this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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It’s just not a good solution to the agency problem. Coercing someone with a gun to get you $300 from the ATM requires constant presence and the gun sticking into their back continuously. Trying to use the threat of possible assassination to get someone to act in a CEO role in a way beneficial to their millions of customers, that’s just not stable.
Using threat of punishment to motivate behavior is extremely unstable even in the tightest, simplest circumstances. Like you gotta be on the ball to get that person to punch in their ATM code and hand you the bills. Even that straightforward action is barely stable in terms of the incentive structure.
You simply can’t coerce a class of people with targeted assassinations. It’s too loose, too abstract, to unstable as a mechanism of control.
All of how our society operates is under threat of punishment when you have no access to food housing or healthcare by not making an income. If you we have threat of punishment for the working class we can also have threat of punishment for the owners. It's the only way to fairly enforce the social contract under our current economic system. Obviously it's bad to operate this way and what we are seeing is a direct result of a class of people not being held accountable for their end of the social contract.
Nothing about our current situation is stable. So yeah, of course the violent symptoms of the starving and ill masses won't be stable either.
You're right, the thing that would work is if governments held them accountable, but governments have sided with the CEOs instead. These CEOs should beg the government to hold them accountable so that they don't have to fear the masses.
Isn't that our entire justice system?
On what basis? Nobody's ever tried it, so it's not like you have data to point to that says otherwise.