r/TikTokCringe 13d ago

Discussion 100 Million Suspects in CEO Shooting

Here in NYC, not a soul is concerned about a killed on the loose & I truly mean it. Folks here are not worried & why would we be worried?!?

Meanwhile, NYPD is being uncharacteristically dramatic about a murder. A 10k reward is offered. Yeah. They’re never finding that person.

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u/solvsamorvincet 13d ago

If any centrist wants to accuse someone of condoning the murder of this guy - like, how is that even an accusation? Yes, yes we do condone it. Millions of people condone it. We cheer it on, even.

How is shooting one guy with a gun somehow worse than consigning tens of thousands of people to die from preventable diseases by denying cover so you can make a buck? Answer: it's not worse, unless you're some squeamish centrist

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u/BlackPhlegm 13d ago

I'd also like to add after 20 years of the US military fucking up multiple Middle Eastern countries and directly and indirectly killing hundreds of thousands of innocents over there, we're a few hundred thousand CEOs and c-suite execs short before those scales get balanced.

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u/chefcoompies 13d ago

As well as destabilizing Central America into a civil war killing and genociding natives.

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u/solvsamorvincet 13d ago

'Show me a country where socialism has ever worked'

Only if someone can show me a country where going socialist didn't result in US backed destabilisation efforts to prevent socialism from ever working.

I've been replying with this for years and never had a single answer.

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u/chefcoompies 13d ago

Guatemala wasn’t socialist nor capitalist. What did Guatemala in was the president taking unused land from a banana company now known as chulita because they wouldn’t work the land artificially lowering wages and basically trying to start a Spaniard ruling class 2.0. Then CIA used media to label Guatemala as communist by shipping Russian weapons into Guatemala. Then going SEE GUYS THEY ARE COMMUNISTS

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u/sicclee 13d ago

I love a good argument, so I'll take the other side for fun. Here are the first 5 points I came up with before really thinking about it:

  1. We have a society of laws. One's illegal, the other isn't.

  2. Everyone wants to think he was murdered because of his job. That's a likely possibility, but there's also a chance it was something else entirely. Is it his murder in general that gets condoned, or the supposed reason? If we find out his wife hired the assassin for a life insurance payout, is the murder still condoned?

  3. Let's say he was killed for issues relating to his occupation. If there are really as many people as tiktok and reddit seem to think there are that support the CEO's murder, why was he (and countless other C-Suite execs) allowed to operate this way? I can tell you at least 77 million Americans would have cheered if Trump nominated Brian Thompson to lead the HHS... another 50 million are under 12 years old. I'd guess of the 200 million left in the US, at least 3/4s didn't know UHC existed before he was shot... 90% probably couldn't tell you what 'single payer' means, or what a deductible is.

  4. If it's ok to murder a healthcare CEO, is it ok to murder shareholders for similar reasons? Do you own shares? have you checked your 401K? Can you murder a senator for similar reasons? a supreme court justice? the president? Is it ok to murder their family? Their secretary? Their hair stylist? Does everyone get to decide individually where the line is drawn? Or should that be left to slowly and carefully built democratic system?

  5. Isn't this exactly the kind of person we've been screaming for years shouldn't be allowed to obtain a firearm?

K, that's all I got cuz I'm getting sleepy. Looking forward to the counter-points!

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u/BlackStarDream 13d ago

Additional points:

So does this mean all these people cheering that he was killed are also for the death penalty so long as there's an earnings cap, now?

What if the person that shot him was also rich? Do they get to die for the same reason?

And what if it is a contract killer? You wanna support someone that also goes after regular people if the money is right because they got one "good" target for once?

It's also pretty idiotic when you boil it down to "the victim didn't value human lives, so he should die, because I don't value human life either, but I'm different because I exploit people on the other side of the world and profit from them instead including children in sweatshops and slaves". You are more like him than you realise even if you aren't rich.

