While it’s very unlikely that someone has a definitive answer, this question popped into my head after the assassination of the UHC CEO and it’s been bothering me that I can’t shake off this feeling that more is likely to happen (maybe not in higher frequency but potential).
Usually I could provide counter-arguments to myself in a realism/(should I buy apples or oranges comparison) kind-of sense but this one I feel more unsure about.
I wish I had more diverse exp in systems analysis as these kinds of questions that linger in my head really irritates my OCD brain as I just want to know what’s the most likely answer.
I certainly hope not, given how an “eat the rich” society generally becomes an “eat your children” society in short order.
as an outsider I would think no. you don’t have much political force to cultivate this sentiment. democrats are already acting shocked and devastated for their buddies. they’re on the side of ceos, don’t forget. insider trading party can hardly pretend to give a shit about the average person. they will wait for the flame to burn out. return to business as usual: protecting the rich, losing elections and all that.
Hopefully
Look to history for some answers.
The Denver Post had a opinion piece that talked about how America has seen something like this before.
The Gilded Age, the tumultuous period between roughly 1870 and 1900, was also a time of rapid technological change, of mass immigration, of spectacular wealth and enormous inequality. The era got its name from a Mark Twain novel: gilded, rather than golden, to signify a thin, shiny surface layer. Below it lay the corruption and greed that engulfed the country after the Civil War.
The era survives in the public imagination through still resonant names, including J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt; through their mansions, which now greet awestruck tourists; and through TV shows with extravagant interiors and lavish gowns. Less well remembered is the brutality that underlay that wealth — the tens of thousands of workers, by some calculations, who lost their lives to industrial accidents, or the bloody repercussions they met when they tried to organize for better working conditions.
Also less well remembered is the intensity of political violence that erupted. The vast inequities of the era fueled political movements that targeted corporate titans, politicians, judges and others for violence. In 1892, an anarchist tried to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick after a drawn-out conflict between Pinkerton security guards and workers. In 1901, an anarchist sympathizer assassinated President William McKinley. And so on.
As historian Jon Grinspan wrote about the years between 1865 and 1915, “the nation experienced one impeachment, two presidential elections ‘won’ by the loser of the popular vote and three presidential assassinations.” And neither political party, he added, seemed “capable of tackling the systemic issues disrupting Americans’ lives.” No, not an identical situation, but the description does resonate with how a great many people feel about the direction of the country today.
It’s not hard to see how, during the Gilded Age, armed political resistance could find many eager recruits and even more numerous sympathetic observers. And it’s not hard to imagine how the United States could enter another such cycle.
As John F Kennedy said “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable”
Either we fix this peacefully through the democratic process, or people are gonna riot.
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
No.
The killing of the CEO was a one-off event.
There would need to be readily apparent will to revolt, or a slow buildup of tit-for-tat escalating action/reaction between have-not and the rich…. More killings and active attacks, more police trying to crush any protest or anyone rebelling, harsher and harsher punishment for resistance or protest, and a wealthy class protecting themselves as much as possible while telling everyone (most likely through the press and government they own) how bad it would be for everyone were they to be killed or the system disrupted.
Short answer: no.
One CEO getting shot is not going to change much. The American public’s attention span is two weeks, if that. Another CEO in the endless line of corporate douchebags will take the spot of the murdered one and so on. All the lousy crap that led to our fucking useless health care system is still in place: CEOs with no heart/conscience, health industry lobbyists, spineless politicians for sale to the highest bidder.
For sure, this was an exceptional event, but it’s not going to lead to any lasting change. Disagree with me? Post your prediction for what will change one year from now and let’s see what happens. My guess is NOTHING.
in a year from now, ceo’s will probably have a bit more private security and do less walking around in cities at 6 in the morning alone. I agree with you on the rest though
Go price out the cost of 24/7 coverage for an individual and then think about the need to restrict your life to places that can be easily secured. These CEOs will be jumpy for a few weeks and then life will go on. I predict this is not going to be a trend. We aren’t going to see 10+ CEOs shot a year. If I am wrong about that rate, then the rest of what I said would no longer be true. I believe this will be an isolated incident.
I doubt it. There’s a good chance that we will see copycat killers. That’s a well known phenomenon, but it is not a change in society.
High-profile events can catalyze changes. Violence has been committed. A person died. That creates a sense of urgency. Americans have discovered that there is a broad consensus that something ought to be done about health care. We’ll see.
But I do not see any appetite for a societal change. Americans look at individuals, not at systemic factors. The USA has, by far, the highest incarceration rate in the world. It costs the taxpayer a lot of money to feed and house all those people, not to mention that the rest of society misses out on all the productive labor they could do. The US likes to punish individuals for perceived wrong-doing, but it does not look at systemic factors.
