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>When there are no judicial penalties for running a vast machine of death like UnitedHealthcare, then eventually people seek extrajudicial ones. Our goal should

by gruez 2y ago

>When there are no judicial penalties for running a vast machine of death like UnitedHealthcare, then eventually people seek extrajudicial ones. Our goal should be to make sure that this doesn't happen. Luigi is a symptom, not the sickness to be treated. Where do you draw the line between "When there are no judicial penalties [...] eventually people seek extrajudicial ones" and "some nutjob went on a shooting spree"? There's no shortage of people killing because of "the great replacement" or "pedophile elites", issues the government aren't exactly in a hurry to address. Are those also examples of "When there are no judicial penalties [...] eventually people seek extrajudicial ones", or can we just chalk them up to the shooters being nutjobs? Is the former just what people say when they're sympathetic to the shooter, similar to how terrorists you support are "rebels" or "freedom fighters"?

harimau777 2y ago
One big difference is that one is true and the other isn't.
- lolinder 2y ago
  Truth doesn't matter when the question is what kinds of tactics we want to officially endorse for moving the political needle. Any tactics you adopt become fair game for your opponent, and if we start seeing laws named after Luigi we will start seeing laws named after the next conspiracy theorist killer.
- gruez 2y ago
  If the framing is merely "When there are no judicial penalties [...] eventually people seek extrajudicial ones", then it doesn't really matter whether it's objectively true or not, only whether people think it's true or not. And to the people who are aggrieved by "the great replacement" or "pedophile elites", they most certainly think it's true. Moreover, it's not hard to think of steelman versions either conspiracy theory that are true. For instance there might not be an actual coordinated conspiracy to replace white American voters with foreigners, but there's certainly a push on the left to allow for more migration, and just a decade ago Democratic strategists were bragging about how demographic change was going to mean they were going to be assured victory for the next few decades.
  - ElevenLathe 2y ago
    Steelman as much as you like, the fact is that health insurance companies really are evil, and the "great replacement" is wingding nonsense. We can't have a standard applies to both real political grievances and fake lunatic ones.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >Steelman as much as you like, the fact is that health insurance companies really are evil, and the "great replacement" is wingding nonsense The point of the steelmaning isn't so "the great replacement" can be declared as "true", it's to point out it's not hard to come up with a slightly revised cause that isn't "wingding nonsense". Sure, it's easy to write off the guy who shoots up a school because of "the great replacement", but what if the next guy is shooting over Biden's immigration policy? Does he get a pass now because "The Biden administration really are evil", on the basis that "they're putting immigrants ahead of Americans" or whatever? >We can't have a standard applies to both real political grievances and fake lunatic ones. I'm so glad that there's a universal standard of what counts as a "real political grievances" that everyone can agree on!
      - aaomidi 2y ago
        There isn't a universal standard.
      - ElevenLathe 2y ago
        Right, we're not doing politics on a frictionless infinite plane though. At some point, somebody has to make a judgment about the actual content of the complaint. Should we do single payer to prevent violent wingnuts from offing people in broad daylight to the tearful applause of millions? Yes, probably. Should we turn up the horror on the southern border even more to appease your uncle who is complaining about Qanon in the Craigslist "missed connections" section? Probably not. Why? We thought about it and decided the former is a good idea related to a real problem but the latter is just pointless cruelty that doesn't solve anything, not even getting people to stop complaining (since they'll just pick some other made-up problem). If you disagree, you're my political enemy and we have to work it out, hopefully without violence.
tomlockwood 2y ago
> Where do you draw the line The converse question is also valid - when do we accept that the system is so unjust and broken that people need to take justice into their own hands? Where do YOU draw the line?
- BrenBarn 2y ago
  This is the interesting question to me. I mean not one line or the other but the idea that both instances of "drawing the line" are just positions on the same spectrum. If you imagine a continuum of societal scenarios from blissful idyllic peace to total dystopian chaos, on the one end murdering someone as a mechanism for accomplishing something is clearly unwarranted, and on the other end it's pretty clearly warranted. So the question is where are we on that continuum and where would we have to be to justify this? In my view when police are kidnapping people off the streets for expressing political viewpoints, when government power is nakedly being used to benefit the individuals wielding it, and so on, we're moving pretty quickly towards a situation where there's not much rational basis for believing the system will hold wrongdoers accountable. That's setting aside the fact that the wrongdoing by the health insurance industry has been going on for decades with little accountability. I wouldn't say we're at the point where a killing like this is justified, but