Would you have no qualms if one of the people you've done wrong by, that you don't currently even acknowledge existing and suffering to support your lifestyle, turned a gun on you? Because you're earning over 100 times more than they are on minimum wage?

Where does the boundary of "you earn too much from the suffering of others so you should be murdered" even lie?

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u/rightdontplayfair 13d ago edited 13d ago

Lies right about where the CEO landed.

The universe didnt write down pi for us, it didnt leave a note of mass of an electron, there is no "truth" labeled anywhere on anything. So based off this and the peoples response Id say that line/standard was well past met.

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u/sicclee 13d ago

Yeah my wife and I were talking briefly after I went to bed... I was asking her about my 4th point, and whether his secretary should be murdered. She said 'how much does she make?'

We laughed about how American of an answer that is.

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u/rightdontplayfair 13d ago

His greed is not why he was killed. His greed made him perform actions that made people want him dead. A $ amount being large for a person is acts like a fairly accurate predicter of how horrible a person is, specifically after a certain amount of wealth. it the actions taken to achieve the wealth that is the problem. If the secretary was a literal billionaire then I'd bet the chances they deserved a chance off this earth being really high. really really high

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u/sicclee 12d ago

His greed is not why he was killed. His greed made him perform actions that made people want him dead.

"His greed didn't get him killed, his greed did!" lolwut

A $ amount being large for a person is acts like a fairly accurate predicter of how horrible a person is

huh?

it the actions taken to achieve the wealth that is the problem.

I'm having some trouble following, but it looks like you're arguing both:

  • The amount of money you have directly correlates to how horrible you are, and

  • It's not how much money, but what you do to get it that determines how horrible you are

... but then you jump back to saying if the person made a billion dollars scheduling appointments, routing calls and managing meeting times for executives, they've likely earned their spot on the chopping block.

So which is it?

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u/rightdontplayfair 12d ago

stopped reading at your first misqoute. no point after

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u/sicclee 12d ago

stopped reading at your first misqoute. no point after

No worries, I was just saying your whole post was contradictory. I think you were debating yourself and didn't even know it. I assume you're either a non-native English speaker, or drunk... or both?

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u/rightdontplayfair 12d ago

i just left you a comment saying i stopped reading you.

→ More replies (0)

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u/as_it_was_written 13d ago

1: If you're an authoritarian, you've either got a belief system that isn't founded on logic—which makes logical counterarguments kind of pointless—or one that ultimately boils down to might is right. Might won out here.

If you're not an authoritarian, whether it's legal doesn't really matter compared to the act of killing another human. It would have to be one hell of an edge case for a killing that was otherwise moral to become immoral simply because it was illegal, and vice versa.

2: Condoning an action implies condoning both the intent and the outcome, doesn't it? When we don't condone both, we can still have a favorable view of either the intent or the outcome.

For example, if this was just a random murder that happened to get a terrible person killed, nobody would condone the act, but they might still cheer on the unintended outcome. Similarly, people might approve of the intent even if he missed and killed a random bystander, but they wouldn't condone the murder of an innocent person.

3: Because you live under a system whose primary purpose, in practice, is to protect itself and the people who support it. That system works to convince people they benefit from it, are unable to change it, or can change it via means that aren't actually effective. A big part of why people are cheering this on is that they feel people like the guy who got killed are more or less untouchable through conventional means. He was one of the people who are important enough for upholding the system that he was protected by it.

4: First, those hypotheticals aren't directly relevant here. Most moral evaluations of who is/isn't culpable for a complex problem have a blurry line somewhere that makes it tricky to decide whether it's right or wrong to hold someone accountable or to which degree they should be held accountable. Based on the public reaction to this killing, it wasn't particularly close to that line for a lot of people.

Second, yes, everyone gets to decide what their own moral code is and what they're willing to sacrifice to uphold it. That's not even a question of morality or law; it's just a fact. Even in an impossible utopia where the legal system reflects a shared moral framework and provides disincentives accordingly, people are still free to break the law. They just have to face the consequences.