US society now wants more bad guy CEOs punished. That’s not a change and it will not lead to a change. People aren’t even thinking about how the law could be changed to punish these bad guys, or what they personally could do alone or by collective action. They are waiting for heroes.
Americans want V (for Vendetta) to save them while they watch the show. Many think that Elon Musk is Ironman. That’s part of the malaise.
People want individuals to take care of things and so individuals need the power to do so. Well, billionaires are people who have been given the power to take care of business (excuse the pun). And if they don’t do it right, it’s because they are greedy or have some other individual flaw.
Never underestimate the laziness of a disaffected but mostly not quite yet starving population.
tl;dr: Patience, grasshopper.
Aren’t we primarily ok with this guy being assassinated because he was the face of a terrible company not because he was CEO in general? If someone from middle management or even low level worker who personally denied this guy′s insurance claim would have been assasinated, would we suddenly feel sorry?
Also remember that people like surgeons or dentists also can be considered ″filthy rich″ by your average Joe standards.
There is a gulf between people who are paid well for their valuable labor (even into the millions of dollars) and the capital class who primarily profit on the labor of others.
Rent seeking is a big driver of “eat the rich”.
We wouldn’t feel sorry because we wouldn’t know it happened, the only reason anyone is talking about this is because the guy was rich.
“If someone from middle management or even low level worker who personally denied this guy′s insurance claim would have been assasinated, would we suddenly feel sorry?”
Absolutely! Who is making the decisions that lead to a mass loss of life? Not a random worker at the company.
Absolutely! Who is making the decisions that lead to a mass loss of life? Not a random worker at the company.
I would argue anyone participating in the company, even someone washing the floors at night is helping to perpetuate it. Definitely not to the degree of the CEO, but every single worker there is helping to sustain the system.
Not just CEO. I would say he might have known even less of procedures in detail than middle management. You wouldn’t pardon all Nazis just because Hitler was on top, would you? If what you do willingly is non-ethical even if you don’t call the shots, you are just as bad.
Well yeah there is a gradient of culpability but it roughly follows the gradient of power and compensation, which is an exponential curve with the lion’s share of the area under the curve contained within the very very top.
If you want to get technical about it, if the average CEO earns 300 times the average (not the lowest) pay of employees at the company than sure, the average employee has culpability but it is 1/300th or less of the culpability of the people truly at the top and that is likely a conservative estimate of gulf between those two values.
Obviously one doesn’t somehow nullify the other but the structure of culpability here has to be taken into account in order to make an honest analysis.
The system is extremely flawed but works just well enough for a plurality of people to feel like they are getting something out of it. I think it would need to collapse in such a way as to affect more people if there was a chance it would be replaced
I think it would need to collapse in such a way as to affect more people if there was a chance it would be replaced
Reading the tea leaves on this incoming administration, I’d wager that’s a rather large possibility…
Yeah that could happen but we were all predicting total collapse last time and things were mostly just bad as opposed to apocalyptic. Obviously the insurrection is unforgivable but the dude spends most of his time playing golf.
It would be awful if the USA elected someone who was the same amount of evil but actually competent. Like president Xi in China type of person.
Last time, Trump stumbled and fell into the Whitehouse. They weren’t prepared to fuck shit up like they wanted. That’s not the case this time around. Trump was just a Trojan horse to get the fascists in office. My prediction is Trump is getting 25th amendment treatment before the first year is out, and we’ll have a Vance administration that’s beholden to the Thiels of the world.
Really hope I’m wrong.
Yeah it’s not irrational to believe that things can always get worse
I sure hope so with how difficult the rich are making it to just fucking get by in this world. Just having more wealth and power than anyone in the history of mankind isn’t enough for them; they have to make sure everyone else has nothing.
they have to make sure everyone else has nothing.
It ain’t about them having most, it is about us having nothing.
Never forget!
No… Lemmy is, but Lemmy is not indicative of society at large, hell, the Internet is not indicative of society at large.
Look at the last US election, if we were going to Eat the Rich would we have elected a putative billionaire candidate backed by Elon Musk?
That’s what fake news is trying to say…
Also, many people on here stated from the start kamala and her DNC komissars are incompetent imbiciles for which they promptly banned from politics and news subs.
So just because mods silence comments sense reasoning, doesn’t mean that it ain’t out there.
I am surprised people have been tolerating the fuckening so well so far.
We live in a richest country and majority life is shit.
Fake news endlessly tells us to just accept it.
A dead CEO is a good message, it is provocative and it got people going.
School shooting copy cats were many… One can only pray that mentally unstable people can find a better targets going forward since shootings ain’t stopping.
Might as well be these parasites.