we're a lot closer than we were a year ago. The particularly frustrating and worrisome bit is that there are obvious moves forward that I think would greatly reduce the likelihood (and perceived acceptability) of vigilantism, but the people in power are unwilling to make those moves. These are things like passing laws to make large swaths of current health industry behavior illegal, with specific penalties against executives, board members, large shareholders, and others who profit from the bad acts, and then rushing in to prosecute and imprison those people and confiscate the majority of their wealth. No more mister nice guy, no more dithering, just direct, forceful, unstinting action against everyone who has gotten rich off other people's suffering --- but doing it via the mechanism of law and justice to demonstrate that it is an implementation of the will of the people. That would make people feel like the system is working. But when those in government are unwilling to do that, it makes people feel like those in government would rather have the occasional vigilante killing, and that they are on the side of the executives rather than everybody else --- and that in turn makes a small minority of people more willing to give those officials what they asked for.
aaomidi 2y ago
> Where do you draw the line between This is where individual opinion basically doesn't matter. This is where collective opinion ends up setting discourse. There is a reason no one really mourned for the CEO. And a reason Luigi is seen as a hero in the vast majority of circles.
- gruez 2y ago
  >And a reason Luigi is seen as a hero in the vast majority of circles. source? Only 17% of americans find the killing was "acceptable", which isn't same question as "hero", but I think most would agree that an action being "acceptable" is a prerequisite to being a "hero". At best, he's anti-hero. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/17/united-healthcare-ceo-killing-poll https://www.axios.com/2024/12/17/united-healthcare-ceo-killi...
  - no_wizard 2y ago
    I suspect the flaw in this poll is being willing to openly admit support would feel precarious to many generations outside seemingly Gen Z due to how other generations were raised. I think private support - the kind you can’t poll - is far far higher
    - gruez 2y ago
      >I suspect the flaw in this poll is being willing to openly admit support would feel precarious to many generations outside seemingly Gen Z due to how other generations were raised. 1. the opposite can also be true, ie. people taking anti-establilshment stances to be edgy or whatever. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-op... 2. Your argument seems to basically "17% or 41% is far lower than I observe, therefore it must be because people are cowed into hiding their actual opinions". That might be the case, but it's also possible you're in a filter bubble that's not representative of the public as a whole. For instance if you were on reddit last year you might have gotten the impression there was a universal consensus that Trump had zero support and that Mangione did nothing wrong, but know now that the former was obviously false.
1123581321 2y ago
Two signs might be: are people of otherwise good character with reputations to lose doing these actions, and does society find their action to clarify a need to redress at the expense of the victim’s class. I’m just speculating about a line and not opining on a specific crime.
motorest 2y ago
> Where do you draw the line between "When there are no judicial penalties [...] eventually people seek extrajudicial ones" and "some nutjob went on a shooting spree"? Perhaps the point where people like you try to depict regular people acting out of despair as nut jobs. Think for a minute: one of the most popular tv shows in modern history is a story of a man with an elite education going to the extreme of running a small criminal organization due to financial pressure caused by a life-threatening medical condition. That was what the US watched for years for escapism.
- kortilla 2y ago
  One of the other most popular shows is about a serial killer. Another is about corporate lawyers fighting for power. People didn’t care about the premise of medical debt at all. It could have just have easily been coercion to pay a ransom. The plot only needed him to be innocent for the initial hook.
- gruez 2y ago
  >Perhaps the point where people like you try to depict regular people acting out of despair as nut jobs. Mangione was most certainly not "acting out of despair". He came from a wealthy family, had ivy league education, and wasn't even denied coverage. At best you could argue he was in "despair" because of his botched back surgery, but that's hardly a reason to shoot the UNH CEO. >Think for a minute: one of the most popular tv shows in modern history is a story of a man with an elite education going to the extreme of running a small criminal organization due to financial pressure caused by a life-threatening medical condition. That was what the US watched for years for escapism. It really isn't. Any critical viewing of the series would reveal that Walter was doing it out of pride rather than necessity. His ex-business partners at Grey Matter even offered to pay for his treatment, but he refused.
  - motorest 2y ago
    > Mangione was most certainly not "acting out of despair". Was Luigi already tried and found to guilty? Don't let your bias show. Also, your blend of argument feels like a straw man. You're not actually debating who pulled the trigger, but why millions of people suddenly and enthusiastically support a random assassination of a CEO of a health insurance company. Why do you think that happens? Can you conceive any explanation?

