I wonder if we'd see slightly more ethical behavior from corporations if their C-level staff and board members had to routinely practice lock-down drills because they were getting offed once a week.
Many of these CEO types never interact with the general public without many armed men around them. I would not expect them to act any more ethical than they currently are.
We've all been watching how effective drones have been in the Ukraine war and there's nothing stopping a motivated individual with nothing to lose from droning a corrupt elected official, a cop who brutalizes innocents or an oligarch.
It's just a matter of time before this happens.
The rich will isolate themselves further behind even more surveillance technology, more physical barriers, and, because that is never enough, inordinate amounts of paid thugs.
I wouldn't be surprised if New York passes new gun control laws because of this shooting; I wouldn't be surprised if there's a congresscritter or White House Staffer or judge who's assassinated in the next several years causing some kind of martial law situation. It's scary times we live in right now.
This is most likely going to happen with an incoming authoritarian gov't anyway.
Do recall that one Congress critter, that is very pro-gun was shot at a baseball game, survived, and still stood against gun legislation. We'll see if things change if the wind shifts and more rich people (the Congresscritters' owners) are targeted.
The scenario you describe is rather frightening. Let's hope the "CEO class" (for lack of a better term) and the general public will allow reason and ethics to win out.
One thing that is for certain, there should be better legal limits to what companies can get away with. We need our justice system to get involved well before vigilante's start running amok. The US government should have stepped in a full decade ago to reign-in United Healthcare's misconduct and fraud.
They won't. They're making billions out of others suffering.
>general public will allow reason and ethics to win out
"Ethics". It's a trolley problem... if a person through their actions enables many people to die, is it wrong to kill them?
To paraphrase Chris Rock... I ain't saying he should have killed him... But I understand.
The term you are looking for is "oligarchs"
Besides politicians, corrupt private leaders are at risk.
I am also not convinced that assassinations will make society less stable. At least in the targeting assassin's mind, it's intended to make society more stable by eliminating corruption.
I think people skip over this a LOT, but it's the basis for society and was long before we had the means to track down most killers and bring them to any sort of justice. Most people, even when given freedom from consequences and ample opportunities, are not murderers.
I don't necessarily disagree with this completely, but it's also worth noting how easily people seem to go with the status quo, eg criminal gangs, nazism, support of genocides, etc.
I think most people have a bit of killer in them, given the right circumstances.
And everyone has seen it thrown in our faces for a year or so now what the blatant two-tiered system looks like. On a longer time scale if you want to count the lack of consequences for those behind an attempted coup in 2021 and a recession that harmed millions of lives in 2008.
If the government won't hold people accountable, and people are pushed to their ends, then things like this can happen. As OP stated, thankfully, it doesn't happen as often as one would think given our society. It does take a lot to murder someone else.
And who feels represented by their government these days?
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-assassin-showed-just-h...