If violence isn't a solution why does the government use it?
The state is nothing but a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. To a hammer, everything is a nail. To a state, everything is a target for violence.
The state even sometimes uses violence on itself.
See: Civil Wars.
I figure legitimate in this instance just means they won't have any reason to expect repercussions for their acts of violence.
The state is nothing but a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence.
Which, ideally, is pretty much how it has to work. The state is, ideally, composed of elected representatives and their appointees. The alternative to violence monopolized by elected representatives is violence distributed to private interests. State monopoly of legitimate violence is not great and I agree with the problems inherent to that, but realistically the alternative seems worse. I'm racking my brain for another system, but I can't think of anything that doesn't devolve to oligarch-led private armies oppressing people.
Aw man. You're gonna bring the "I like hospitals and roads but not taxes" crowd out of the wood work, claiming governments are just warlords with good PR.
It's A solution, just not the preferred one.
Because the US government has more guns than any other entity on the planet. There's no fight it loses.
Afghanistan and Vietnam come to mind.
afganistan, lol
If the us government where to go to war with its own populous it would destroy the very wealth they sought to control.
lol
The Vietnamese peasants and farmers beg to differ.
yeah except for basically all of them
My experience with human rights acrivists is that they only fight for the assholes. Never saw a human rights activist in a foundraiser for children, but talk about murderers and rapists they are all love.
Yeah, because nobody else speaks up for those who’d be railroaded through court otherwise. You don’t ’see them speak up’ because those same people’s voice get lost in the crowd of everyone else’s outrage/support.
It’s trite but true, failure to defend the fringes leaves a smaller and smaller pool of resistance/solidarity:
First they came for the socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a socialist.Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
When you crush folks into the ground for decades, ensure there's no legal recourse, and bleed them for every dollar until the money runs red. It's hardly a surprising outcome.
Here's the song that's been playing in my head last couple days, for no related reason: https://youtu.be/o9mJ82x_l-E?si=y7r9kDydchPhNPAp
Not sure if you know the reason for the song, but here is the info behind it... the actual footage was brutal as well.
A Song Inspired by an Infamous Suicide
Patrick found the lyrical inspiration for “Hey Man Nice Shot” from the January 1987 suicide of Pennsylvania State Treasurer R. Budd Dwyer. It occurred on the day Dwyer was to be sentenced for 11 counts of bribery for which he had faced up to 55 years in prison and a $305,000 fine, according to an Associated Press article from the time. No money was said to have exchanged hands. The public official spent 20 minutes on live television proclaiming his innocence, then shot himself to death. The incident shocked family, friends, and political associates, not to mention the viewing audience.
I saw that video when I was in middle school and found out later in my teens that song was about that headshot. It's a good song.
Wasn't that the guy who was later found to be innocent? He tried to fight the charges, got convicted, killed himself, and THEN they figured out he really didn't do it?
Here's the song I've been thinking about
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm1nCYOZB-s&t=175s&pp=2AGvAZACAQ%3D%3D
I prefer this one for obvious reasons.
This is my jam this week
Seriously though, don't do violence.
Why not? It's a perfectly fair response to the violence perpetuated upon millions of "customers" annually, made "legitimate" by paid off lawmakers. Why should we not be allowed to respond in kind when they're allowed to kill us - just because it's in a more roundabout method? Fuck 'em. I've never been a gun type, but right-wingers have really been getting me to rethink that stance.
I'm mostly saying it because I don't know the mods on this sub or if/when they're gonna start nuking posts and comments like the News mods did. But also, I don't want to be responsible (or at least feel responsible) in the unlikely event that an unhinged person sees this and does something stupid.
Like...look, am I weeping because a man who profited by denying people healthcare is dead? No. Am I happy to see billionaires suddenly afraid of the people they're exploiting? Yes. But does that mean I want people who see this meme to start gunning people down in the street? In all seriousness, no, don't take this as a call to violence.
I know there's some hypocrisy in that statement, but that's kinda the point I was getting at with the post: "I can't condone this action, but damn, it appears to have been very effective at enacting change."
I couldn't have said it better, tho we have yet to see if it's effective at change. It's really too early to tell.
murder is in general bad, fed-posting is inadvisable
also there's a broader boring argument about the dangers of violence being normalized as means of political change, but those arguments are boring
- If you are USA citizen, you have the right to bear arms in case goverment turns evil
- While yiur giv turned incompeten/insensitive instead, it also soldd itself out to corporations.
