martin Shkreli, but I think he might fall under your criteria of defrauding investors https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Shkreli
  - dredmorbius 2y ago
    Good suggestion, but I think it's the investor, not public side, which pushed the needle there.
- lucianbr 2y ago
  I thought the original argument was that they should be prosecuted and condemned to death. And against this, I say if you are able to prosecute and condemn the right people, sending them to jail is enough to get a useful result. What's the view you're defending? That CEOs should be murdered when some arbitrary citizen ready to do murder thinks the CEO is guilty enough? I totally think law and order is dysfunctional. I don't know if people will actually resort to murder, but I could understand why they would do it. (It's far easier to talk about it than to do it.) But it is not a good solution to the problem. The system of "murder people when we are upset" will certainly be at least as dysfunctional as the current one, if not more. Law being taken into the hands of whoever has weapons and the will to do it is what happens in narco states. Who prefers that?

dredmorbius 2y ago

NB: Saddam Hussein was, at least nominally, tried and executed, not assassinated: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein> I'm not claiming that the trial / execution adhered to any particular standards, just that as an example of an extrajudicial killing the story's a bit shaky. There are other examples to choose from, including the utterly nonjudicial killings of Osama bin Laden (by US forces) or Muammar Gaddafi (by Libyan rebels with at least notional US support). There's a long list of US targeted assassinations as well, from Anwar al-Awlaki (2010), with another 35 intended targets and 200 killed, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing#Use_by_United_States_government https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing#Use_by_United...>. (I'm also not litigating the appropriateness of those actions, rather they're offered as instances where the US government has acted within recent memory to kill designated enemies without judicial process.)

vouaobrasil 2y ago
Thank you for the information -- those are indeed better examples.

JohnFen 2y ago

> there are plenty of cases where people break the law in a socially regulated way and society doesn't enter into some sort of chaos. You're talking about civil disobedience here, which typically doesn't involve murder. > (how is lethal injection different than assassination? I think it's basically the same) I'm opposed to capital punishment, but I see a huge difference between the two even though they both involve killing someone. The death penalty only comes after a legal process and court deliberation. Assassination is unregulated. That's a pretty large distinction. > Don't you think that the regular expectation of this might make them a little less blood-sucking? No, I don't. It would make them do their bloodsucking differently in order to minimize their risk, but I don't think it would make them cut back.

vouaobrasil 2y ago
> I'm opposed to capital punishment, but I see a huge difference between the two even though they both involve killing someone. The death penalty only comes after a legal process and court deliberation. Assassination is unregulated. That's a pretty large distinction.' True, there is a distinction but in some cases since there is no alternative, it might be the next best thing.

mulmen 2y ago

> Theoretically and philosophically speaking, why shouldn't we? Because what you are describing is literally anarchy. It’s antithetical to our foundational principles as a society. > I bet not many Americans would object to taking out terrorists, especially some who have caused a lot of damage like 9/11. Opposition to the war on terror is not a fringe position in the United States. > What about Timothy McVeigh? The U.S. assassinated him basically (how is lethal injection different than assassination? I think it's basically the same). Well you’re wrong. Timothy McVeigh was tried and convicted. That’s literally the difference between assasination and the death penalty. Opposition to the death penalty is also not a fringe position and many states no longer practice capital punishment. > And what about this? Imagine a world where the especially blood-sucking CEOs have a 1/10 chance of being assassinated. How do you identify the 1/10? > Don't you think that the regular expectation of this might make them a little less blood-sucking? I don’t know what the effect would be, why are you so confident you do? > I wonder why it's morally acceptable for a country to send an army to assassinate some guy causing trouble or for the police to kill a terrorist holding hostages, but when another rich guy takes charge of a machine killing many more people than the average terrorist, assassinating them is taboo? Do you really wonder? Do you really, honestly not know the difference? I find that very hard to believe.

harimau777 2y ago
> It’s antithetical to our foundational principles as a society. I'm not sure it actually is. The foundational principle of society is basically the social contract "Individuals give up the right to exert violence in exchange for society providing safety and benefit." If society fails to uphold its end of the bargain, then it seems logical that the individual is no longer obligated to hold up their end.
- mulmen 2y ago
  You don’t get to kill people when you don’t get your way. I can’t believe I even have to explain that. If assassination is acceptable behavior society is doomed. And the people carrying out those murders aren’t going to build anything better than we have now. Yes, the healthcare system has flaws. But those flaws are fixable. In living memory we have seen dramatic improvements in the healthcare industry. Murder isn’t the solution here.