United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot on Dec. 4, 2024. The public response was generally not sympathetic.
The public response was generally not sympathetic.
The words they use are an attempt to weaken the impact of the hit. The public response wasn’t sympathetic, it was generally celebratory.
The elite cannot fathom being anything other than better than those below them. Deserving. They “got theirs.”
Maybe it was the significant amount of lead in the atmosphere for a long time that caused widespread brain damage, but it’s so obvious how disconnected from reality they are. Thompson’s death highlighted that reality applies to them too, and they can’t handle it.
I would like to believe people are poisoned and that excuses their idiocy, but approximately 15% of humans seem to be hardcore authoritarians by genetic lottery. They will believe that wealth and power are evidence of merit, no matter what. We just have to learn to work around that.
“When I was growing up, CEOs didn’t make millions more than everyone else in the company. I think we have to reflect on why there’s so much anger and do something about it.”, said someone who will do absolutely nothing about it.
US income distribution is on the same level as fucking Russia. Bring back the tax brackets from the 1950’s and 60’s.
It’s different people. Those in US still own real things and do something with them to get such incomes.
Those in Russia steal.
In other words, in USA connections are means to help actual power and tools to actual power. In Russia it’s the other way around, actual power is all dependent on connections, which ultimately all go to one ruling group.
It’s nowhere as bad. But it will get as bad as Russia, of course, if Americans don’t learn something.
Hahaha. Just because it’s “legal” here doesn’t mean it’s not stealing. Taking billions in insurance premiums and then spending it to lobby to make it harder and harder to qualify to receive money for a claim is “legal” but so unethical and morally bankrupt that a guy just killed a CEO because of it and the entire country just shrugged and said “Yeah that’s about right.”
It’s legal in Russia too at this point. That’s not what I mean. Wealthy people in Russia own nothing really - they are just pockets of Putin. Less wealthy people are just elements of various mechanisms, legal and not, able to steal according to their status. Less wealthy than them - those who do honest business, but pretend the competition is not stifled by various invisible limitations by connections. The lower it gets, the more it is like normal stuff, but one can feel that something is wrong even arriving from Yerevan to Moscow, and Armenia is quite oligarch-owned too.
In Russia there are no CEOs to kill. People in such positions are kinda normal and everyone knows where real power lies, and those holding it can’t be so easily caught.
I misunderstood the core of what you were saying. Thank you for explaining it like this.
Dude, you have a self selecting Elite in the US and most other countries. It is the same shit. How many “rags to riches” stories still happen? And these ultimately also involve the right connections at the right time.
Look at the lauded “started in a Garage” tech billionaires.
Bill Gates?
His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors of First Interstate BancSystem and United Way of America. Gates’s maternal grandfather J. W. Maxwell was a national bank president.
At age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school.[14][15] When he was in eighth grade, the Mothers’ Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School’s rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the students.[16] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest.
Zuckerberg? Haward student
Bezos? Princeton and then various banks, albeit his family background actually was lower/middle class.
Musk? Fucking apartheid mine owners.
Really? It feels worse than Russia.
You haven’t been to Russia.
Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.
“…and that’s a good thing, so we’ll see to it that it remains that way. Divide and conquer.”
That’s almost the exact qoute in my clipboard, and pretty much my response.
Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.
They will have bigger issues to care about. the quiet part said out loud.
How can you be so oblivious? When you’re the biggest issue people have, then you get to act all indignant when people deals with their issues.
They have bigger issues to care about.
Issues caused mostly by CEOs.
I mean… I wouldn’t be too unhappy to see some rage directed towards the board of directors.
They aren’t oblivious, they’re just relying on the operation of our society and their personal and organizational power to protect them. They don’t give a fuck, and they don’t want to give a fuck.
And the bigger issues are to keep a roof over their head and food on the table. Because of said CEOs.
Well, corporate America is made up of hardworking Americans who do their best to reward the investors, and many times those investors are pension funds
Ah yes, every day I wake up to go to work just to do my best to reward the investors. Not because I need to pay for living expenses, just because I love pleasing the investors.
JFC these people are living in a fantasy world.
It’s fortune magazine, so yeah they’re full-on delusional in their pandering to “business leaders.”
“A-are we the baddies?”
This was at the end of the article Forbes presented me with:
Do you have what it takes to make it to the C-suite? Learn how Fortune 500 CEOs overcame surprising obstacles on the road to the corner office…
I don’t want to make it to the C-suite. That sounds awful. I want to help specific people solve problems they have helping other people.