- Thus, corporations = gov
- Thus, you have right to bear arms in case corporations turn evil
Violence towards the evil power can be good. See the French Revolution.
I agree is justified in many situations, the French revolution ain't a good example for that, namely that it didn't work in the long run with all the Napoleon-ing. The people most adept at violence, who will be most empowered by violence as normalized political tactic mostly don't promote the interests of most people if they get into power. Napoleon and such
also every time there's been prominent "propaganda of the deed" it's backfired by inciting a HUGE state crackdown, Tsar Alexander II and William Mckinley come to mind
though both were relative reformers, which would make this about target selection and not alienating potential allies rather than the use of the tactic in general
Violence is clearly justified. There's only a question of it being the most effective means.
I'm currently reading "Why Civil Resistance Works", which strongly suggests that non-violent means of protest are far, far more effective.
I'm currently reading "Why Civil Resistance Works", which strongly suggests that non-violent means of protest are far, far more effective.
Oh yeah all the peace marches ended slavery. All the peaceful sit-ins that took down the Nazis. I remember all of those... never happening.
Kill your masters and oppressors. Full stop.
Yes, someone who worked at the state department wouldn't have any motive to push for "civil" protest.
The opposition to the south african apartheid did a campaign of sabotage because it wanted to reduce casualties. I would say it was very effective.
correlation is not causation.
repeat the experiment.
Without 25 observations at least we cannot draw conclusions
Depends on your dataset, confidence, and margin of error.
Assuming that 95% of billionaires will act similarly and 750-ish total billionaires in the US, if you want to have 99% confidence and 1% margin of error, you'll need a minimum sample size of around 600.
We really should be thorough. For science.
Hmmmm... I wonder what would cause pharmaceutical prices mysteriously drop?
Denying healthcare = violence
"Violence is bad"
-Sincerely, every country that came into existence from the violent overthrow of the country that existed before it.
violence is bad
It is bad if used as the first approach.
It is fine when used in self defense or when all peaceful approaches have been exhausted in response to oppression and other malicious actions. It does matter when and why it is used.
Agreed. This happened because both parties are bought and paid for by big corpo. Our vote is only on how to address some of the social issue symptoms, if at all, of our crony capitalist economy, and only if they don't meaningfully effect corpo profits.
Example "please leftwing Obama, save us from this for profit healthcare hell!" proceeds to further enshrine for profit insurer leeches in a plan made from the heritage foundation because big corpo demand line go up.
The people don't get a vote on the crony capitalist economy.
When we wish to protest, we're now sent to designated protest zones out of the eyelines and profit operations of those we protest, making such "protests" as effective as masturbation in creating change.
This is happening because they have made us this desperate,and taken away/castrated our non-violent options. Some are apparently finally realizing that our votes and our protest have been manipulated by the capitalists that know they're doing us harm into still technically existing, but no longer mattering.
Gotta hand it to them, it's far more insidious than overt slavery with chains.
I was really hoping we would avoid violence by electing people like Bernie Sanders. Instead it looks like the class warfare will come to violence.
We really have no other option left
🌏👨🚀🔫👨🚀
The legislature and violence monopoly are there to ensure all people have legal recourse instead of needing to turn to violence. If you corrupt that system and use it to oppress the masses, they become violent.
I neither agree with, nor condone violence, but it does not surprise me at all. Just surprised that it took so long.
Violence from the masses requires the masses to feel like they are starving, sick, and dying with no way out except death. We have been slowly accelerating towards that violence for a while now.
Watch for an increase for those CEO's, (at least insurance and pharmaceutical CEOs), to have much increased budget for private security measures. Both in surveillance and personnel. I think we will start to see more 'black limo caravans' like the the POTUS moves around in. And being surrounded by people in black suits with guns openly visible. They will do whatever it takes to stay alive and be evil.
The next question is: how long before politicians start becoming targets?
If it works it works. Humans have been using as an effective way to accomplish things for millennia.
The current capitalism overlords may not be happy when it's used the other way around to what they are used to.
"Violence is a precipitation of two sides unwilling to compromise."
- Sun Tzu The Art of War
Humans? You mean every living thing that ever existed?
Maybe if several more CEOs and C Suite suits are murdered in the street, then my insurance rates will only rise by single digits next year.
Violence gave us (the US) freedom from being a colony, freedom from slavery, workers rights, women's rights.....wait a minute.
Why do we get told to not do violence again? Seems like we just need a little bit of organized violence and we can solve problems.
Because violence is a tragedy and in an ideal world there would be no need for it. However, fewer and fewer people these days can pretend we live in an ideal world.
