[EDIT] Inb4 more people try to suggest that I’m mourning the loss of this scumbag capitalist fuck: No, I’m not sad he’s dead. No, I don’t think corporate murder is acceptable and no, I would not ever rat to police if I knew the shooter and yes, I believe the punishment fits the crimes he’s committed against untold thousands of people. THAT SAID…
I’m not down with vigilante murder or anything because it seems like the slipperiest of slopes toward chaos, but what other option is there in a situation where someone seeks to make an impact in this way? You can’t just beat up evil CEOs and let them go back to work. It would be naïve to expect them to change their ways when faced with consequences for their actions and then promptly let go. It just seems like the chances that it emboldens their penchant for exploitative behaviour and disdain for people in need are too high.
We’re just born into and strapped to this capitalist ride and expected to sit quiet and make these leeches their billions. How else can this cancerous greed possibly be dealt with? Is vigilante murder the only effective option? Honest questions. I’m terribly conflicted and I’m genuinely curious what more reasonable and intelligent minds than mine think about this because I can’t think of an alternative to murder in this case.
Ideally, we wouldn’t have to resort to vigilante killings to level the playing field but I 100% understand that we don’t live in a society where the rich will ever give a fuck about the rest of us or would ever sacrifice their power over us in the name of goodwill.
If violence isn’t a solution then why does the government use it?
This is a very interesting question that would require so much more talk than is proper for a lemmy comment.
I’ll try and make a stupidly short summary:
In political philosophy, it is commonly accepted to define a state as a political community where the government detains the monopoly over legitimate use of physical force.
Basically what allows you to feel safe in such a community - as opposed to a more tribal one - is that you know that you can’t be harmed by your fellow citizen. When you buy your groceries you don’t want to worry that the shopkeeper will beat you up because he doesn’t want to give you change. When you are outside enjoying your sandwich you don’t want to worry about a random guy cracking your head open in order to steal it. You are not worried because you know that their violence would be considered illegitimate, and would be met by legitimate violence.
This only works if everyone agrees to delegate their use of violence to the state, who in turn executes that violence through the appropriate means (police etc) using the appropriate rules. If violence is taken into one’s hands the whole foundation of the political community breaks down, which means that the state has existential interests in prosecuting whoever does it.
States where violence is not really prosecuted are those commonly considered failed states.
Now I know this is rather abstract and the real world is more complex than that, but as I said this would require a lot more space than is available here. But there is your answer: [privately administered] violence is not the answer.
OK I get that, but the social contract has broken down.
“Health care industry” is a horrible, horrible concept. You and I both know that these corporations get in between doctors and patients. Why? Profit. Everyone knows this.
I’m not going to go out and murder a CEO but I’m sure not going to give a shit that this one got murdered. Godspeed, murderer.
I’m with you. I was just addressing the general question, which doesn’t get addressed as much as it should :)
I would rather see the conversation going towards reforming the broken system rather than going in the direction of “fuck the state it’s all broken anyway” which wouldn’t help anybody.
Let’s call this murder an act of political violence. If it’s the first, brutal step towards reform, then it’s one thing and we can “celebrate”. If it’s the first step towards Dodge City (which is the vibes I get from some comments) then there is very little to be happy about.
I would rather see the conversation going towards reforming the broken system rather than going in the direction of “fuck the state it’s all broken anyway” which wouldn’t help anybody.
I mean there are people who want to reform the broken system. They’re sabotaged by the elites on both sides of the aisle, which is why it has continued being broken in the first place.
The threat of violence is the fundamental basis of all political power. Politicians act in self-interest, and will be exactly as corrupt as the people allow them to be.
When you buy your groceries you don’t want to worry that the shopkeeper will beat you up because he doesn’t want to give you change.
True, but it used to be understood that he’d get beaten up if he didn’t give you change. Slowly that bar has been moved to where now they over-charge you, keep the change, and then have the cops arrest you if you try to get help from the institutions put in place to ensure a safe society. Figuratively of course.
