| ▲ | zdragnar 5 days ago |
| Have we already forgotten the absurd amount of support the murderer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare? Maybe it wasn't 23%, but it was certainly not insignificant. > It isn't hard to find evidence of people (especially young ones) equating speech with violence. I don't think anyone conflates the phrase "threatening or committing violence" with "threatening or committing calling you a bad name". Yes, there's too much equating speech and violence, but the particular wording of threatening or committing imho is largely still reserved for the physical variety. |
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| ▲ | lores 5 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| If a mafia boss orders a hit, he is no less guilty than the one who pulls the trigger. If a CEO orders vital funds to be withheld from those who are entitled to them, knowing many will die, he is similarly guilty of murder. The mafia boss can be sent to jail, the CEO won't. The corporate veil may keep you pristine inside the cynical circles of power, but all the people see is impunity. When murderers act with impunity, what redress is there but counter-violence? It is unfortunate, but many people have lost hope the system can change, so revolution is getting more likely, and revolutions are seldom peaceful. |
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| ▲ | DecoySalamander 5 days ago | parent [-] | | The CEO of a healthcare insurer is not involved in "withholding" funds. At best, he sets up policies that distribute a limited amount of funds among millions of claimants who are all in need of help to some degree, but he does that job poorly. If this juvenile logic is applied further, aren't you guilty of the same crime? There are people in need of life-saving drugs and treatments, yet you're just sitting behind your computer withholding funds. | | |
| ▲ | ImPostingOnHN 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | This sounds like airlines saying they have a right to bump people who paid for a ticket because the airlines couldn't figure out a business model that earned them an acceptable amounts of money without doing it. UHC does that, except instead of denying you the seat you paid for, they deny you care you paid for, and you suffer and die. The problem is the conclusion that we must allow this so that their business economics can be sound, so that they can continue to exist. We should instead conclude that being horrible to people is bad, and any business model that requires it should not exist. Brian saw a company that he knew ahead of time was horrible to people, that he knew ahead of time decided that many of their customers must die, and indeed this was critical to the company's economics and business model, and thought, 'You know what? I want to be a part of that. I like that so much that I want to be the one in charge of it.' Why that job, instead of the millions of others? Well, we can take a gue$$. He had to make his nut, no matter who he hurt along the way, right? Meanwhile, as an arguably less-horrible person, I see a job posting for startups that use AI to scan terminal cancer patient records for timely funeral business leads in exchange for offering crypto credits that can be applied towards a coupon for palliative care AI chat or whatever, or makes drones and AI systems for tracking and identifying government critics for later persecution, and I have to click 'next' because my soul is worth more than the salary. What a fuckin' chump I am. | | |
| ▲ | AceyMan 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Airlines operate under completely different optimization (game) theory, which makes for an absolutely horrible choice in your analogy. |
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| ▲ | lores 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | 1/ There is no "distribute a limited amount of funds". There is even less a "distribute a limited amount of funds after shareholder profit and massive executive paychecks". Customers have bought coverage; if the company overissued policies, they make a loss, or they go bankrupt and their own insurers cover the existing claims. Anything else is privatised profit and socialised losses, which even a callous teenager just blown away by their first glimpse at Ayn Rand should find objectionable. 2/ I carefully said "entitled to" to avoid a debate about personal responsibility and limit the conversation to "paid for a life-saving service they did not receive", which everyone will agree is wrong. 3/ If you think the CEO did not issue orders to make it as difficult to claim as possible, and drag the process as much as possible, you are a fool. Denying help to a human is one thing. Denying them help after they paid for the help so you can buy a yacht another thing entirely. |
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| ▲ | elcritch 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Still the trend of calling speech a form of violence likely has the counter effect of legitimizing violence. It’s not hard to go from “speech is violence” thoughts to “well they used violence (speech) against us so it’s okay if I use violence (physical) against them”. |
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| ▲ | kbelder 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | Absolutely, and I am sure that is exactly why speech is claimed to be violence. It's to enable and legitimize violent retribution. | |
| ▲ | krapp 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | [flagged] | | |
| ▲ | zdragnar 5 days ago | parent [-] | | This is nonsense; assaulting and killing people is illegal except in self defense. In no way whatsoever does the second amendment legitimize violence. | | |