Violence is the one true power from which all other powers are derived.
For legal reason I wish to say that I don't advocate violence. I also say that, I really think this was the only way this was going to happen.
Billionaires only do the right thing if it's profitable or if they're afraid.
I don't want to advocate violence too, but there's going to be a next CEO, and somebody must keep renting bikes.
I want to advocate for violence, I'm not going to participate but violence is the only way for change sometimes
The best alternative is that we all vote in a government for the people that looks after the people and makes laws to bind these corporations from taking advantage of people locked into their systems.
Obviously, we're a long LONG way from that happening....
Violence is neutral.
Human nature is bad.
When someone is violent to someone else and doesn't need to be violent, they are bad.
When someone unintentionally wrongs someone, you try to settle the situation without violence in a way that is fair to both parties.
When they don't settle or they keep wronging people, you need to escalate.
When the person wronging the people is in a place of money and power, and you cannot escalate, there should be consequences.
I'm not a big fan of vigilantism, If the world ran that way, we'd have a lot of innocent deaths. But if the government and laws don't protect the people, stuff like this happens, or at least it logically should. If anything, I'm kind of shocked this isn't more commonplace.
“Your health insurance doesn’t want you to know this one cool trick!”
Ah, good. So the corrupt, evil, and greedy tactics of health insurers are finally mitigated to... checks notes oh, to what they were last week.
You know they're sitting on a wish list of awful policies while they're waiting for this to blow over so they can implement them when we aren't looking. Fuck that.
"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"
~ Asimov
And here we are, nailed to the fucking wall. I'm fine with expanding this "incompetence".
I feel like Asimov's statement has to be couched in some larger discussion. Taken in a vacuum, I can see some merit, but I can't say that I completely agree with it. Incompetent in what aspect? I feel that his quote ignores intention. For some, violence isn't something that they're resorting to due to a failure to communicate through conflict, it is the preferred tool for the job. He comes off a little condescending and armchair intellectual-y here. I prefer the Sun Tzu quote someone mentioned earlier in the thread, "Violence is a precipitation of two sides unwilling to compromise."
yeah I love Asimov but the quote is stupid. What is a slave supposed to do to it's master? Write a strongly worded letter? Beg for others to save them?
Violence absolutely makes sense when there's no diplomatic solution and unfortunately quarter into the 21st century - where we should have personal robots and moon bases - that is still a pretty big issue.
The M4A movement was absolutely incompetent if you compared it to health insurance Super PACs. It was basically a bunch unpaid volunteers, many with their own medical debt, against fully salaried lobby groups paid for with our premiums, our denied claims.
So like, one rough day, and I mean really rough? Sounds familiar, wait it's coming back... dictator but only on day one - that kind of thing?
This was self defence. Insurance companies conduct violence on a grand scale. The adjuster just defended himself.
Don't do violence
This wasn't violent. It was calm and deliberate and it really seems like what Brian wanted with how he led his life. Seems like a lot of other CEOs of insurance companies and other hyper predatory industries are likely a bit jealous of Brian getting the result they all seem to be aiming for with their own calm, deliberate actions in life.
Also, the stock went up, so weird that we aren't really celebrating the boost to shareholder value - again, this was the endeavor that Brian committed his life to. He'd be overjoyed to have made an additional $7million on paper for man also worth $14 billion in family wealth.
Did you think it was easy for Brian to sign the death warrants of tens/hundreds of thousands of people? Through a lot of indirect action and often while enjoying a very lovely omikase sushi lunch with a different chef flown in from Kyoto each day to prepare? No. It wasn't easy. But you know what, he rolled his sleeves up and he did it, because that's just the kind of man he was until he was shot in the back of the head.
Hope you all have a good day at work today with your own decisions, remaining CEOs, board members of predatory industries and random billionaires. We know you'll stay focused on doing the most valuable thing with your time today
You couldn't be more wrong. I think he was actually shot in the chest, the rest seems like a solid assessment tho
Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield reverses decision… for now. They’ll wait a month and then introduce it again.
Except when it isn't.
Well, I definitely can't agree with that...in writing.
I don't know why you chose the title you used. I would've upvoted this post but i couldn't because of the title. Violence absolutely is the right course of action in certain circumstances. Violence should never be used first, but once all non-violent means have been tried and failed to correct a grave injustice, then violence becomes the appropriate action for any moral person.