But there is the question of whom most people consider part of this political community - people aren’t going to crack each other’s heads open over a sandwich. But over denied healthcare… even in a world where most people support the lynching of these CEOs, you should be safe with a sandwich.
Also government constantly approving selling violence of mass destruction
Killing in the defense of others is a legal defense to homicide.
If the guy were attacking people with a machete, nobody would dream of prosecuting the person who put him down.
The fact that he’s doing it slightly more slowly, but on a massively larger scale should not change anything.
The fact that he’s doing it slightly more slowly, but on a massively larger scale should not change anything.
This is something that I hope society learns to comprehend and act on more effectively in the future.
A lot of today’s huge problems we’ve known about since I was a kid 30 years ago - climate change, corporate greed, housing crisis, immigration, etc. I spent most of my times growing up arguing with adults, having my lived experience questioned. I thought there would be a tipping point when I started working, or paying my own way through life, where the condescension would stop but it never did.
The current older generation has lived longer than any other in history, and they’ve clung to control for as long as possible. Even when younger leaders come in, they’re still trapped in these outdated values—Victorian at best—that keep pulling us backwards. Somehow, they’ve convinced themselves that investors deserve their returns more than people deserve to live. It’s soul crushing.
The current older generation has lived longer than any other in history, and they’ve clung to control for as long as possible
And they’ve used that time to change laws and tax codes to ensure their power and money will pass to their children, forming lasting dynasties who will continue their extortive behavior.
$1000 says Baron Trump will be president someday, no laws required (just idiots)
What a terrible premonition.
immigration
Is it really a big issue or are you just internalizing the language of the oppressing class, putting common people against each other?
The current older generation has lived longer than any other in history, and they’ve clung to control for as long as possible.
And now you’re adding ageism to the mix. It is not old people who are the problem! Keep your eyes fixed on the real enemies and don’t target your exploited fellows.
I think it all boils down to that nebulous concept of “the social contract”. The most naive interpretation of the justice system is that it will provide justice when justice is demanded. It is, after all, called “the justice system”. But what constitutes justice? And who receives it? We have already seen two separate supreme court decisions that state unequivocally that the police are neither obligated to serve nor protect people. We have also seen that young black men are 7 times more likely to be falsely convicted of serious crimes than young white men, so we know that the justice system does not work for all of us. We know that rich people get convicted far less often, and for far shorter sentences than poor people, and we know that the legal system saps the opportunity to acquire generational wealth from those who do get convicted.
It is illegal to shoplift $100 of groceries from a corporation, but it is perfectly legal for that same corporation to drive out competition and then raise prices, in essence stealing from the entire community. It is illegal to intentionally harm someone, but it is perfectly legal for a medical insurance company to deny coverage to paying customers for necessary medical intervention.
When justice is completely out of reach by legal means, the flimsy fiction of the social contract is voided. New York City has somewhere in the neighborhood of 900 murders per year, which means that there have probably been 5 or 6 other people who have been murdered in the city since Brian Thompson was shot. Are the police putting the same effort into tracking the killers of those people as they are into Brian Thompson’s murderer? The reality is that the vast majority of us are intentionally excluded from the halls of power. The American Declaration of Independence makes the bold claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal. Does the present situation in this country feel to you like equality? Because to me, it feels like there is an owner class, and a peasant class, and brother… we ain’t the owners.
The American Declaration of Independence makes the bold claim that it is a self-evident truth that all men are created equal.
The guy who wrote those words was also raping his slaves. It’s always been this way.
If any other avenue existed: it would long have been tried and replicated. They have the judiciary, they have the legislative bodies, they have the senates, they have the presidencies/head of states whatever. There is no influence left except appealing to their literal and undeniable physical humanity
This situation is the result of them facing literally no consequences ever for tons of exceedingly evil shit. It appears to be the only form of justice available
Thats what the comment above yours said.
