I thought it was a joke when I saw the posts on the Reddit homepage celebrating the murder and even the murderer. Partly because I thought Redditors were above that type of thing, but also because I thought it was against their TOS.
It's a real reminder of how little sympathy people can have about people who they consider the enemy or the "other". I'm almost certain nearly all of the people celebrating the murder believe that they're good people and believe in justice too. Humans are so flawed. And I'm not suggesting for a moment I'm above it. I've often noticed how I don't care as much as I should when someone I dislike is harmed or suffers injustice.
A lot of people feel that he as the CEO of the health insurance with the highest rate of denied claims is indirectly responsible for the death of a large number of people. Thus killing him is justified as vigilante justice. And vigilante justice is frequently seen in a positive light when the justice system is unable or unwilling to act.
That may feel acceptable, but I hope those people remember it when someone controversial they admire meets a similar fate, greeted by applause from the other side.
Once we start tacitly approving of extrajudicial killings, it doesn’t stop with just those you dislike or even just the outspoken figures. Consider how many completely innocent civilians died during the Troubles or the French Revolution, or how easy it would’ve been for someone completely innocent to get harmed here.
It’s easy to approve of this in a vacuum, it’s just a path full of extreme cognitive dissonance.
One of the many purposes of the justice system is to serve "justice" so people don't feel the need to take it in their own hands. The fact that so many people feel this murder is justified shows a clear breakdown of the justice system. Which should give everyone pause because that path does lead to the terrors you describe.
But the path to solving that has to involve adjustments to the system that address this mismatch, not just condemning the act or creating some huge diversion in the hope people will forget about it.
I would say that this is not only one of its proposes, but by far the most important. The system primarily prevents violence by convincing people they don’t need to commit violence to achieve justice.
If that starts to break down, people in power need to wake up and fix it. The system does not, cannot, protect them from the masses entirely by force. I fear that they have forgotten.
It is absolutely not the duty of citizens to bend to an unjust system, but rather that of the justice system to reflect the ethics of its citizenry. Clearly there is a severe disconnect and "civil society" reached a breaking point around this issue.
What do you mean, “once we start”? It has always been. The only really unusual thing about this instance is that the target was not the sort of person who’s traditionally been seen as deserving it.
Even in times of peace, Americans love our righteous killings and murderous folk heroes.
I’m not keen to embrace it. But I think the finger-wagging is idiotic. Chastising people will accomplish nothing except for making them think you’re out of touch.
Folks disturbed by this outpouring of support for this murder should instead be asking why people feel that way. Maybe it’s because of a system that treats their lives as an expense to be minimized and gives them no recourse. If wide support for Luigi Mangione worries you, maybe look at fixing that.
I keep getting this response and I do not understand it. Why would I change my opinion just because other people might disagree?
It’s especially bizarre here because I haven’t even expressed an opinion about the killing. All I said is that love of killers is nothing new, and if you want it to stop then you need to change the circumstances that make people like killing, rather than just telling them that they’re bad.
There is a belief that Daniel Penny acted in the direct defense of those in the area. That is quite different than killing a CEO who is probably going to be replaced by the same type of person.
Considering the other side is a minority of top-level executives and media outlets, I wouldn't bank much on that.
People are going to celebrate killers regardless, as they always have, when the perpetrator shares the viewpoint of the majority. It happened with Jesus and Barabbas, it happened with Cromwell and Charles I, it happened with Louis XVI and the French revolutionaries.
In fact, I'm not surprised that Luigi has a bigger fanbase than the Trump shooter. The majority then were in awe of Trump, if not openly cheering him. Here, they're cheering Luigi, with some even insinuating that it was his plan to get caught (something which might as well be true).
> Considering the other side is a minority of top-level executives and media outlets, I wouldn't bank much on that.
The other side is often 50% of the country. Whatever controversial figures you like, near 50% of the country would gladly applause or at least quote Clarence Darrow if they were brutally murdered.
Trump just got elected and is appointing a cabinet of billionaires.
It should be noted that the context with Jesus and Barabbas is probably the failed Jewish revolt against Rome that led to the destruction of the temple in 70CE, with the gospel accounts looking to separate the emerging gentile Christian movement from the Jewish rebels.
It's similar to war heroes. Yes, Abraham Lincoln killed people. Yes, we could avoid glamorizing him and empathize with the poor southerners. But generally, war heroes are idolized. This guy is like a war hero who killed someone on the other side.