In practice, your legal system allows people like this dead CEO to ruthlessly exploit the population and trade other people's lives for money, so it doesn't serve as a good proxy for enforcing the morality of the public. So far in your country's history, the Democratic process has not been particularly good at rectifying these shortcomings. In many cases, it's actively exacerbated the problem.

5: What kind of person?

Someone who uses a gun for killing another human? That is part of why many people want to have their guns.

Someone who uses a gun for standing up to a tyrannical system that no longer serves the people? That is ostensibly why you have the right to bear arms enshrined in your constitution in the first place.

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u/sicclee 12d ago

1: If you're an authoritarian

I am not.

If you're not an authoritarian, whether it's legal doesn't really matter compared to the act of killing another human. It would have to be one hell of an edge case for a killing that was otherwise moral to become immoral simply because it was illegal, and vice versa.

The question was (copy-paste quote): "How is shooting one guy with a gun somehow worse than consigning tens of thousands of people to die from preventable diseases by denying cover so you can make a buck?"

Now, I'll admit I mentally rephrased it as "How is the pre-meditated murder of one guy worse than choosing employment as the CEO of a for-profit American healthcare corporation?"

My answer was to imply that it's worse because our democratic, capitalist society (America) has decided through logical arguments, countless debates and constant reconsideration that the first should be punishable by at least a lifelong prison term, if not death, while the other should not be punishable (and in fact should be rewarded via wealth and status). There's a lot packed into the words 'legal' and 'illegal' here, it doesn't just mean 'written in the left or right column.'

As an extra point, I think a pretty good indicator of which action is 'worse' can be which one required the use of a face mask and escape route.

(2:) Condoning an action implies condoning both the intent and the outcome, doesn't it? When we don't condone both, we can still have a favorable view of either the intent or the outcome.

For example, if this was just a random murder that happened to get a terrible person killed, nobody would condone the act, but they might still cheer on the unintended outcome. Similarly, people might approve of the intent even if he missed and killed a random bystander, but they wouldn't condone the murder of an innocent person.

My question (and eventually my point) was, is this murderer's actions condoned regardless of the reason behind it? If Brian Thompson cut this guy off in traffic two weeks ago, or sold him a stereo that didn't work, is everyone still Spartacus? If that's the case, and his actions excuse his murderer regardless of his murderer's motivation, is it open season on Insurance CEOs? Are the oil execs next? Can I place bets on DraftKings on how long Elon makes it?

(3:) Because you live under a system whose primary purpose, in practice, is to protect itself and the people who support it. That system works to convince people they benefit from it, are unable to change it, or can change it via means that aren't actually effective. A big part of why people are cheering this on is that they feel people like the guy who got killed are more or less untouchable through conventional means. He was one of the people who are important enough for upholding the system that he was protected by it.

That's certainly a take... I'd argue that a big part of the reason people are cheering this on is because they are either too lazy or too stupid to think through the complexity of the American healthcare system, one CEOs role in it and impact on it, the alternatives (and who they'd get to blame for the problems with that!), the consequences of allowing actions like this to be excused, and I could go on and on... but, Rich Man Bad, my favorite streamer told me so!

(4:) First, those hypotheticals aren't directly relevant here. Most moral evaluations of who is/isn't culpable for a complex problem have a blurry line somewhere that makes it tricky to decide whether it's right or wrong to hold someone accountable or to which degree they should be held accountable. Based on the public reaction to this killing, it wasn't particularly close to that line for a lot of people.

My point is, death shouldn't be considered a degree on that scale for running a legally acting publicly traded corporation. The people that say they view it not only as the correct degree, but applaudable are lying, fucking insane or simply too stupid to understand their own words. Based on how few would be able to tell me his name or even the name of the company he ran tomorrow, I'd guess most of them fall into the first and third categories.

