We'd all do well to, in our rush to decry the murder itself, be mindful of the mistake of losing sight of the reason behind the massive support for Mangione's actions.
Measure twice and cut once on such things.
> We'd all do well to be mindful of the mistake of losing sight of the reason behind the massive support for Mangione's actions.
What I fear is that while screaming that vigilantism isn't ever justified, that this very same act justifies it.
The Kleptocracy has a year, two at the outside to make some concessions near as I can tell, before they can’t walk the streets of NYC safely full stop. Or Chicago, or …
Luigi has tens of thousands of women lining up to marry him, multiple academics doing long pieces about how to achieve jury nullification, and saying he’s the bad guy is not a popular move basically anywhere with a lot of people in it.
If it’s amplified then the amplifier is the public.
There are a very fucking small number of people who own any significant equities, or have their interests actually materialize politically.
That’s the group I’m lobbying to get your shit correct before Luigi is fucking everywhere.
You do have some better definition of merit than “currently profits myself”?
Maybe we could do the same but with the hardest working? It’s not that either. You ever seen guys making a highway in Arizona? Nah, not the hardest working.
Maybe we could backdate pure fucking blind luck in parents and mentors and shit and call it merit and just push that on the previous two groups like the greasy pimps we are for so long we forgot it was a scam and we actually start believing it. And then use it to justify atrocities at the scale of millions (Brian Thompson) but condemn violence at the retail level (shooting him).
Yeah. John Galt forever. I meant Spring Break.
That's around 50 million people.
how about a fucking unprecedented number of people are vigorously endorsing an assassination? How about a fucking huge number that’s a big deal?
My point --- I think obviously --- is that 15% support in an opinion poll is a meaningless metric. Tens of millions of Americans do not in fact support Hitler. There's a whole literature on why these kinds of crazy results pop out of opinion polls (read up for instance on acquiescence bias).
Kanye seems to like him.
Trump has said positive things about him.
There are more white supremacists around than you might think.
There is the concept of the lizardman’s constant for polling wacky ideas but it is more like 4%.
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
OK then, what crime did the CEO commit? Simply presiding over a business that people don't like, which he has no real power to change, is not a crime in any sense.
Vigilantism only makes sense when there is no justice for real obvious crimes with known guilty parties. And even then, it has many downsides.
A loud minority (or even majority) of people condoning this does not make it right. In the absence of an articulable crime for which the victim is responsible, this is simple murder. You can rationalize it all you want but your logic could be used to justify lynch mobs.
Insurance companies aren't overtly or covertly killing people. They might not be paying for their healthcare in every single instance where they should. As a business, they must decide what services to cover and at what price or they won't be in business for long. They face extensive regulation to ensure that they are not doing exactly the thing you're accusing them of. Yes that means everything has a limit.
Luigi was a rich kid. Neither he nor his family had any business with this insurance company or the CEO, as I understand it. So this action on his part is the result of some insanity plus radicalization, perhaps by people like yourself who have the gall to compare 100% legal businesses to Nazi concentration camps. Our political discourse has really degraded in my lifetime, with one large faction now frequently accusing everyone they disagree with of being Nazis. No good can come of this.
>The CEO of a company has the most power to change it, and definitely enough power to say "fuck this, find another CEO".
Perhaps he could change something but you can't articulate what that is exactly, because you don't care. You just hate the industry as a whole. Even if the industry needs a lot of improvement, it is entirely legal and regulated, and not a charity. The CEO has no reason to leave because he's got a great job at what most people regard as an upstanding business.
It could be argued that Luigi's murder of this CEO and the public reaction to it could make insurance worse. How? Think about it. What competent CEO-type would want to work at a company if it might put a target on his back? A lot of normal people would not want to. So you're less likely to get a competent and relatable CEO, and more likely to get a cutthroat or incompetent one. The kind of person who doesn't care that lots of people would celebrate his death just for having held the position. And an incompetent one could lead to more deaths, because insurance is basically a finance business that must make enough money to cover its expenses. If they go broke, then nobody is getting covered.
At the time of Nazi rulership in Germany concentration camps were 100% legal.
Health insurance is a modern invention. People lived for thousands of years without it, and even in recent times most of the world does not have it. If you don't like insurance, you have the option of saving and investing your money to pay for whatever you can. Some people cannot afford to pay their expenses by saving, but those people cannot afford insurance either. Someone has to pay for whatever is on offer. I don't think insurance should be used for common health care, only for catastrophic things that you can't anticipate. Imagine how expensive car insurance would be if you insisted on having it pay for oil, tires, carwashes, etc. That is how people treat health insurance and it's stupid.
nice strawman
Because the publics and their representatives made the law that this is a perfectly legal and acceptable thing to do.
Killing a CEO does very little, as there are hundreds of millions of people lined up to take their job.
It would be more effective to go out and kill your neighbors who vote differently than you, and reject things like single payer healthcare or reform.
I can't tell if this is a joke or not but I'll argue as if it isn't. First of all, nobody knows if single payer or any reform would lead to anything better. It's a complex issue that boils down to trying to get something for nothing (or at a price lower than the limited supply of healthcare dictates), which leads to enslaving other people to pay for one's own needs. You can do something about corporate corruption such as in the insurance industry. But state corruption is much more insidious. If you feel that strongly about state-sponsored healthcare then there are lots of other countries you can choose to live in that allegedly have the benefits you want, rather than just hating or doing harm to your neighbors. Furthermore, the MAJORITY of people who approve of the current system aren't going to stand by helpless as random wannabe tyrants attack them.
I feel like the murderer wouldn't be so widely commended if that were true. Justice is what is supposed to prevent vigilantism, and apparently lots of people here felt that the murder was just.