this post was submitted on 05 Dec 2024
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The assassination of United Healthcare's CEO is a real life trolley problem, and a select few are trying to argue to save all lives while the train is going to kill the masses. (lemmy.world)
submitted 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) by moral_quandary@lemmy.world to c/showerthoughts@lemmy.world
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It appears that in every thread about this event there is someone calling everyone else in the thread sick and twisted for not proclaiming that all lives are sacred and being for the death of one individual.

It really is a real life trolley problem because those individuals are not seeing the deaths caused by the insurance industry and not realizing that sitting back and doing nothing (i.e. not pulling the lever on the train track switch) doesn't save lives...people are going to continue to die if nothing is done.

Taking a moral high ground and stating that all lives matter is still going to costs lives and instead of it being a few CEOs it will be thousands.

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[–] booly@sh.itjust.works -4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

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.

[–] AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

So you're saying that, given a choice between

  1. Earn 10M a year and live in peace and obscurity
  2. Earn 15M a year and run the risk of being assassinated.

You'd take the 2nd choice and hire bodyguards. Sure, you might. But not everybody would.

[–] stembolts@programming.dev 3 points 2 weeks ago

They're being intentionally dense. But we understand your point. Some people were born to lick the boot. Let them stay dumb.

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works -2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

You'd take the 2nd choice and hire bodyguards. Sure, you might. But not everybody would.

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.

[–] stembolts@programming.dev 2 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] booly@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 weeks ago

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?