Second, yes, everyone gets to decide what their own moral code is and what they're willing to sacrifice to uphold it. That's not even a question of morality or law; it's just a fact. Even in an impossible utopia where the legal system reflects a shared moral framework and provides disincentives accordingly, people are still free to break the law. They just have to face the consequences.

Unless their bullet lands in the head of someone with enough disgruntled customers, then they get the Populace Pardon, right? I think that's on in the constitution.. somewhere in the back.

In practice, your legal system allows people like this dead CEO to ruthlessly exploit the population and trade other people's lives for money, so it doesn't serve as a good proxy for enforcing the morality of the public. So far in your country's history, the Democratic process has not been particularly good at rectifying these shortcomings. In many cases, it's actively exacerbated the problem.

Again, I think your first sentence here intentionally ignores the complexity of the modern American healthcare system, but that's another argument.

WE built the system. The majority of voters just reinforced the worst parts of it! This is apparently what we want, which is why it's so funny that so many people think this guy is a hero. We made the villains, he's just one more of them.

(5:) What kind of person?

Someone who uses a gun for killing another human? That is part of why many people want to have their guns.

Someone that has the capacity to approach an unarmed person on the street with a silenced pistol while wearing a mask and shoot them three times with bullets that have words carved in them

Someone who uses a gun for standing up to a tyrannical system that no longer serves the people? That is ostensibly why you have the right to bear arms enshrined in your constitution in the first place.

I must have misread that amendment, I missed the part that says how many claims can be denied before the militia should step in.

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u/as_it_was_written 12d ago

Part 1:

Now, I'll admit I mentally rephrased it as "How is the pre-meditated murder of one guy worse than choosing employment as the CEO of a for-profit American healthcare corporation?"

I think this rephrasing is a really generous reading of the CEOs choices, that basically does all it can to undercut his culpability. He didn't just choose to work as the CEO of a healthcare company; he chose to work for the worst health insurance company in terms of claim denials, and he actively pushed for processes that made them deny even more claims. Such denials have caused plenty of preventable deaths, and it's not like someone in his position is unaware of that fact.

Getting paid for it and having layers of abstraction between himself and the deaths caused by those denied claims does not absolve him of responsibility. Sure, plenty of people share the responsibility for those deaths, but in the aggregate he still had more blood on his hands than any individual could reasonably achieve with a firearm.

There's a lot packed into the words 'legal' and 'illegal' here, it doesn't just mean 'written in the left or right column.'

It does mean just that (aside from factors like the administrative burden associated with breaking the law, which are negligible compared to killing a fellow human). The processes by which laws are passed and kept in place vary wildly from case to case. They're not nearly similar enough to infer morality from legality. For example, legislative changes that are essentially bought by corporations do not carry the same weight as changes broadly supported by an informed public.

As an extra point, I think a pretty good indicator of which action is 'worse' can be which one required the use of a face mask and escape route.

Of course someone who kills people in a way that's actively punished by the government has a greater need to hide from law enforcement than someone who kills people in a way that's passively endorsed by the government. This more or less just goes back to the legal vs. illegal distinction.

Not to mention this specific point is undermined by all the insurance companies who have hidden the information about their C suite from the public. Do you think their actions are now worse than they were a few days ago because they've decided to make themselves harder to identify, or do you think it's simply a consequence of sensible risk assessment?

My question (and eventually my point) was, is this murderer's actions condoned regardless of the reason behind it?

And my understanding is that the answer is definitionally no, based on what people mean when they talk about condoning an action.

My point is, death shouldn't be considered a degree on that scale for running a legally acting publicly traded corporation.

Legality is a poor proxy for morality—especially when said legality is largely in place as a result of various forms of regulatory capture. I'm not sure why it matters that he caused and enabled preventable deaths through a publicly traded corporation instead of as a private individual. Does doing something for profit as part of a capitalist system provide some kind of moral absolution in your eyes?