That's already happening. Just yesterday someone got acquitted of murdering a homeless person in NYC. The only thing that's different here is that it was a CEO who got killed instead of one of the peasants.
Yes, near 50% of the country is cheering that he was acquitted and someone was killed. The other 50% would be glad if he faced extrajudicial punishment.
I mean, we’re already there. There wasn’t a shared reality in the past few years, and now we even have the generative tools to ensure there is even less shared reality.
These CEOs have found a way to game the system, but the system presupposes mutual respect. If one side reneges on this contract and says that technically they're following the rules, well, the other side will just disregard the rules. It's like the kid at the playground who won't play fair but insists that technically they follow the rules, ignoring completely the outcome -- kids just don't want to play with them anymore, and will probably be mean to the `cheater'.
A CEO like this is an employee. He didn’t invent private insurance. He doesn’t get the 50 billion a year. He is a symbolic scapegoat.
Every person with a 401k probably owns UHC somewhere, and they expect it to increase every year. He is merely part of the system to help make that happen.
Try going into work tomorrow and saying “boss I think our VP’s initiatives are wrong and I’m going to take us in a different direction”.
What kind of alternate reality would that be? The people heading these companies are good at rationalizing why they are not evil. Don't play their game.
The interesting question to me is where murder is justified in your ethics. You came in with absolutes, after defending him.
I’m sure you never do anything because it’s enforced by the systems you are a part of. Always an independent thinker, looking out for your personal integrity.
You’re also comparing an insurance CEO to nazi organizers. Reality check.
The serious point is that blaming individual moral character is not going to fix healthcare. We need systemic change.
This idea of there being a "game" that just magically is, while players that cannot be blamed for playing, nonsense. We need to change the system people with low individual character created for their own benefits, yes. But that's still why we have those systems in the first place, that wasn't an accident or oversight or lack of an effort of common people to try and make the world better. They fight and struggle every day, against the efforts of people the likes of which Brian Thompson played willing executive for.
> You’re also comparing an insurance CEO to nazi organizers. Reality check.
They're comparing an excuse. It would be the same correct comparison if it was about someone parking illegally. And accepting and enabling suffering and death of people for profit rather than out of fear of being shot isn't exactly better.
> I’m sure you never do anything because it’s enforced by the systems you are a part of.
I mean, I can quite confidently state I've not received tens of millions of dollars for my role in denying medical care to millions of people.
> You’re also comparing an insurance CEO to nazi organizers. Reality check.
I'm saying "I'm just a little peon in the system!" isn't a good defense. Doubly so for C-suite level folks. This wasn't some call center drone following a script.
> The serious point is that blaming individual moral character is not going to fix healthcare. We need systemic change.
Systemic change often requires individual people to be ashamed of the current setup.
Ok just to be clear: Your position is that UHC is bad because of the exceptionally poor morality of the CEO? And that if we name, shame, and threaten we will hopefully get a moral one who will turn it around?
> I'm just a little peon in the system!" isn't a good defense.
I agree. It’s not a good way to morally justify to yourself why you killed someone.
My position is that a CEO of a large publicly traded company doesn’t get to shimmy out of responsibility by going “woe is me, it’s the system’s fault!”
I think if the system keeps refusing to change something breaks. We just saw that in Syria. I think people are unsympathetic in this case because health insurers have already broken the social compact they’re supposed to operate within.
But nothing is keeping you from working for that change, certainly not the fact that so many people want it so badly that they even cheer over the murder of a healthcare CEO. It's not a dichotomy; you can do either of these things, both, or none.
This just occurred to me though. Is UHC going to have a hard time finding a CEO that continues this practice? Have they actually been given any reason to change? Any reason to believe they won't just double down?
If this murder doesn't change anything, was it justified? I just don't know.
I was even more surprised by the response on Bluesky because I naively expected it to be 'better' than that. But I saw vitriol and hatred directed at people for daring to suggest that other, unrelated CEOs shouldn't be shot. It was like a reflection of the worst elements of X, even though these people claim to be the 'good' side.
some people believe the CEO's death is justice. engels called what insurance companies do "social murder" where these institutions and the state commits violence against individuals or kills them through policy or profit motives. and it's perfectly legal. it's only when an individual uses self defense against this social violence that it is considered wrong.
