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 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 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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[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 22 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

It's more like "We found the guy pulling the lever on the trolley problem, only his trolley problem is 'people die or I get less money', and he has the trolley run over the people every time"

Unfortunately, there's a long line of twats behind him drooling over their chance to make the trolley run over human beings in exchange for money, so killing him doesn't really have the 'trolley running over people averted' effect that the trolley problem is usually based around. You're just punishing a shithead killer by killing him. Which, while hilarious, lacks the moral quandary that the trolley problem is meant to highlight, since no one is actually saved.

It's one of those things where the institutions of society can and must genuinely pursue the killer (albeit not at the level they actually are, expending a disproportionate amount of resources compared to if one of us commoners was killed), but if I saw the person who killed the CEO, I didn't.