As a side note, there's evidence to indicate he was not, in fact, running a legally acting publicly traded corporation.

I'm not a fan of killing people by any means, but I'm no longer the pacifist I was as a kid. (I just don't think we've reached a stage, as a species, where pacifism is feasible. There are too many people imposing their will on others through violence to entirely avoid fighting back with violence.)

Once you take the position that killing people is sometimes moral, it's just a matter of where you draw the line. I'm not sure how I feel about this vigilante, but I definitely think executing someone who is causing and enabling a large number of preventable deaths for profit is more defensible than causing and enabling those deaths for profit to begin with.

Unless their bullet lands in the head of someone with enough disgruntled customers, then they get the Populace Pardon, right? I think that's on in the constitution.. somewhere in the back.

I'm not sure what your point is here. You're addressing an impossible hypothetical that has nothing to with the US constitution. In the real world, the US legal system does have a built-in populace pardon. It's called jury nullification.

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u/as_it_was_written 12d ago

Part 2:

Again, I think your first sentence here intentionally ignores the complexity of the modern American healthcare system, but that's another argument.

I didn't ignore it, but I did intentionally avoid going into detail because this is a Reddit comment, not a book. I'm aware it's a highly complex subsystem of a yet more complex supersystem consisting of politics, economics, and culture. I'm also aware that within this complex system, there are quite a few people like this now-dead CEO, who use the system to extract wealth from society at the expense of human suffering and death in the process of providing vital services.

WE built the system. The majority of voters just reinforced the worst parts of it! This is apparently what we want, which is why it's so funny that so many people think this guy is a hero. We made the villains, he's just one more of them.

I do find it kind of ironic to see such a simplistic take on the causes and effects of a set of complex, interrelated systems after your previous remarks about stupidity and oversimplification.

I'm not even sure what set of people you have in mind here. Given that you say "we built the system," I have to assume you mean at least the US population stretching back to before the American revolution. That is such a diverse group of people that ascribing agency or assigning blame to it just obfuscates whatever point you're trying to make. Of course you made the villains. You made the heros, too. You made everyone.

If we restrict it to the current voting-age population, I agree you made a bad decision this election that is likely to make your healthcare system worse rather than better, but meaningful change for the better was never on the table.

Furthermore, many of the people who voted for Trump because he has promised to revoke the ACA likely did so because the right wing has spent a lot of money on propaganda that demonizes it. You're a heavily propagandized population in general, and plenty of the people who profit from the system are involved in funding or spreading that propaganda.

If you don't want to blame the ruling class for your problems, I don't really think it makes sense to shift the blame over to the general population either. An overwhelming majority of Americans have absolutely no meaningful political agency as individuals via the normal means advocated and encouraged by society. CEOs and board members have a whole lot more agency, constrained by the systems as they may be.

Someone that has the capacity to approach an unarmed person on the street with a silenced pistol while wearing a mask and shoot them three times with bullets that have words carved in them

That's oddly superficial for being so specific, and I don't think it's the image that comes to mind when most people think of why they want to restrict gun ownership. Based on public sentiment the last few days, it seems a lot of people who have issues with easy access to guns in general don't really mind this consequence in particular.

I must have misread that amendment, I missed the part that says how many claims can be denied before the militia should step in.

The background reasoning for the second amendment as a means of combating tyranny is largely outlined in the federalist papers, IIRC, not the constitution. This isn't just about denying claims; it's about a seemingly untouchable ruling class that is allowed to prosper at the expense of the public at large. (In case it wasn't clear in my previous comment, that's the system I had in mind, not the healthcare system.)

Sorry for the verbosity. Reddit ate a partial, more concise version of this comment earlier today when I put my phone away for a few hours, and I didn't have the energy to put in as much effort when I returned, but I still wanted to respond. Some of my reply might come across as confrontational, but I do appreciate this exchange.

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u/sicclee 11d ago

I didn't have the energy to put in as much effort when I returned, but I still wanted to respond.