Honest question, do you think there is a point where someone has earned death? For example, was the mission to kill Bin Laden wrong? Was the mission to kill the Iranian General in Iraq wrong? Is it wrong to kill someone via the death penalty for the rape and murder of a child? Many people fundamentally believe those things are good examples of killing other humans. And realistically, those people are responsible for less harm and suffering , not to mention deaths, that CEOs of healthcare providers being investigated by the DoJ.
It’s not that there. Is a lack of sympathy, it’s overwhelmed by the feeling of justice. And not the injustice you think occurred.
There is a difference between “earning a death” as some sort of justice, and killing being justified to prevent further harm. The death penalty is more of an example of earning death, as it is a punishment more than it is to prevent the person doing harm. Whereas a police shooting is a “justified” killing to prevent harm to others. In the former the goal is killing, in the latter the goal is to stop a threat and the outcome is killing.
The killing of Bin Laden and Soleimani were justified, in my opinion, as declared enemy combatants and leaders of hostile State and non-State military forces. They didn’t “deserve” to die for justice. They were taken off the battlefield. Whether I agree with that decision or not, I understand the justification.
Killing a rapist and murderer via the death penalty is wrong, in my opinion. It is killing in cold blood as a punishment, not to protect others or prevent harm. I do not think government should engage in retributive killing. But that is just me.
As for the United CEO, I don’t think he deserved to die or earned a death. I do think that a compelling argument can be made that government institutions have failed to act to protect human life at the hands of the American healthcare system, and that an individual could see his killing as a justified means to force change and protect American lives. It is the eternal question of when is someone a terrorist and when are they a freedom fighter?
There's martial law and there is civil law. Martial law applies to enemies and in wartime. In this case, killing enemies like Bin Laden is acceptable.
However, in civil law, for the state to kill someone it has to be done through the courts. There is evidence given on each side. Killing someone without this is not justice.
People talk as if it is so obvious UHC CEO was responsible for the deaths of many people but he never got to make his case. That's not justice at all.
I‘m talking about justice and what is legal and what is just are two different things.
Is it just a child rapist, who there is video evidence commuting the crime, gets to walk free because they can’t find the victim to testify in court? And yes, that is the law in some countries. The uk had to wait for someone to come back to the uk because they could convict without the victims but the country he committed the crime couldn’t.
And it’s only not obvious that he‘s responsible for a lot of pain and suffering when you ignore the facts. The accused doesn’t need to give their side of the story for people to know what happened.
> The accused doesn’t need to give their side of the story for people to know what happened.
There is always a defense in court. This is not necessarily the defendant explicitly testifying. That's what I meant by the defendant making their case.
Justice can fail in the courts, I agree. But you can't have justice without (a) an authority with the power to judge, usually the state, and (b) a court proceeding where evidence is weighed.
If you say the UHC CEO killing was justice, then you must, to be consistent, allow for other such killings. Should all healthcare CEOs now be knocked off?
Only about a quarter of the world's countries have the death penalty so even if "many people believe that's a good example of killing other humans", most do not. While I abhor the nature of privatised healthcare in the US, I think judging—and, certainly, killing—people based on potential indirect harm they've caused is a very slippery slope.
I don’t know of a single country without a military nor a country that doesn’t allow law enforcement to use lethal force. So your statement that most people don’t think they are valid examples of a good killing of someone is disingenuous.
But my point was about justice and if we think there is a point someone deserves to die. If we say there is, which I think it’s clear, there is. The whole question about people being happy is about them being happy that they‘re seeing justice. But you tried to side step that.
Also, on the death penalty, I don’t think it’s ever gone to a vote where the people decided. So saying most people are againist the death penalty sounds hollow.
A kind of justice that hasn't ben particularly just in the past, which is why vigilante justice isn't legal. The point is to not have citizens deciding to carry out their own idea of justice. That's for the state, which in a democratic society, we vote on, they pass laws which judges interpret and so on.
Because we can't trust everyone to deal out their own idea of justice without it turning into endless blood feuds and partisan killings. Not to mention all the lynchings and witch hunts. This doesn't even bring up the fact that most individuals don't have the resources or motivation to carry out a proper independent investigation. So then the wrong person gets hung by an angry mob, or beat to death by a family member of the victim.
