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.
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.
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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It’s not a real life trolley problem, because there is no mechanism by which killing this CEO saves lives.
There is. There's reason to think the CEO was targeted specifically because of his shitty policies. If enough CEOs were eliminated for the same reason, the rest might start remembering they have a duty to society.
(This is not a call for violence, and I am not advocating for it, this is answering a direct question about how and why the mechanic might exist)
If enough CEOs were eliminated for the same reason, the rest might start remembering they have a duty to society.
...Or they could go the way of prison gang status, where the system selects its leaders based on their willingness to not only do violence to others but also sacrifice their own safety and wellbeing for power. That seems way more likely to me than CEOs suddenly growing a fear based conscience and throwing profits/shareholders under the bus and somehow still being allowed to remain in their positions.
And all that is assuming that would-be assassins are in general coherent and reactive to the relative badness of corporate leaders and credibly applying danger relative to harm caused, which doesn't seem likely either; rationality and being a killer tend to not usually go together, even if this incident seems like an outlier just from its most obvious narrative.
where the system selects its leaders based on their willingness to not only do violence to others but also sacrifice their own safety and wellbeing for power
The system already chooses leaders based on their willingness to do violence to others, so I don't see any downside if they decide to start sacrificing their safety and wellbeing.
And all that is assuming that would-be assassins are in general coherent and reactive to the relative badness of corporate leaders and credibly applying danger relative to harm caused
That's not strictly necessary, as long as there's a general trend of risk increasing along with harm done.
so I don’t see any downside if they decide to start sacrificing their safety and wellbeing.
It's not that it's necessarily a downside (though it probably is because people like that are potentially even worse to be ruled by), but you said there's a mechanism for coercion by assassination to work here. This is why there won't be; you will just get harder corpos.
That’s not strictly necessary, as long as there’s a general trend of risk increasing along with harm done.
It's necessary because what if the risk factor is simply working in that industry at all, because of all the people fucked over by it? If regardless of their actual efforts to improve the humanitarian situation, executives are judged shallowly, there is no incentive to do anything except to quit and be replaced by someone who has more of a gangsterish disposition.
This is why there won’t be; you will just get harder corpos.
You're postulating one possible (and in my mind, unlikely) outcome. I'm pointing out that the usual and straightforward result of threatening punishment is that people stop doing the activity (or at least rethink it).
It’s necessary because what if the risk factor is simply working in that industry at all, because of all the people fucked over by it? If regardless of their actual efforts to improve the humanitarian situation
It's 2024. Stats and numbers are publicly available and easily searchable on the internet. UHC had double the industry average rejection rate. And the CEO had been in charge for long enough that if he had wanted to make changes, he could have. There's no 'hypothetical' scenario here.
It's weird how only in the US is it necessary for insurance companies to fuck their customers over to survive. I wonder why insurance companies in the rest of the world can survive without fucking their customers over? I suppose it's a puzzle we'll never solve.
I’m pointing out that the usual and straightforward result of threatening punishment is that people stop doing the activity (or at least rethink it).
The idea that punishment works is for the most part an authoritarian fantasy, not reality, and this is backed by both research into individual behavior and collective behavior.
I wonder why insurance companies in the rest of the world can survive without fucking their customers over?
Probably because the insurance companies they compete with are bound by the same (specific, predictable, law-based) rules prohibiting that behavior. Probably not because they are afraid of angry customers with guns.
The idea that punishment works is for the most part an authoritarian fantasy, not reality
The idea that punishment works is the concept behind our entire justice system, and most of society.
Probably because the insurance companies they compete with are bound by the same (specific, predictable, law-based) rules prohibiting that behavior. Probably not because they are afraid of angry customers with guns.
You seem to have missed the point. You claimed that 'the risk factor is simply working in that industry at all'. I'm pointing out that the industry does not inherently have any risk factor, and it's entirely possible to be in the industry without murdering tens of thousands of people. The rest of the world manages to do it. The risk factor would be deciding to screw your customers over.
The idea that punishment works is the concept behind our entire justice system
It's one of the concepts, and that's a big part of why we have so much evidence against it.
On a quick google:
The certainty of being caught is a vastly more powerful deterrent than the punishment. Research shows clearly: If criminals think there's only a slim chance they will be caught, the severity of punishment — even draconian punishment — is an ineffective deterrent to crime
So the more executions, the more effective it is?
Sounds right, but again with the caveat, what are they being caught for? Being a healthcare executive at all? Some vaguely defined moral threshhold? What is it they are being taught to fear, and how disconnected is that from any actual intention? Like beating a dog to try to get it to stop destroying your furniture. And then consider that certain punishment for them isn't actually realistic unless it's the government imposing it. Vigilantes can't get them all or probably even many of them.
If enough CEOs were eliminated for the same reason, the rest might start remembering they have a duty to society.
No. They'll hire private security and reduce their public exposure. Ironically, this will end up costing the company more and potentially increasing prices as a result.
The last thing they'll do is suddenly become introspective and sympathetic.
"this may increase costs for the consumer" argument is flawed. It always implies they would have left profit on the table otherwise, rather than squeeze the system and everyone within it for as much as it'll give and then some.
Nobody's expecting them to become more introspective and sympathetic. Unlike fines and regulations, which can be passed off as the cost of doing business, threats to their life carries the risk of succeeding no matter what measures are taken. And the cost of such is not something that can be compensated for with money. Hence at some point simple profit / loss analysis will require them to consider not pissing off the public too badly
I promise you, I would risk getting shot every day for a 10 million dollar salary. Many jobs are dangerous for very little pay, give me the cushiest job and maybe somebody murders me?
Not the point. If you're already getting 10M with no risk, would you want to raise it to 12M and live in fear for your life?
In general, the employer that purchased the insurance plan decided what they wanted the plan to cover. That's why you can have great insurance plans when you're in a union, for example. While for a bottom line, an insurance company wouldn't want to pay claims, the people actually doing it each day are just following whatever plan guidelines they're given. This death will do absolutely nothing.
That's how it works in theory. In reality, insurance companies in the US deny a lot more claims than they should. Somebody posted some stats showing UHC denies about twice as many claims as the other insurance companies, making them the worst of the bunch.
This death will do absolutely nothing.
I've already pointed out how it might do something.
This death will do absolutely nothing.
Have you seen other socials?
Have you seen how limp dick fake news is?
I never seen America this united so clearly it did something and some parasite life is a small price to pay for such solidarity haha
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.
Using threat of punishment to motivate behavior is extremely unstable even in the tightest, simplest circumstances
Isn't that our entire justice system?
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.
On what basis? Nobody's ever tried it, so it's not like you have data to point to that says otherwise.
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.
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.
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.
CEOs have faced zero consequences for their actions, the people they've harmed have exhausted all reasonable peaceful options. This incident alone will probably not change anything for the better but if those in power have no fear of the masses idk what else they expect to happen.
It's worse than that- they've been rewarded for their actions
Which made them feel 100% vindicated.