For now… Eventually the bastards will basically be like D&D liches and can only be destroyed if you find their phylactery: Their consciousness uploaded to a computer kept in a fortified bunker, miles underground.
See: the recent fallout show
👁️👄👁️
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This is fine. Then it would only become necessary to sever their lines of communication. This would take for form of an appeal to the closest human element to not listen to their masters and to not repair any damage that prevents them from doing so.
As to what form that appeal takes, well, people can make up their own minds as the situation demands.
I am down for it. If more of it happens I’ll laugh just as hard every time.
Because fuck em. They’ve spent the last half century recreating The Gilded Age. If now is when the bill comes due. Good. Happy I’m alive to see it instead of just reading about it.
You’re a savage pretending to have morals
I have morals. I have empathy. For the homeless. For the destitute. The poor. The hungry. Victims of war.
For parasites like Brian Thompson I have nothing but vicious mockery and laughter. Fuck them all. May they die screaming.
Edit - hold up, I’m not done.
I am a savage. The product of my environment. An environment that has told me all my life that 30 dead kids every week or two is the price we pay for freedom. That a million dead civilians on the other side of the planet is good and just because we’re the good guys. That the predatory monsters at the head of all these companies that have made life here worse year over year are the smartest and most qualified and that what they do isn’t only legal, but just. That the poor don’t deserve food water and shelter. It’s fine if they starve. Because they didn’t work hard enough or maybe they’re on drugs. That corporations have no responsibility whatsoever to anyone but their shareholders. They deserve everything they can take from us. Because that’s Capitalism and Capitalism is just the best. That women don’t deserve self determination because of a 1700ish year old book of shitty fairytales.
So yeah. [redacted] all the ceos. All the billionaires too. Why should I care? They’re just meat. Fuck em. A few more bodies on the pile. No big deal.
Edit 2 - Same country that handwaves off a goddamned genocide. Funds it, supports it, and tells me it’s not a big deal. 100,000 dead civilians this year. Tells me that I can’t boycott the country using MY MONEY to ethnically cleanse an entire indigenous population.
Two wrongs don’t make a right I’m afraid.
Edti: Like you don’t exactly need to be Kamt to see that setting a precedent for extra-judicial killings isn’t going to end well.
I don’t care if it ends well. I’m just enjoying the ride.
I’m not afraid. I have nothing to fear. When I die the entire country wont celebrate like Ewoks watching the 2nd death star explode.
I could start today and 🔫 my way through the entire fortune 500 and I’d have less blood on my hands than Brian Thompson had. (giggled at “had”)
Got no love for the dude. Clearly wasn’t a boyscout. Also have to admit it was a slick assassination given that they are still at large.
I just feel celebrating it (encouraging it?) is immoral Nihilism might seem appealing but it’s basically just giving up.
Moral. Immoral.
There’s no quantifying it because the opposing classes are not equal. They have the money, police, political support, media support, the entirety of the power structure of this country.
We have numbers, and little if anything left to lose.
Your myopia is truly astounding. They’re both murderers. One murdered to avenge and spare the lives of the many. The other murdered countless individuals for profit. Murder within a legal framework, with a profit motive, is murder nonetheless.
The fact your country resolves every single problem with violence is astonishing. Lemmy has been a cesspool the past few days. You guys deserve Trump - he’s pretty much a personification of the entire country.
- disagree that it’s astonishing. it was baked into our system. it’s expected. it’s overdue, frankly.
- agree that we deserve trump. we voted for him, after all. it’ls going to be interesting, to say the least.
- if you think trump personifies this country having won a plurality of a pathetic voter pool, you’re every bit the idiot he is.
The fuck you think billionaires are?
Bootlickers been so hurt recently haha
… You mean a human?
The main point of any government is a mediator between people.
When the government is corrupt and not only lets the powerful break the laws, but rewrites them in their favor, people realize it.