Brian Thompson was CEO for all of 3 and a half years. He was also only about 50 years old, I don't think he's quite the bond villain you want him to be.
I don't follow your reasoning, 3 years is a significant time. Are you saying that you need to be above 70 to become a "bond villain", haven't seen that movie.
But in any case he was working for United since 2004, according to Wikipedia.
The actions of his company —which he led and dictated policy for— can be considered evil by a reasonably dispassionate measure - they deliberately caused undue suffering or shortened the life of countless thousands of vulnerable people.
I (obviously) don’t support vigilante justice, and felt somewhat sad when Hussein and Gadaffi were hanged/lynched because despite their evil, I’d rather we don’t treat human beings like that.
But I don’t think it’s hyperbole to consider the actions of this CEO and his company in the same breath as such evil tyrants; and as such, I can understand why many might be happy about what took place, especially if they had personal animus with the company.
> But I don’t think it’s hyperbole to consider the actions of this CEO and his company in the same breath as such evil tyrants
But it is. Tyrants round up women and children and execute them. Healthcare is more complicated because you have multiple causes at play: the health conditions of patients, the hospitals and what they bill, and the insurance companies.
Money is a big factor here. People talk as if insurance companies should spend unlimited resources on every person. I understand the resentment over wealth inequality, but someone recently calculated that the top 4 billionaires could only support healthcare for everyone for 3 months. Money is not an infinite resource. Rationing is unavoidable.
But I get that there is a problem. Automatic denials and denials over treatments that have clear and significant benefits are a problem, absolutely. And the system could run more efficiently. But we also can't avoid death due to old age or sickness. Nor painless death.
But we can avoid murdering people in the streets in cold blood.
When people are tired of a system and the powers that be, they take action into their own hands. I'd rather a few dead CEO's and a renewed zeal among the populace to address these issues, then roll over like a dog.
> But it is. Tyrants round up women and children and execute them.
That's just a difference in methods.
> People talk as if insurance companies should spend unlimited resources on every person.
You're right that US healthcare is a total mess (that's a much bigger area for discussion) but that doesn't mean that it's therefore okay for insurance companies to deliberately trade people for profits. That's literally what they do. Seriously, they could choose to make less profit, or pay lower salaries, and treat patients proportionally better. (And of course, as we all know from the reporting in the past week, UnitedHealth is the worst of all in the US for treatment denials.)
> But we can avoid murdering people in the streets in cold blood.
I totally agree; but that wasn't the argument I was making.
This overall dynamic has become very concerning to me- people have sorted themselves into echo chambers online that dehumanize anyone not in their group- to the point of justifying murder for just for not being in their specific group. This has happened universally across the political and ideological spectrum. Parts of Reddit for example has a seething hatred for anyone elderly “boomers” and/or well off “billionaires and landlords” with lots of extreme essays on why people in these groups should be systematically harmed or even executed becoming well liked. Anyone adding nuance to the discussion is attacked- empathy and nuance are labeled as themselves evil. Everything is based on a cartoonishly oversimplified model of the world with pure good and evil actors- not understanding that unfair outcomes are most often simply the banal result of bad planning and locked in structures that appear organically and can persist even when everyone involved wants them to change but can’t coordinate well. This dynamic is repeated everywhere and not unique to just the right or left. Nothing good will come off this.
This is a spot-on description. The locked-in banality seems to be the source of fuel for many issues people are taking offense with. Housing cost too much? Oh well. Food costs too much? Oh well. Medical costs too much? Oh well, etc. etc.
There doesn't seem to be many release valves other than "accept your fate" especially when you have seemingly little control over your own fate.
When you have a complex locked in problem that most people genuinely already want to solve, it can be solved with good leadership- someone needs to have a clear and workable vision and get all of the players organized to collectively act at the same time.
One doesn't need to be a politician to do this, but just as an example Obama was able to do this to make some improvements to the US healthcare situation.
Unfortunately, the people most affected by these problems are probably not in a position to acquire the knowledge and skills to lead the entire field to a better solution like this.
It's a real reminder of how little sympathy people can have about people who they consider the enemy or the "other". I'm almost certain nearly all of the people celebrating the murder believe that they're good people and believe in justice too. Humans are so flawed. And I'm not suggesting for a moment I'm above it. I've often noticed how I don't care as much as I should when someone I dislike is harmed or suffers injustice.