this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
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You're absolutely right and I'd argue it boils down to the fundamental error in OP's shower thought:
Killing the CEO doesn't save the lives on the other track. It just adds another dead body to the pile.
Why wouldn't it, though? Every CEO makes a profit/loss calculation in their head. Now they've got one more potential entry in their loss column. We're not talking about saving lives already taken by UHC, but future lives that other CEOs might cost.
We all know that the death of a CEO is a blip in the actual day to day operations in the company. The teams and departments will continue operating as before, and the broad strategic decisions made by the executives aren't going to factor in a remote likelihood of violence on a particular executive.
After all, if they're already doing cost/benefit analysis with human lives, what's another life of a colleague, versus an insurance beneficiary?
They'll just beef up personal security, put the cost of that security into their operating expenses, and then try to recover their costs through the business (including through stinginess on coverage decisions or policies).
That only remains true so long as this doesn't turn into a copycat situation, which it very well might given how numerous the people with motives are, how easy it is to get guns in this country, and how fervently the people of this country are supporting the gunman.
The key word there is 'remote likelihood'. My point was that if it goes from 'remote' to 'possible' or 'likely', then it will start getting factored into decision making.
There's a difference once they start considering their own lifes on the line.
Unlike fines, which can be passed off as a cost of doing business, their lives are irreplaceable. And once the logic has been hammered into their heads, it can start influencing their decisions.
They won't. Anyone who has a semblance of belief that their decisions in the job might actually cause their own death just won't do the job. Instead, it becomes a filter for choosing even more narcissistic/sociopathic people in the role.
And once they've internalized the idea that any decision made by any one employee of the company, including their predecessor CEOs, can put them in danger, it's pretty attenuated from the actual decisions that they themselves make.
It's a dice roll on a group of people, which isn't enough to influence the individuals in that group.
Who then get removed from society
Depends how many dice you roll. That's my point. If you roll enough dice, it can start affecting decisions.
This is ludicrous. A person faced with unpopular decisions that might send assassins after him is going to make himself harder to assassinate, not less hated.
So you're saying that, given a choice between
You'd take the 2nd choice and hire bodyguards. Sure, you might. But not everybody would.
They're being intentionally dense. But we understand your point. Some people were born to lick the boot. Let them stay dumb.
No, the question isn't whether everyone would. It's whether anyone would. And the answer is obviously yes.
So now the position is filled. Did the healthcare system change?
My argument is that no, you can't kill your way to reform on this one. There will always be another CEO to step into that place.
And the ratio of dead would-be assassins to CEOs would also pile more bodies on.
Next time you take a break from licking the boot, read a history book. Do you know how many corpses are in the ground today because a few folks said, "We shouldn't have to work seven days a week." A fucking lot.
Thanks to them, we have the concept of "weekends".
Change is written in blood.
This is not a one-off example, there are thousands.
That is reality. Welcome to it.
Which business leaders were killed on the way to securing a 5-day workweek? Those gains were achieved through direct action affecting business bottom lines: strikes, sabotage, and direct action on the streets, not secret targeting of soft targets.
Put another way: there were two attempted assassinations of Donald Trump in the past year. Do you think that will change his political actions to be more popular?
Do you think that United Healthcare's next CEO will suddenly forgo profits? What about hospital administrators, pharma CEOs, or any of the other tens of thousands profiting off of this fucked up system? Do you think that a mass assassination campaign will actually happen in large enough volume to change any behavior at all?