They stop following rules because they know others aren’t. If someone stops them in the act, they feel innocent because they didn’t complete the act. If no one stops them, they legitimate believe it was allowed, because they see people flagrantly break the rules with no consequences on the daily.
That’s what today’s elite don’t get, they’re stopping the peaceful process we all agreed was better than violence, because they have a monopoly on legal violence. But eventually it just means no one follows the rules, and 99% of us don’t have much to lose these days.
A society that starts acting that way quickly becomes uncontrollable.
Like we saw four years ago, it only takes a relatively small amount of people in one spot to really be uncontrollable. A mob of 5,000 people is just as unstoppable as a hoard of 5,000 zombies. At that point pain compliance is the only thing that can get thru to them, and there’s always a chance the mob fights back instead.
That’s why if cops think the mob has a chance of having guns, they immediately back down.
If BLM had marched with ARs, shit might have changed.
How do you feel about the French Revolution? Storming the Bastille to kill the governor was an act of vigilante murder, and there’s an entire holiday celebrating it.
Violence should only ever be a last resort when all else has failed. But there have been numerous times in history where we consider violence to have been a just last resort.
The hard part is recognizing when it’s truly time for that last resort. I can’t say for sure where the line is drawn. Maybe it can never be clearly drawn in the moment and will just have to be something for future historians to judge.
Before you prick your finger and commit to the contract, lemme remind you it took about a century for France to settle down into a republic and then still didn’t establish some basic rights until the 20th century.
And that century included an attempt to take over the world (by Emperor Napoleon), a bunch of ambitious dictators, the invention of the Piano, and consequently, romanticism and multiple instances in which the guillotines had to be pulled out and heads piled high because the ownership class refused to play nice.
Okay, you’re slightly better informed. Do do some research.
Sign away.
You said do-do lol
Haha. Dodo. They did say it haha.
the invention of the Piano
So the French Revolution led to the career of Billy Joel?
Bo Burnham
The French Revolution and the English post-war (WWII) Cultural Revolution. Yes. Though there were two very important musical technologies. In Paris mid 19th century, the Pianoforte ( soft / loud ) allowed for a keyboardist to express velocity changes, allowing for more impassioned expression (hence the Romantic age), and then a similar thing happened in the mid-20th century, with the electric guitar, the output of which could be run through filters, essentially turning them into early synths.
Mix that with musicians learning and expanding on the blues and we have the Rock-&-Roll revolution of the 60s and 70s.
Ok, but frame some of those same problems in the context of the times and their peer countries. Did France’s rights or republic keep pace, lag, or were they actually ahead despite the turmoil? There were many places with awful monarchs that were effectively dictators. Maybe they were stable dictatorships…and it took global conflict to unseat many of them.
🤓
France was a revolution of a monarchy in a continent of monarchies, who in turn demanded they choose a king, and that was after they were tired of Robespierre’s culty shenanigans.
France refused because they didn’t want to be dictated to by the international community (who again were still feudal lords). Napoleon developed the Napoleonic Code, establishing bunches of civil rights and rule of law, before inventing the Levée en masse (popular conscription) and proceeding to make Europe his personal bitch†
They tried a bit of the constitutional monarchy thing with the Bourbon restoration, but again Charles X went Heritage Foundation on the French and started rolling back rights eventually resulting in the July Revolution of 1830 (more guillotines, more piles of heads).
It wouldn’t be the last.
Note in Russia / USSR, the moment the Red Army won and Lenin started going Communist, Wilson pushed Europe to embargo the union, to never give it a chance. The Red Scare started at the beginning, and was entirely about its threat to King Capitalism. Of course, we’d see the true colors of Capitalism a couple decades later with the Great Depression, and Hoover was glad to let people live in cardboard boxes and piles of paint cans while dying of malnutrition surviving on flour paste. Compared to that, Lenin’s arrangement started looking really good, and FDR’s New Deal, a stopgap to give capitalism one more chance really pissed off the industrialists, who began their plot to propagandize the United States into a fascist pro-capitalism bulwark. That was a pivotal moment in the white Christian nationalism movement that is taking over in 2025.