by gruez 2y ago

harimau777 2y ago

One big difference is that one is true and the other isn't.

lolinder 2y ago
Truth doesn't matter when the question is what kinds of tactics we want to officially endorse for moving the political needle. Any tactics you adopt become fair game for your opponent, and if we start seeing laws named after Luigi we will start seeing laws named after the next conspiracy theorist killer.
gruez 2y ago
If the framing is merely "When there are no judicial penalties [...] eventually people seek extrajudicial ones", then it doesn't really matter whether it's objectively true or not, only whether people think it's true or not. And to the people who are aggrieved by "the great replacement" or "pedophile elites", they most certainly think it's true. Moreover, it's not hard to think of steelman versions either conspiracy theory that are true. For instance there might not be an actual coordinated conspiracy to replace white American voters with foreigners, but there's certainly a push on the left to allow for more migration, and just a decade ago Democratic strategists were bragging about how demographic change was going to mean they were going to be assured victory for the next few decades.
- ElevenLathe 2y ago
  Steelman as much as you like, the fact is that health insurance companies really are evil, and the "great replacement" is wingding nonsense. We can't have a standard applies to both real political grievances and fake lunatic ones.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >Steelman as much as you like, the fact is that health insurance companies really are evil, and the "great replacement" is wingding nonsense The point of the steelmaning isn't so "the great replacement" can be declared as "true", it's to point out it's not hard to come up with a slightly revised cause that isn't "wingding nonsense". Sure, it's easy to write off the guy who shoots up a school because of "the great replacement", but what if the next guy is shooting over Biden's immigration policy? Does he get a pass now because "The Biden administration really are evil", on the basis that "they're putting immigrants ahead of Americans" or whatever? >We can't have a standard applies to both real political grievances and fake lunatic ones. I'm so glad that there's a universal standard of what counts as a "real political grievances" that everyone can agree on!
    - aaomidi 2y ago
      There isn't a universal standard.
    - ElevenLathe 2y ago
      Right, we're not doing politics on a frictionless infinite plane though. At some point, somebody has to make a judgment about the actual content of the complaint. Should we do single payer to prevent violent wingnuts from offing people in broad daylight to the tearful applause of millions? Yes, probably. Should we turn up the horror on the southern border even more to appease your uncle who is complaining about Qanon in the Craigslist "missed connections" section? Probably not. Why? We thought about it and decided the former is a good idea related to a real problem but the latter is just pointless cruelty that doesn't solve anything, not even getting people to stop complaining (since they'll just pick some other made-up problem). If you disagree, you're my political enemy and we have to work it out, hopefully without violence.

tomlockwood 2y ago

> Where do you draw the line The converse question is also valid - when do we accept that the system is so unjust and broken that people need to take justice into their own hands? Where do YOU draw the line?

BrenBarn 2y ago
This is the interesting question to me. I mean not one line or the other but the idea that both instances of "drawing the line" are just positions on the same spectrum. If you imagine a continuum of societal scenarios from blissful idyllic peace to total dystopian chaos, on the one end murdering someone as a mechanism for accomplishing something is clearly unwarranted, and on the other end it's pretty clearly warranted. So the question is where are we on that continuum and where would we have to be to justify this? In my view when police are kidnapping people off the streets for expressing political viewpoints, when government power is nakedly being used to benefit the individuals wielding it, and so on, we're moving pretty quickly towards a situation where there's not much rational basis for believing the system will hold wrongdoers accountable. That's setting aside the fact that the wrongdoing by the health insurance industry has been going on for decades with little accountability. I wouldn't say we're at the point where a killing like this is justified, but we're a lot closer than we were a year ago. The particularly frustrating and worrisome bit is that there are obvious moves forward that I think would greatly reduce the likelihood (and perceived acceptability) of vigilantism, but the people in power are unwilling to make those moves. These are things like passing laws to make large swaths of current health industry behavior illegal, with specific penalties against executives, board members, large shareholders, and others who profit from the bad acts, and then rushing in to prosecute and imprison those people and confiscate the majority of their wealth. No more mister nice guy, no more dithering, just direct, forceful, unstinting action against everyone who has gotten rich off other people's suffering --- but doing it via the mechanism of law and justice to demonstrate that it is an implementation of the will of the people. That would make people feel like the system is working. But when those in government are unwilling to do that, it makes people feel like those in government would rather have the occasional vigilante killing, and that they are on the side of the executives rather than everybody else --- and that in turn makes a small minority of people more willing to give those officials what they asked for.