Do other people think like this? Like they want a corner office and a big car? Am I that fucking abnormal that this sounds like a death sentence to me?
“suprising obstacles” lol as soon as it gets hard these fuckers just fuck off to a new ceo position at a different company.
And the only thing hard about being ceo is making decisions that suck for your own employees like cutting back homeoffice or fire/rehire and not have a bad conscience. But since these fuckers dont have any moral or loyalality anyways it isnt hard for them at all.
Actually a lot of “normal” people do want that.
And many even not very “normal” people may easily lose their mind thinking they have the opportunity to become powerful.
Maybe I’m more spider than man but with great power comes great responsibility and I recognize I’m not mature enough for that.
Yes, but you are not in a situation where you can have that great power and can’t be certain until then.
I’ve had a small amount of power and the responsibilities were enough that I never want any power again.
Do you have what it takes which is also known as inherited wealth
I don’t want that. I want enough to live my life and nothing extravagant.
Lemmy tends to have skewed perception of such things. Truth is, most people want money. As much as possible in as short time as possible. There’s a multitude of reasons, from wanting a luxurious life, to simply wanting to not have to worry about the money or to retire early, but pretty much everyone wants money. Look at how many folk join the lottery.
Hell, most of Lemmy wants student debt to be forgotten. That’s gaining money, just in reverse order. Same with distributed wealth etc.
World spins around money, no matter how you look at it.
But sure as hell I wouldn’t like to be in a place I hate to earn it. :/
Truth is, most people want money. As much as possible in a
It’s not unreasonable to aspire to not having money worries, the stess of it is literally a medical issue eg not having to worry about meeting mortgae or rent payments, a mechanical breakdown on a car, or paying for a dental emergency, a broken limb, or buying a new pair of shoes, replacing your laptop etc.
Much past that is based on envy and that’s where it becomes toxic with wealth inequality. It’s human nature to feel envy, you can fight it but its inate in all humans, the ONLY solution is to recognise that and to remove it by removal of inequality. The inevitable end result of not doing that is the guillotine, social instability, or in this case a bullet.
However… :) theres a whole other issue of the people in the first paragraph, who see themselves as the “everyday volk”, being incredibly unequal to the other 90% of the world. So there’s an irony there that they need to use force to preserve thier own status quo, much like the C-suite rely on force to protect their status quo (police, army etc) . You see this play out in anti immigrant and refugee hostility, build a wall etc
Of those people who want more money to afford a comfortable life, it is much more rare to be mentally ill enough to want to be a billionaire and that is what is being discussed here really.
And on the topic of wanting more money to afford a comfortable life, that mostly exists also because achieving this comfortable and fear free life is made more harder by these billionaires who view services which should be basic social rights as sectors that they can squeeze money out of.
Wanting to be billionaire is not to be mentally ill. Who doesn’t like power without responsibility? Whatever moral framework you’ve got, most folk wouldn’t subscribe to when given option to be billionaire. Sorry, but that’s reality - power makes people drunk, and it’s only natural for us to want power - power to make our families and friends live better, to make people we despise grovel, to have all we want. It takes discipline and ideals to veer off into helping everyone.
And I agree with the lofe being made harder being the reason, but it doesn’t really apply to original comment I replied to.
sociopaths and children is who. have you ever been in charge of something important? something that actually matters to a number of people? if it turns into a power trip you need to grow the fuck up. it should be a humbling experience, that many people are relying on you take care of them in one way or another.
and to make people you don’t like ‘grovel’ is just maintaining a cycle of violence.
Every time I get a promotion I’ve had more and more distance between me and doing the actual work I get paid a lot more but I hate it. I have very little job satisfaction because the time scale of the things I’m working on has gone from days to months. Most of the time I just feel like I’m getting nothing done and it’s incredibly frustrating.
You guys are getting promotions?
People who read Forbes do.
I think large parts of humanity still desires enormous amount of money and are willing to spend their lives focusing on it.
It’s because money gives what people actually want - safety, respect, admiration, power, freedom etc.
They’re calvinists believing: the greater the wealth, the greater the morality. Taking it to its extremes is the point as is the cruel structural violence.
Gleefully looking forward to the US not learning anything from this and moving on to the next gotcha moment! Seriously, the ship’s slowly sinking and I’m buying stock in popcorn and booze.
It is paywalled.
This thread is an #ad.
On the house, internet stranger❤️
A.I. CEOs here we come
I betcha the server the AI ceo is hosted on can be shot up.