If you do nothing while you watch a murderer kill an innocent person, then part of the guilt falls on your hands. As the saying goes "the only thing necessary for evil to triumph, is for good men to do nothing."
It goes to show how morally bankrupt these people are that it takes the fear of death being out into them to get them to do something even remotely good/ethical.
It also unfortunately proves, once more, that violence can absolutely be the solution.
This is HORRIBLE! Now CEOS might Fear for their LIVES and in Turn make Decisions that HELP US! That's SICK! We should let them KILL US without Consequence!
It's self-defence.
Its Afraid.
I wouldn't call it violence, I would call it a justified use of force.
Haiii helloo I'm a bit OOTL and I don't live in the States.
I hear this CFO got killed and that the health insurance company was exceptionally awful. But I don't understand the time limit on anesthesia part. What time limits? What's that about? Like "you only get anesthesia for the first day you're hospitalized" time limits?
Basically, BCBS was only going to reimburse the amount of anesthesia that government medical agencies estimate a procedure requires. So, an appendectomy is estimated to take an hour, but your surgery takes an hour and a half, then you're on the hook for the anesthetic costs for the last 30 minutes. There was a lot of backlash to that decision, and I guess they're taking backlash pretty seriously...for some reason.
So now you can go bankrupt over something that happened while you weren't even conscious?
What the fuck
I see I see. Awful. Thanks for all the answers
Fucking hell... Don't tell me whoever wrote that policy isn't fucking evil. You cannot be a normal human being and come up with such cruelty.
They were considering putting a time limit on the anesthesia they would pay for during procedures. Have a complication and the surgery runs long? Guess you're going to be in intense pain.
I think it would be the other way around: the doctors don't stop giving you anesthesia if the surgry goes long, but now you wake up to it costing some extra thousands of dollars.
You know how in many industries there is a standard amount of time something takes and that determines the standard cost? Like it takes .5 work hours to change your oil so they charge .5 of labor + cost? Well, as I understand it, the plan was to limit the amount of anesthesia they'd cover based on the standard/expected time a medical procedure would take.
"In other words, if a procedure takes longer than expected, patients may wake up to an unexpected bill." https://www.prevention.com/health/a63104965/blue-cross-blue-shield-anthem-insurance-anesthesia-time-limit/
They proposed only paying for a certain amount of anesthesia during surgery, ie you are getting a kidney transplant you only get 45 min of anesthesia the rest wouldn't be covered.
I made a large collection of screenshots from Facebook of people who had their claims denied by United Healthcare today if you want to really see violence.
Damn, I've heard that healthcare sucks in the USA but I didn't expect it to be that bad. This is just heartbreaking.
If anything, this assassination made people like me from countries with functioning healthcare systems more aware of how it could've been in the bad timeline.
I tried to find a similar collection from other health care robber companies, but they didn't seem to be as brutal as this.
Aggressive negotiations
Violence is what bought Americans every right we have. Violence is always the answer to solve unjust systems.
Only in Connecticut
I'm not saying to track down do what this guy did to huge multi-hundred-billion dollar CEOs, but it's hard to say that it doesn't work.
Yeah, that's about what I'm getting at.
I mean history is ambiguous about it, but it usually tends to be more bad than good. Usually.
Depends on how far back you go. We're smart because we're predators.
🍽🍽🍽🍽🍽🍽🍽
At best, this will cause insurance companies to spend more on PR, and maybe make some small token changes they can use as headlines.
To most governments and some private citizens, violence is a tool
Violence against the powerful begets fascism. Did violence work for Native Americans? Did it work for Palestinians? Did it work for the original antifa (you know, the ones who died in concentration camps)? Violence only works if you have more guns than the other side. If you don't, stop and figure something else.
Worked for the IRA, OG Rednecks, and Zapatistas. The fact of the matter is that you dont need more guns only more intelligence and a willingness to make the ones you are targeting bleed far more than you ever could.
Worked for the IRA, OG Rednecks, and Zapatistas.
Give me a specific example of how violence worked for any of these. I'm not sure what you're referring to with OG rednecks, but the IRA (as of 1997) abandoned violence because it failed to reach their goals and just angered the people they were supposed to be fighting for. EZLN only took up armed rebellion for a brief moment and never really tried to engage in battle, focusining on peaceful activity since the mid-90s.
a willingness to make the ones you are targeting bleed far more than you ever could.
The problem there is that the ones being targeted make a ton of money for what they're doing, and can avoid this sort of problem by just being a little more careful. Meanwhile, there's not that many people willing to risk prison and death to express their disdain for corporate healthcare.
