Comment by toomuchtodo
1 year ago
This is the comment that has been in my head since the news broke, and I feel like we are only at the beginning, like the pause before the first drop of a rollercoaster with the forward looking macro (political and economic tension, broadly speaking). Laws and rules only matter so long as we're all willing to believe they do.
Same here. With as many guns and victims of corporate greed that we have, I'm actually pretty shocked that we don't see this happening as routinely as, say, school shootings.
I wonder if we'd see slightly more ethical behavior from corporations if their C-level staff and board members had to routinely practice lock-down drills because they were getting offed once a week.
Doubt it. They will just never leave their island compounds and other fortresses. There have been many news stories lately of these guys building up compounds and bunkers. Many of them off-shore and entirely unreachable by the general public.
Many of these CEO types never interact with the general public without many armed men around them. I would not expect them to act any more ethical than they currently are.
That won't hold people back.
We've all been watching how effective drones have been in the Ukraine war and there's nothing stopping a motivated individual with nothing to lose from droning a corrupt elected official, a cop who brutalizes innocents or an oligarch.
It's just a matter of time before this happens.
See "cyberpunk", Gibson et al.
The rich will isolate themselves further behind even more surveillance technology, more physical barriers, and, because that is never enough, inordinate amounts of paid thugs.
and what health insurance will they provide to those paid thugs and the thugs' extended families, hmm?
Not so fast, probably just killer bots…thugs are screwed too
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Nah, folks’ll forget about it in a few days and go back to perpetuating or worrying about stuff like trans & immigrant bashing.
Kids can be more cruel than a health insurance company?
I don't know how to write this comment in a way that won't land me in a CIA black site so I'll just start with a disclaimer that this post in no way celebrates or condones any violence, but I wouldn't be surprised if political assassination attempts go up 10-fold in the next 10 years. We already saw two different assassination attempts against Trump during the lead up to the election. You can read my older comments to know my political leanings, I don't like Trump. But wow, I'm genuinely more worried about the stability of our society because of increases in violent acts like this and the inevitable retaliation by the government against all people in the name of "security", than anything Trump could enact.
I wouldn't be surprised if New York passes new gun control laws because of this shooting; I wouldn't be surprised if there's a congresscritter or White House Staffer or judge who's assassinated in the next several years causing some kind of martial law situation. It's scary times we live in right now.
I know you are half-joking, but it shows how worrying things are related to public discourse where you need such a disclaimer at the start of your argument.
The scenario you describe is rather frightening. Let's hope the "CEO class" (for lack of a better term) and the general public will allow reason and ethics to win out.
One thing that is for certain, there should be better legal limits to what companies can get away with. We need our justice system to get involved well before vigilante's start running amok. The US government should have stepped in a full decade ago to reign-in United Healthcare's misconduct and fraud.
>Let's hope the "CEO class"... will allow reason and ethics to win out.
They won't. They're making billions out of others suffering.
>general public will allow reason and ethics to win out
"Ethics". It's a trolley problem... if a person through their actions enables many people to die, is it wrong to kill them?
To paraphrase Chris Rock... I ain't saying he should have killed him... But I understand.
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> Let's hope the "CEO class" (for lack of a better term)
The term you are looking for is "oligarchs"
New York State and City (separate firearms laws) already has some of the strictest gun control laws in the country, requiring permits for purchasing pistols within NYC, concealed carry licenses throughout the state, magazine size limits, etc.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_laws_in_New_York
>I wouldn't be surprised if New York passes new gun control laws because of this shooting; I wouldn't be surprised if there's a congresscritter or White House Staffer or judge who's assassinated in the next several years causing some kind of martial law situation. It's scary times we live in right now.
This is most likely going to happen with an incoming authoritarian gov't anyway.
Do recall that one Congress critter, that is very pro-gun was shot at a baseball game, survived, and still stood against gun legislation. We'll see if things change if the wind shifts and more rich people (the Congresscritters' owners) are targeted.
Trump is an exceptional case who genuinely is feared to democracy itself as risk. The logic doesn't carry over to most other national politicians, although it absolutely can at various local levels.
Besides politicians, corrupt private leaders are at risk.
I am also not convinced that assassinations will make society less stable. At least in the targeting assassin's mind, it's intended to make society more stable by eliminating corruption.
It’ll get worse. You forgot to throw in unrest due to mass workforce displacement from ai / bots
Federal judges are the only people in this country that privacy laws apply to.
>Laws and rules only matter so long as we're all willing to believe they do.
And everyone has seen it thrown in our faces for a year or so now what the blatant two-tiered system looks like. On a longer time scale if you want to count the lack of consequences for those behind an attempted coup in 2021 and a recession that harmed millions of lives in 2008.
If the government won't hold people accountable, and people are pushed to their ends, then things like this can happen. As OP stated, thankfully, it doesn't happen as often as one would think given our society. It does take a lot to murder someone else.
When the government doesn't represent people any more, it's natural for people to represent themselves.
And who feels represented by their government these days?
Relevant XKCD https://xkcd.com/1958
I think people skip over this a LOT, but it's the basis for society and was long before we had the means to track down most killers and bring them to any sort of justice. Most people, even when given freedom from consequences and ample opportunities, are not murderers.
Not murderers of others they consider to be “in” their own “group”. But murderers of out group folks seems like it just depends on enough rage and desperation to build up.
>Most people, even when given freedom from consequences and ample opportunities, are not murderers.
I don't necessarily disagree with this completely, but it's also worth noting how easily people seem to go with the status quo, eg criminal gangs, nazism, support of genocides, etc.
I think most people have a bit of killer in them, given the right circumstances.
Matt Stoller does a far better job explaining than my comment did.
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/an-assassin-showed-just-h...