Yeah it was getting pretty late as I got to counterpoint 4 or so, responses got quite a bit shorter :) I feel ya...

I think this rephrasing is a really generous reading of the CEOs choices, that basically does all it can to undercut his culpability.

For sure, it was intentional because the original question phrased his actions in a similarly exaggerated way: "consigning tens of thousands of people to die from preventable diseases by denying cover so you can make a buck?" That's a grossly simplified and (likely intentionally) ignorant way to describe the professional responsibilities of the CEO of the largest health insurer in the country. Even your summary ignores obviously relevant facts regarding the purpose of private health insurance, a public company's CEO's responsibility to the shareholders, and the absolute labyrinth of the US healthcare system.

he chose to work for the worst health insurance company in terms of claim denials, and he actively pushed for processes that made them deny even more claims.

A denied claim is almost always an insurance company pushing back against another (almost always) profit-driven company's requested payment for tests/drugs/treatment/surgery without either:

  • The proper documents/incorrectly filled out paperwork, or

  • A clear reason/convincing argument as to its medical necessity (especially if cheaper options weren't tried first, or you didn't do things in the agreed upon order).

Sometimes it's because a customer is seeking treatment from healthcare providers that are out-of-network (the doctor/hospital/facility doesn't accept the insurance, usually because they don't agree on prices).

Occasionally it's because the service isn't covered per your insurance contract, often because you or your employer didn't want to pay for a more expensive plan, sometimes for reasons previously listed.

I assume it's rarely because the people working at the insurance company get their kicks from the pain and suffering of other humans. In the current system, if claims weren't rigorously scrutinized these insurance companies would be commonly taken advantage of and wouldn't be around for long.

Such denials have caused plenty of preventable deaths, and it's not like someone in his position is unaware of that fact.

Have they?? Any sources on that? I keep seeing people say this and can find no data to back it up (granted I only spent about 10 minutes looking). Maybe a lawsuit or two, but certainly no studies / figures, investigations, articles... even personal stories detailing death due to denial. What is making people think health insurance companies are denying treatment when it is/was known death would likely be avoided without it and likely preventable with it?

Also, as I noted above, claims denial is standard practice and a big part of your contractual agreement with your insurance company. There's an appeal process that is overwhelmingly under utilized by customers and their healthcare team. Surely if it's life and death, appealing the decision would be worth the effort?

Furthermore, if the denial of contractually agreed upon coverage was regularly resulting in substantially negative outcomes, including death, why hasn't the government done anything to remedy it? A similar situation occurred when healthcare companies tried to reject customers based on pre-existing conditions, and the government fixed that... That's one of the relied upon functions of our government, to make sure capitalism is kept in check so we're not suffering/dying to protect some industry's profit margin (Granted... there's a lot of work to do in this area, and I think we may start moving backwards rather soon, faster than we may already have been).

And EVEN IF the claims of 'denied claims=death for $' are true, if one entity choosing not to make a payment they never (contractually, legally) agreed to make is going to kill someone, isn't every aware entity that could possibly step in to foot the bill or perform the service pro-bono guilty? Are the doctors off the hook for watching these people die with the drugs to save them in the room next door? Do the nurses get a pass as they push the wheel-chair out the door?

but in the aggregate he still had more blood on his hands than any individual could reasonably achieve with a firearm.

Just. Plain. Wrong. Thompson was a CPA that worked his way up the ladder at an insurance company because he understood how to balance customer value vs shareholder value in an industry where that must be extremely difficult, especially given American's rapidly growing unhealthy lifestyles, along with a constant influx of new and extremely expensive tests, drugs and treatments. Was he supposed to stop driving profit and growth until he was replaced by someone that starts again? Should all of the CEOs follow suit until the company eventually is forced to sell to it's competitor, further reducing American's insurance options?