Nah, just get a hose
“When I was growing up, CEOs didn’t make millions more than everyone else in the company. I think we have to reflect on why there’s so much anger and do something about it.”
Only one of the 11 anonymous CEO responses gets it. There’s constant brainwashing in America (fortune.com is a literally part of it), that wealthy people made good decisions and were smart so they deserve every penny they make off the backs of everyone else.
This ruse might work in an economy of the past with fairer tax rules, better social mobility (for cis white males at the time), and industries where the consumer-company relationship aren’t counter to each other. With healthcare, it is plainly obvious that the money going to the executive is from people dying and sick people being denied care, forced into debt and bankruptcy, exploited for this product with extremely inelastic demand. Every minute they waste of your time keeping you away from your treatment is more dollars to them. That’s why people are upset at United, and aren’t upset about CEOs of these types of industries being murdered.
The country’s residents’ health should not be a commodity to be sold.
“People are in disbelief that they would be making this kid into a hero,” he told Fortune.
Attending a conference for CEOs in New York this week, just blocks away from the site of the shooting, George found that many were shaken and deeply concerned by the reaction to Thompson’s killing. “They’re having plenty of meetings right now to discuss beefing up security,” he said of the business leaders, even as some question how much security coverage is enough. People are asking themselves, “‘What does that say about our society? Where’s our society going?’” George said.
So they’ve learned absolutely nothing.
Plenty of meetings to beef up security. How about plenty of meetings to understand how your greed has caused this? They sound one logical leap (that they are unwilling to make) away from understanding exactly what the problem is.
The “what does this say about society” question bugs the shit out of me. It means that our society is sick and tired of being the only rich nation in the world where getting sick or injured will bankrupt you. If these people were truly concerned about the good of society, they’d quit sucking us dry for every dollar that they can and would advocate for a better system.
Absolutely. The entire article makes it clear that they don’t even have an inkling of what it’s like to have to worry about your health or how much money you have.
It would be hilarious if there were a law requiring healthcare CEOs to use the lowest tier health plan of a competitor which denies the most claims and bar them from self-financing any procedures while legally requiring them to use the same customer support as everyone else. They would face jail time if they accept preferential treatment on account of them being a healthcare CEO.
For other CEOs there would need to be a different approach. They would be given a choice: pay the full amount they owe in federal taxes or personally finance the room and board, food and necessities, healthcare including mental health, substance abuse treatment and dental for homeless people until the amount paid is two thirds of what they would otherwise pay the IRS.
It also bugs the shit out of me because how long have children been being murdered in school in a mass shooting epidemic, but now that the rich are being killed that’s what makes them ask this? Our society has been in bad shape for a long time
We live in a society!!
That’s a bridge too far for them, especially with particularly oligarch friendly policies of the incoming US administration.
That’s what makes it sooo good, they think they just got the keys to the kingdom but forgot the all the residents can bite back at any time.
They literally can’t see the light for all their wealth because they’re calvinists believing: the greater the wealth, the greater the morality.
Elysium
Have been thinking about that movie quite a bit since all this went down, but don’t remember it in great detail. Might be worth a rewatch.
All I can think of is a TED talk I saw where the speaker had given some presentation to a bunch of billionaires and had some q&a, and one of them who had built a bunker for themselves asked him how they could prevent their security team from turning on them in the bunker.
The TED talk guy responded “Be kind to them?”
And the Billionaire said “But where does that end?”
I’ll try to find it so I can link it.
EDIT: Found it!
Wow, that was actually an extremely insightful conversation. Thank you for going out of your way to share it!
That video was freakin amazing and insightful!
You should make this it’s own post so more people can spread it
The guy is called Douglas Rushkoff and he wrote a book on the subject called “Survival of the Richest: Escape fantasies of the Tech Billionaires”.
I don’t think it was a ted talk, I’m pretty sure it was a seminar put on specifically by the billionaire class asking this guy how best to navigate societal collapse with their vast amount of resources.
This I believe was one of the exchanges at that event.
What’s incredible to me is that they don’t realize that societal collapse will render their resources more or less worthless. Their options are the same as everyone else’s: get a bug out plan, be ready to abandon all belongings, etc. What are you planning to do to keep your bunkers stocked past the first month? How will you pay your security if your banks are gone or your currency is worthless?
Exactly. These people don’t think rationally. They truly believe they’ll have a group of sycophants who will do anything they say because they had them all this time before.
When shit hits the fan, you need to be the only one with the keys to the shock collars. You need to basically become Batman.