aaomidi 2y ago

> Where do you draw the line between This is where individual opinion basically doesn't matter. This is where collective opinion ends up setting discourse. There is a reason no one really mourned for the CEO. And a reason Luigi is seen as a hero in the vast majority of circles.

gruez 2y ago
>And a reason Luigi is seen as a hero in the vast majority of circles. source? Only 17% of americans find the killing was "acceptable", which isn't same question as "hero", but I think most would agree that an action being "acceptable" is a prerequisite to being a "hero". At best, he's anti-hero. https://www.axios.com/2024/12/17/united-healthcare-ceo-killing-poll https://www.axios.com/2024/12/17/united-healthcare-ceo-killi...
- no_wizard 2y ago
  I suspect the flaw in this poll is being willing to openly admit support would feel precarious to many generations outside seemingly Gen Z due to how other generations were raised. I think private support - the kind you can’t poll - is far far higher
  - gruez 2y ago
    >I suspect the flaw in this poll is being willing to openly admit support would feel precarious to many generations outside seemingly Gen Z due to how other generations were raised. 1. the opposite can also be true, ie. people taking anti-establilshment stances to be edgy or whatever. https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-opt-in-polls-can-produce-misleading-results-especially-for-young-people-and-hispanic-adults/ https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/03/05/online-op... 2. Your argument seems to basically "17% or 41% is far lower than I observe, therefore it must be because people are cowed into hiding their actual opinions". That might be the case, but it's also possible you're in a filter bubble that's not representative of the public as a whole. For instance if you were on reddit last year you might have gotten the impression there was a universal consensus that Trump had zero support and that Mangione did nothing wrong, but know now that the former was obviously false.

1123581321 2y ago

Two signs might be: are people of otherwise good character with reputations to lose doing these actions, and does society find their action to clarify a need to redress at the expense of the victim’s class. I’m just speculating about a line and not opining on a specific crime.

motorest 2y ago

> Where do you draw the line between "When there are no judicial penalties [...] eventually people seek extrajudicial ones" and "some nutjob went on a shooting spree"? Perhaps the point where people like you try to depict regular people acting out of despair as nut jobs. Think for a minute: one of the most popular tv shows in modern history is a story of a man with an elite education going to the extreme of running a small criminal organization due to financial pressure caused by a life-threatening medical condition. That was what the US watched for years for escapism.

kortilla 2y ago
One of the other most popular shows is about a serial killer. Another is about corporate lawyers fighting for power. People didn’t care about the premise of medical debt at all. It could have just have easily been coercion to pay a ransom. The plot only needed him to be innocent for the initial hook.
gruez 2y ago
>Perhaps the point where people like you try to depict regular people acting out of despair as nut jobs. Mangione was most certainly not "acting out of despair". He came from a wealthy family, had ivy league education, and wasn't even denied coverage. At best you could argue he was in "despair" because of his botched back surgery, but that's hardly a reason to shoot the UNH CEO. >Think for a minute: one of the most popular tv shows in modern history is a story of a man with an elite education going to the extreme of running a small criminal organization due to financial pressure caused by a life-threatening medical condition. That was what the US watched for years for escapism. It really isn't. Any critical viewing of the series would reveal that Walter was doing it out of pride rather than necessity. His ex-business partners at Grey Matter even offered to pay for his treatment, but he refused.
- motorest 2y ago
  > Mangione was most certainly not "acting out of despair". Was Luigi already tried and found to guilty? Don't let your bias show. Also, your blend of argument feels like a straw man. You're not actually debating who pulled the trigger, but why millions of people suddenly and enthusiastically support a random assassination of a CEO of a health insurance company. Why do you think that happens? Can you conceive any explanation?