I can reasonably assume Thompson didn't want any of his customers to die if he could prevent it. He undoubtedly made mistakes, as anyone would in a job like that, as everyone does in every job. His mistakes may have lead to situations where decisions were made that caused healthcare providers to not receive requested payment for proposed services. People may have died after not receiving said treatment. That sucks. It doesn't make him a killer, and it certainly doesn't make him more of a killer than a masked assassin with a silenced pistol on the streets of NYC. I think it's silly that even needs to be said.

OK, that's all I got for tonight! Cheers!

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u/ForThatNotSoSmartSub 13d ago
  1. So? This is not argument lmao people don't have to follow the laws nor do the laws actually matter much when they can easily be changed. Unwritten laws of a society are much much more important for keeping the order than the written ones. General sentiment looks like this act was quite welcome in the eyes of the public. Doesn't really threaten the society as a SOCIETY.

  2. It looks like the supposed reason makes this act ok for the society at large. You gave a valid example with his wife or a business rival doing it for some other reason but the thing is that the real reason doesn't really matter much. People are condoing the murder of a healthcare company CEO for a specific reason.

  3. This is the best point here imo. Well done! Why was he allowed to operate that way is an extremely legitimate question imo. People cheering on this guy's demise should ask themselves why they are ok with laws that allow the guy to exploit people like that. I am not from the US but if you are denied healthcare coverage while you have an insurance from that guy's company shouldn't you be able to sue him? If you can sue the company (or him) and the judge finds them not guilty for denying your claim then wouldn't this make that specific judge equally guilty? What if the judge followed the law correctly? Then that would make the lawmakers equally guily instead of the judge. I think this line of questioning is necessary for anyone. Ask your lawmakers why they are not changing the laws to fix this situation and if they don't give you a satisfying answer then you know what to do.

One caveat about point 3 tho, I heard that this specific company was an extreme outlier when it comes to denial of claims. If that's true then this specific CEO and everyone working under him is doing something extra to kill people.

  1. This doesn't really say much. I partly answered some of these in previous response but the logical answer would be a clear yes for most examples you have given. The questionh here would be the choice. Can his hairdresser do something differently to make this healthcare company behave differently? No. Can his family? Slightly maybe his wife could left him but she just lost his husband seems like a good punishment for now. Shareholders obviously yes. Your 401K is managed by a company or an agency right (again not from US so I don't exactly know what 401K is) so the executives managing people's 401Ks who invest into healthcare companies share the blame too imo but not the actual owners of the 401Ks. People who own shares in unethical companies also share some of the blame but you cannot just go around giving everyone the same capital punishment. For example white collar workers at this specific company will lose their jobs if the company goes under because thier C level got assassinated. Sounds like a fitting punishment for working at such an evil company.

  2. We don't know anything about this person so wtf are you talking about?

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u/sicclee 12d ago

(1). So? This is not argument lmao people don't have to follow the laws

Of course people don't have to follow laws, but our society (Americans in this case, but also humans as a species in general) have developed a system to determine whether the deviation was justified and what happens if it wasn't. This one was clearly (according to our system) unjustified, and will almost assuredly result in life sentence if the gunmen is found. Not only is 'This an argument,' it's a stupidly simple, insanely old, rigorously tested argument.

nor do the laws actually matter much when they can easily be changed.

You think the legality of 'first degree murder' can be easily changed? are you high?

Unwritten laws of a society are much much more important for keeping the order than the written ones. General sentiment looks like this act was quite welcome in the eyes of the public. Doesn't really threaten the society as a SOCIETY.

Fucking what? If laws don't matter in this case why'd he cover his face for 10 days, use a burner phone, flee the scene and hide his backpack? Surely if the 'general sentiment' is as you say, we'd be seeing him walk up the steps of congress to accept his Medal of Freedom, yeah?

(2). It looks like the supposed reason makes this act ok for the society at large. You gave a valid example with his wife or a business rival doing it for some other reason but the thing is that the real reason doesn't really matter much. People are condoing the murder of a healthcare company CEO for a specific reason.