You’re right, though I was first introduced to the story from the guy telling it at a TED talk. I phrased it poorly :p
And it’s funny because the answer is build an egalitarian compound where your share of the labor is the funding. That’s it. If the guards see it as how they contribute to a shared community then they’re not going to turn on their boss
I’ll try to find it so I can link it.
Oh god please do.
I managed to find what I was thinking of, but it concludes with a totally different line about them than I remembered. I think @neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com is right, and the “where does that end?” quote might be from a segment in a Robert Evans podcast.
Thank you!
Wait! I found it! It was the same guy from the TED talk, but on a different podcast!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nS3-dQen-YM
relevant part at 4:20
You rock!
I’m pretty sure it was the same guy who did the “it could happen here podcast.” Then they were like, can we put shock collars on the security guards. Stuff like that.
Robert Evans? The man is a national treasure.
If you haven’t heard his miniseries “Behind the Police” (ironically a four episode special in a much longer running serial podcast called “Behind the Bastards” which is not only about police) I strongly recommend it.
Because CEOs are a symptom.
The problem is our investment economy that focuses only on the stock prices continually going up. It’s literally an unsustainable system.
If a CEO puts their personal safety over the investors, the company gets a new CEO.
They’re not the one really making the worst decisions, they’re the ones who agreed to take a shitton of money to be the face of the company and take all the blame.
CEOs don’t get paid for the work they do, they get paid to be the fall guy.
Still absolutely shit people who deserve zero sympathy, but they’re not the real problem, just a symptom
If a CEO puts their personal safety over the investors, the company gets a new CEO.
How many times will they be willing to get a new CEO before they make changes? How many times will someone accept promotion into that position? I wouldn’t take Brian Thompson’s job for any amount of money right now, would you?
How many times will someone accept promotion into that position? I wouldn’t take Brian Thompson’s job for any amount of money right now, would you?
I absolutely would take the job. I’d do it for a $1 salary even. I would have the power to make sure claims were approved, lower premiums on users, and call out the inequity of private healthcare from the top of the ivory tower. I’d be fired, but not before I was able to make some good happen.
And, in the long term, that wouldn’t even be bad for line go up.
Companies used to invest in their reputation, back when there was that 90% marginal income tax rate.
Fair, but in the context of a company being willing to just replace CEOs every time they have to fire one (or especially when someone shows up to fire the CEO for them, Luigi-style), I think there’s a small number of cycles they would go through before logic would dictate that they need to conduct business differently.
If you made too much good happen, you wouldn’t be fired, you’d be thrown off of a moving train
thrown off of a moving train
It’s called “dying of an apparent suicide” and the authorities can find no sign of foul play. It’s so sad when this sort of thing happens. The company’s thoughts and prayers are with his family.
Ah yes, apparent suicide with two random, unrelated gunshot wounds to the back of the head
That’s the thing, you wouldn’t have the power to do any of that before you were booted out. CEOs do have a lot of power over the board, and the board has power over the company. The net result is that if the CEO pushes too fast or too radically they get removed before any change occurs. As the poster above said, in situations like this the CEO is paid to be the fall guy; the people who wield the actual power are the board members and the large shareholders. The CEO deserves a chunk of the blame for being the face of the organisation and legitimizing it, but killing one, or even a few, off wont significantly change the direction these companies are headed in.
How many times will they be willing to get a new CEO before they make changes
They’d do it on the daily if it makes them more money…
What do you think a CEO actually does?
They listen to what high level management says is best, and then just does whatever brings the stock price up fastet disregarding everything else.
There’s a reason they all get golden parachutes. None of them care past the last board meeting
They’d do it on the daily if it makes them more money…
Sure. They’d run a hundred grandmas a day through a woodchipper, each of them clutching a puppy, if it made them money. However, I am quite sure there isn’t a way that replacing your CEO daily, or even often, makes more money. And yes, I understand hyperbole.
I also understand that the impacts on a company of having multiple CEOs shot in a short period of time, or having multiple CEOs come in, try to be decent humans, and fired for it in a short period of time, would have destabilizing impacts throughout any sizable organization. They would run into problems with manpower and staffing, investment dollars, and generally the ability to do business. It would harm morale and reduce efficiency. And probably a bunch of other things I haven’t thought of in the 3 minutes I’ve been typing this.
The problem is our investment economy that focuses only on the stock prices continually going up. It’s literally an unsustainable system.
