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.
It doesn’t create good outcomes directly. It’s indiscriminate, highly subject to individual biases and extremely destabilizing to society. It’s definitely not a good thing if it keeps happening over a long time.
But when the workers and the owners are fighting at a large enough scale (beyond one or two murders), it forces the government to come in and mediate between the two sides. They must reach a compromise in order to quell the violence. Which means the owner class has to give something up in exchange for the worker class to stop the violence. It’s how we got unions and worker protections when voting and political pressure failed. It’s never the right answer, but at some point it’s the only answer left.
This has never occurred historically. What historical period of workers and owners fighting at a large scale are you alluding to? That hasn’t ever occurred in America. What usually happens is that people vote, and that’s what causes the government to act.
We got unions and workers protections because of voting and political pressure. The modern framework of labor rights in the US was almost entirely created by FDR, who was swept into office by an overwhelming majority of voters as a result of the Great Depression. He passed a ton of legislation as part of the New Deal and utilized political pressure on the Supreme Court when they tried to strike down the legislation. It was strengthened and expanded by JFK and LBJ, two more presidents who were elected with strong mandates from the American people.
There is no scenario where gunning down healthcare CEOs applies any sort of political pressure to anyone. I know that it feels like it means something to the common person who doesn’t understand much about the functioning of government or business. But I can promise you that it means very little to the people with the power to make decisions, aside from reminding them of the necessity of private security.
The battle of cripple creek involved shootings and dynamite explosions between workers and mine owners and was only stopped once the governor stepped in and helped negotiate a compromise.
I wasn’t trying to imply anything close to a full on war, but violence was a lot more common in early clashes for worker rights. Protests and strikes much more frequently were backed by violent behavior including several deaths.
As you go back further in history, essentially everything was decided by violence. But the balance of power has shifted with the rapid advance of technology. Violent behavior is less likely now than ever to make a difference, in my opinion.
And also that’s not what this is. There wasn’t any manifesto, there wasn’t any protest, there weren’t any unions going on strike. It was just one man gunning down another man in cold blood. To what end?