But I’m pretty sure the far right is going to be happy enough to shoot first.
Going back to France again, it’s much like Nazi-occupied Paris, in which the German Wermacht soldiers were such Karens, and the garrison was so brutal that the French couldn’t help themselves but take action. It started with cutting phone lines, defacing propaganda and slashing tires, but eventually La Résistance organized into a formidable fighting force.
We know ICE is eager to crack heads, typically immigrants and their families, but in Trump’s first term they went after anyone who was Latin enough or simply brown enough. If local law enforcement behaves as the nationwide police unions have been pushing them to, we’re likely to see civil unrest rise up in many states, and then we’ll be one sympathetic dead victim away from riots and Molotov Cocktails.
/🤓
† These days, mostly thanks to WWII, the French are known as cheese-eating surrender monkeys, but historians like to keep in mind that everyone gets their turn in the barrel, and everyone gets their turn on top of the hill.
When the justice system no longer provides justice, justice will be sought elsewhere.
The closest thing to a real answer that i can come up with is to remove money from politics. That itself seems near impossible a goal, but in order to start making better decisions you have to improve the decision making process that got us to this point.
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Taking money from politics is like taking food from cooking. Not compatible.
The whole point of politics is power, influence, assignment of scarce resources. I don’t mean this in a bad way, it’s literally what politics is about: you want your government to make laws that influence your community, to collect taxes and use them in a certain way, to regulate certain things the way you’d like. Without those things politics are meaningless.
Money is just power that you can measure and trade, it will always be part of the equation. Removing money from politics is nonsensical.
Justice Thomas? Is that you on Lemmy?
The whole point of politics is compromise. Finding solutions that the most people can accept.
Compromise is the… point, of politics? Are you sure? At best it’s a mean to an end, and only in democracy. We’re not taking moral judgement here, just what is what.
John: “I think we should install storm drains so Main street doesn’t flood when it rains.”
Jim: “But that will block access to my store for weeks!”
Bob: “And I think it’s a waste of time and money!”
Politics is the process of finding a solution that most of the affected people can agree on. As I see it. The rest is just scale.
There’s few countries where the effectiveness of electoral campaigns are measured in the amount of money raised.
It is possible to regulate the amount of money in politics, there’s plenty of examples.
Party funding and salaries are not “the money” that is in politics, those are peanuts. Do you think Elon musk is interested in a government job because he wants the paycheck?
I wasn’t taking about that at all.
I’m most countries there time of money in politics is way healthier than in the us.
So it’s possible to regulate that better.
Yes but you are talking about party funding. Politicians are not into it for the funding, that’s peanuts.
The relationship between politics and money is already regulated, that’s what embezzlement laws are about. They can be improved, but you’ll find it’s harder than you would think.
Surely decoupling money from politics is not possible, which is what I was answering about.
No I was talking about electoral funding, through super PACs and the like. How individuals and companies can buy their way into politicians favor.
I was talking about that the dollar amount raised during elections is a measure of success. That’s not the case in almost all developed countries. And it’s wrong.
Aha, gotchu now
All I know is that jury nullification is legal and is there for a reason.
but what other option is there in a situation where someone seeks to make an impact in this way?
You can form an organization that gathers evidence and levies lawsuits in an effort to expose and stop their abhorrent practices. You just need to make it your sole purpose in life. It only took Rob Bilott 30 years to get DuPont to stop knowingly poisoning 99.9% of all life on planet earth. DuPont was even fined 3% of their annual profits from a single year. Other than that? Nothing. They have their hooks into the politicians, the legislators, the judges, the regulatory agencies, and the police forces. How do you fight that without making it your entire life’s work?