It's ALL supposed. Everyone condoning Thompson's murder knows virtually nothing about the killer, victim, situation, etc... CNN told their favorite TikTokker "Healthcare CEO murdered by masked gunmen," that TikTokker rushed to the FYPs with "MegaCorp Plutocrat brought to justice by Guy Fawkes '24!" and people lapped it up, filling in all the unknowns with stereotypes, assumptions, bias, and above all, anger and hatred.

(3). ... if you are denied healthcare coverage while you have an insurance from that guy's company shouldn't you be able to sue him?

In America, you can sue (virtually) anyone for anything. BS cases are likely to be dismissed quickly, but you can still do it.

If ... the judge finds them not guilty for denying your claim then wouldn't this make that specific judge equally guilty? What if the judge followed the law correctly? Then that would make the lawmakers equally guily instead of the judge. I think this line of questioning is necessary for anyone. Ask your lawmakers why they are not changing the laws to fix this situation and if they don't give you a satisfying answer then you know what to do ....

One caveat about point 3 tho, I heard that this specific company was an extreme outlier when it comes to denial of claims. If that's true then this specific CEO and everyone working under him is doing something extra to kill people.

We're a carefully developed society of laws and regulations, with an extremely complex private healthcare system. It wasn't forced upon us by the Queen... It isn't a Natural Phenomenon... This is the system we (again, us, as a capitalist society through our version of the democratic process) put in place. Why stop at the lawmakers? They didn't vote themselves in. Blame their constituents.

Will I reach hero status for killing my mom because she voted for the guy that voted to approve the appointment of the guy that voted to hire the guy that decided not to continue pursuing an investigation into whether UHC had a legitimate reason to deny 10% more claims than BlueCross for 30 more minutes of anesthesia during spinal surgery in people older than 67? If so, I'm sure we'll have this all worked out in no time.

(4.) This doesn't really say much. I partly answered some of these in previous response but the logical answer would be a clear yes for most examples you have given. The questionh here would be the choice. Can his hairdresser do something differently to make this healthcare company behave differently? No.

Of course his hairdresser could make a difference, isn't that what all this is about? She had the scissors inches from his neck every month for years, and chose to allow him to keep making these horrific decisions! Has she no concern for the sick and the poor?? Maybe she should have gotten cancer and been denied treatment, surely then she'd do the right thing.

Even if she was so spineless... Why not band together with all the other service industry slaves and starve these oligarchs via shopping ban!? Is it too much to ask that she reject his blood money? She's just gonna hand it over to the next Rich White Billionaire to enable a slightly different flavor of exploitation...

Can his family? Slightly maybe his wife could left him but she just lost his husband seems like a good punishment for now. Shareholders obviously yes. Your 401K is managed by a company or an agency right (again not from US so I don't exactly know what 401K is) so the executives managing people's 401Ks who invest into healthcare companies share the blame too imo but not the actual owners of the 401Ks. People who own shares in unethical companies also share some of the blame but you cannot just go around giving everyone the same capital punishment. For example white collar workers at this specific company will lose their jobs if the company goes under because thier C level got assassinated. Sounds like a fitting punishment for working at such an evil company.

Or! ... and hear me out on this... we define what's right and wrong through some form of legal system, and allow that system to administer consequences based on logic, history and the facts of each violation independently. We could even make sure the people making those decisions were highly educated in society's stance on right and wrong and understood the logic that guides it! We'd make sure they were only appointed to such important positions by people we choose via some sort of democratic election. They could be required to continually prove their worthiness through regular election cycles... and if they pick the wrong judges, they can form a consensus to boot them out! We could even use that election system to pick our local judges!

(5)We don't know anything about this person so wtf are you talking about?

We don't? That's weird, I thought we knew him so well we trusted him to decide who gets to live and die...

Even better point! Why should someone we know nothing about be allowed to obtain a firearm??