| ▲ | krapp 5 days ago | parent [-] | | The second amendment literally defines a free state by its capacity for armed revolt, in other words, by violence. Spend ten seconds around American gun culture. American gun owners absolutely believe the second amendment justifies violence, and Americans have believed as much for two centuries. Hell Thomas Jefferson thought any healthy democracy should have an uprising every 20 years or so. That it happens to be illegal to shoot people under most circumstances is merely a formality. The founding fathers absolutely intended popular violence to be an integral part of the American political system, as a counterbalance to the potential violence of the state, because they inherently mistrusted the state. The only debatable facet of this is what specifically they meant by "militia." Then again, the constitution was written when drawing and quartering was still practiced, along with slavery, and before the industrial revolution. Maybe the intent of the founding fathers as regards the second amendment no longer has a place in modern society. Unfortunately it can't be touched without triggering a full scale civil war so we're stuck with it and its consequences. | | |
| ▲ | zdragnar 5 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > The only debatable facet of this is what specifically they meant by "militia." There's not too much to debate there; many militias existed at the time. Every state had them! Further, every border was susceptible to foreign aggression, and the frontier borders were too vast to be policed or patrolled by soldiers to protect civilians from war or banditry. Civilians needed to be able to protect themselves, and the militias needed people who could shoot prior to enlisting, as the nation was constantly under threat. > The founding fathers absolutely intended popular violence to be an integral part of the American political system This is also not broadly true, barring some choice quotes intended to stir up support for the war. It was intended as a last resort against a tyrannical government. The assassinations of presidents have no legal foundation within the Constitution itself, despite it happening. Likewise, American gun culture doesn't promote assassinating politicians, but rather being prepared in case of the fall of the Constitution itself. France would be a much better example of a country that embraces violence as a matter of course in politics. | | | |
| ▲ | hollerith 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | >The second amendment literally defines a free state by its capacity for armed revolt Aren't you confusing the text[1] with what one person, namely Thomas Jefferson, said about it? [1] "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." | | |
| ▲ | krapp 5 days ago | parent [-] | | >Aren't you confusing the text[1] with what one person, namely Thomas Jefferson, said about it? If I am, then so are the Supreme Court, the NRA, militia groups, the Republican Party and much of the country. At some point one has to admit that the purpose of a system is what it does and the American system does violence very well. |
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| ▲ | cryptonector 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > The second amendment literally defines a free state by its capacity for armed revolt, in other words, by violence. Armed revolt is something people all over the political spectrum always want to leave the door open to (except once they have total power). |
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| ▲ | motorest 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > Have we already forgotten the absurd amount of support the murderer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare? I hope not, because that would mean people would already forgot why supporters were describing it as reacting towards violence with violence. |
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| ▲ | pxc 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Depends on what you consider to be "support", but this report is pretty interesting and says something like 24% of US adults sympathize greatly with Mangione, and 63% have some non-zero level of sympathy for him. Outright approval for his actions isn't directly quantified by this poll but is undoubtedly lower than that 24% figure. One interesting thing is sympathy for Mangione doesn't seem very strongly influenced by income level or level of education. The two biggest mediators seem to be political alignment and age. It seems the vast majority of US adults under 50 have a significant amount of sympathy for him, with only 28% expressing no sympathy at all. https://www.cloudresearch.com/resources/blog/mangione-suppor... |
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| ▲ | hattmall 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think it would be much higher than 23%. I think most people would argue justification in using violence to oppose violence. The question would be what percent view the utilization of profit driven policy resulting in deaths as violence, and I think that too is pretty high. |
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| ▲ | honeybadger1 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| probably the best point that has been made is that there are a lot of younger people who think killing someone is a way to solve a conflict or problem |
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| ▲ | SV_BubbleTime 5 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| >Have we already forgotten the absurd amount of support the murderer of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare? Oh yea. A guy was murdered with an illegal handgun and an illegal silencer. and not one single Democrat usually so hot to call for more gun control did so. Must have slipped their minds. |
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| ▲ | Fezzik 5 days ago | parent [-] | | I’d encourage you to do a bit more research. An entire state banned ghost guns and bump stocks following the CEO’s murder, just 9 days after it happened… and it was Democrats, as it always has been, that passed the law over majority Republican objection. You can find loads of articles about Democrats continuing to push for gun reform. https://bridgemi.com/michigan-government/gun-reforms-among-m... | | |
| ▲ | SV_BubbleTime 5 days ago | parent [-] | | Thanks, but I live here. Michigan has been trying to ban 3D printed guns for years before UnitedHealth CEO was murdered. That was just during the session and a coincidence, not cause. | | |
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