One would need to forge a dominant unified labor union or labor union network that has the sole purpose of representing the worker. Unions would need the power to cripple a company. It will cost everyone more at first, but it could eventually claw back the salaries of c-level executives.
That is a great question. Thanks for the link. I only know the surface level basics of the DuPont story.
It’s an outstanding movie, yet infuriating, and enlightening simultaneously. Definitely check it out to get a glimpse into the power these companies have, and the destruction they’re willing to wage for profit.
Not to toot my own horn, but I’m a rather intelligent person. I have done a lot of thinking and reading about these problems. I have tried to consider ways that might change their minds without violence and come up with little.
The rich NEED to be afraid of the poor. Or there needs to be no rich. Those are the options for a prospering society.
The rich throughout history have always been afraid of the working class it just usually just shows up in less obvious ways.
The way the wealthy talk about the working class
The way the wealthy always look to divide the working class into camps to fight amongst themselves
The way the wealthy demonize labor unions
The way the wealthy keep education limited and expensive
The way the wealthy use religion and media to drive their idea of goodness and justice
The way the wealthy try to make the working class envious of their wealth so the working class spends their money and time trying to replicate it.
Are all examples of an underlying fear of the significantly larger working class population getting control.
And it is such a winning strategy that it works on them in reverse. The wealthy will do whatever they can to keep their wealth and always try to pile more on because of the fear of being one of them (the working class) that they have demonized for generations.
EDIT: added more examples
thing about people being afraid of something is that it tends to lead them trying to kill it
The poor have been afraid of the system for decades…
We subject to largest psyop in human history tho
Things are changing due to deteriorating socio economic conditions
Things are changing due to deteriorating socio economic conditions
Agreed. When you fear the actions of the system as much as the consequences of inaction, the needle definitely shifts.
There are so many more of us than there are of them that a general strike would bring about swift change without us stooping to their level of harming others to gain and wield power.
Unfortunately, we’d have to stop all the infighting and work together. We couldn’t be bothered to do that for the latest US presidential election, so I’m not sure we’d do it in this case.
I have even less hope that violence and threats of violence will do any good at this point. They have so much money, they can buy invincibility. And that’ll be even easier under the next administration. Vigilantism is a feel-good revenge fantasy rather than it leading to anyone’s life improving. If it was effective it would be much more common. We’ve got the guns in America, but their use has not yet caused a utopia.
I mean the labor movement that lead to humane labor laws was very much violent. Compared to what insisting on nonviolence would’ve accomplished, the modern US is indeed a utopia. As for why, well, count the number of children you know who work in coal mines.
Unfortunately, we’d have to stop all the infighting and work together.
Given all the divisions in our society, it’s remarkable how unified people seem over cheering this CEOs murder. I think we may have unlocked a common cause.
They have so much money, they can buy invincibility.
There is no such thing. Even the secret service drops the ball sometimes. Also, more security means more potential for betrayal. If the demand for security personal goes up, the quality will go down.
Best answer here
Over the last several years, I have had opportunities or at least contemplated opportunities to make lots of money while exploiting others or being a completely useless finance bro.
The thing that keeps me from moving in those directions is moral character. If you can’t bring yourself to bullshit your fellow human and take from them to enrich yourself without providing any real value, you won’t get as rich as a CEO. Think of all those get rich quick YouTubers who do nothing but sell digital bullshit or ebooks about how to sell ebooks or some other digital bullshit to get rich quick.
There are, of course, exceptions, but what did Brian Thompson really do for society? Moreover, what harm did he cause to society?
These people know they are doing the wrong thing and are cashing in on their ability to take from society while enriching themselves. In the context of health care, they’re literally hurting and killing people.
Remember when the arguments against nationalized health care were mostly about how we would have death panels? How fucking ironic.
Yeah it’s so weird that more than 30 countries have managed to implement public healthcare without assassinating CEOs. Mind boggling.