Yup, this is the problem right here. Investments are supposed to generate returns, that’s the whole point. But Milton Friedman and Jack Welch decided that the sole mission of any company was to increase shareholder value, and the rest of the world rolled with that. So whenever these CEOs point to their Mission and Vision statements, unless they say “Our only priority is delivering returns to our Shareholders”, they are lying.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value
Economist Milton Friedman introduced the Friedman doctrine in a 1970 essay for The New York Times, entitled “A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”.[5] In it, he argued that a company has no social responsibility to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders.[6]
Meanwhile, we’ve decided that these corporations are people. Psychopaths who have no moral responsibilities to anyone but their shareholders, but people nonetheless.
Exactly. At some point companies need to transition from investment vehicles to institutions
Thus our efforts to make social justice a core condition for profits: fuck people over and get a boycott or protests or a label in media as toxic, and lose customers.
It’s not going well, as a strategy. It requires an educated populace.
I mean, every economic model out there “assumes rational actors,” which I’ve always taken to mean informed and educated. Too many of the masses are neither.
I don’t always agree with what you post, but you’re spot on here.
Yep, we have a word for continual uninhibited growth - it’s called cancer.
Well they did learn one thing though
They finally learned how it is to be a high schooler, having to live under constant fear of murder. I can’t wait to watch C level execs having tondo active shooter drills where they have tonhude under bullet proof blankets.
Mind you, murder is bad, and this murder on this CEO was bad, no matter how you turn it. I don’t want to live in a world where murdering eachother is the only conversation left.
Having said that, it is very gratifying to finally see these out of touch assholes having to suffer the same fear as all little kids in America
Great points!
Mind you, murder is bad
Yes for sure.
and this murder on this CEO was bad, no matter how you turn it.
I don’t want to live in a world where murdering eachother is the only conversation left.
Me neither. Let’s see if they are ready for any other kind of conversation now. OP makes me think they aren’t. Let’s not forget this murder happened because of all the other murders.
Yeah, you missed the point
Teo wrongs do not make a right. The murder of this CEO was still murder. This CEO indirectly murdered thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands and caused untold suffering. He was also apparently already on the hook for tax fraud and insider trading IIRC hearing in a news report earlier this week. He was a horrible man who should spend the remainder of his years behind bars.
That, unfortunately, is not the world we live in and I fully understand why he was shot. That doesn’t make it right, though. I don’t want to live in a world where you can be murdered without judges and juries and due process. We live in a civil society and that means that if you want it done right, everyone deserves a fair trial, even rapists, murderers or criminal CEO’s.
Yeah, I know that the US has a big issue with the justice system being damn near bullshit at this point, still doesn’t make anarchistic vigilante murdering an “okay” thing.
Do you want to live in a move civil society where everyone is treated equal, or do you prefer to live in a post civil society where it’s each for their own and we just murder those that we have a conflict with?
This murder of the CEO, as much as I understand it, is a step in the wrong direction. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the catalyst that will push society in the right direction and the US justice system will be overhauled and made fair for everyone and maybe the government will institute laws that will restrict what companies can do to make it fair for everyone… Doubtful, but maybe. Either way, it still is a step in the wrong direction and I do worry that the US is sliding off into a hellhole it will never be able to dig it self out of. This trump shit will inevitably make it easier for a few to abuse the rest. The few will control the news and narrative, and blame the leftz the immigrants, and at some point more on the left will start fighting instead of talking. Once the scale tips, there is no tipping back. Ask Yugoslavia how well that worked out for them. Oh yeah, millions of deaths later, it no longer exists.
How is that for a kind of conversation?
How is that for a kind of conversation?
It’s fine, if a bit preachy.
It’s not in any way moving the needle on healthcare though.
Yeah, you missed the point
No I didn’t, I’m just not sure I agree.
Maybe, just maybe, this will be the catalyst that will push society in the right direction and the US justice system will be overhauled and made fair for everyone
In which case it would be a net positive.
“Do you want to live in a move civil society where everyone is treated equal, or do you prefer to live in a post civil society where it’s each for their own and we just murder those that we have a conflict with?”
Oh, the first one, absolutely.
But we’re already living in the second one it’s simply obfuscated by an illusion of civility. When the violence is only directed downward, it’s somehow legal and civil, but when it’s directed upwards, they convince the public that it’s wrong.
Some of us disagree with that, and think that mass murderers should be punished even if the law won’t do its job.
Same for stealing.
A company steals millions from their employees? Silence.
A guy stealing from Walmart? Police force everywhere.
its not a new reality dudes. you just did not know.
