While it’s very unlikely that someone has a definitive answer, this question popped into my head after the assassination of the UHC CEO and it’s been bothering me that I can’t shake off this feeling that more is likely to happen (maybe not in higher frequency but potential).
Usually I could provide counter-arguments to myself in a realism/(should I buy apples or oranges comparison) kind-of sense but this one I feel more unsure about.
I wish I had more diverse exp in systems analysis as these kinds of questions that linger in my head really irritates my OCD brain as I just want to know what’s the most likely answer.
Feels too good to be true. It’s only one shooting.
Now if some second evil CEO were unfortunately victimized, I might be tempted to call it a trend…
two is just a mere coincidence; but three would be the start a pattern or trend.
And if there were FIVE evil CEO’s suddenly victimized, why we could have a movement!
But is it? This same year a kid was an inch or two away from making a bullet enter Trumps brain.
He’s not the CEO of a healthcare company, but he’s certainly at the helm of many companies, and will soon be president of the states.
I feel like victimized is the wrong word for someone reaching the find out part of fucking around.
“If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.”
It’s certainly part of the catabolic stage in the system’s decay. Due to many reasons, both at the input side and the “drowning in waste” side (example: GHGs waste causing climate destabilization), growth is going to falter which means that the “sharing” strategy of the rich, of the oligarchs, is going to stop working. You may know it as “grow the pie” (instead of “share the pie”). The rich get richer, the rest get poorer, and there are going to be a lot of poor people. That means a lot of desperate people and a lot of people with nothing left to lose.
What you have to watch out for is perhaps two strategies that can stop this:
- Scapegoating: vulnerable minorities and more. The rich of a certain ethnicity may become the scapegoats, instead of … you know, ALL of that class. This would be a misdirection of attention.
- Jingoism, chauvinism and various forms of ultra-nationalism. This would be a misdirection of violence… instead of “punching up”, it becomes “punching the foreign threat”, which means war.
- Combined 1 & 2. It’s usually called fascism.
Something to print:
On a related note, I really liked the recent season of “Arcane” (both seasons are great). https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11126994/
One can hope.
If people can protest for higher taxes on the wealthy, and ensure that money is spent on social services that would be a great start. I don’t know about other countries, but why the fuck can’t America do a Nordic model of socialism?
as an outsider I would think no. you don’t have much political force to cultivate this sentiment. democrats are already acting shocked and devastated for their buddies. they’re on the side of ceos, don’t forget. insider trading party can hardly pretend to give a shit about the average person. they will wait for the flame to burn out. return to business as usual: protecting the rich, losing elections and all that.
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Never underestimate the laziness of a disaffected but mostly not quite yet starving population.
tl;dr: Patience, grasshopper.
No… Lemmy is, but Lemmy is not indicative of society at large, hell, the Internet is not indicative of society at large.
Look at the last US election, if we were going to Eat the Rich would we have elected a putative billionaire candidate backed by Elon Musk?
I mean, kind of. Conservatives don’t view Donald Trump and Elon Musk as the wealthy elite that they are. They view them as “political outsiders”. So yeah, people want change from the status quo, because the status quo is broken for so many.
The system is extremely flawed but works just well enough for a plurality of people to feel like they are getting something out of it. I think it would need to collapse in such a way as to affect more people if there was a chance it would be replaced
It always does. The lords get too greedy, and the peasants revolt.
The US has done an exceptionally good job of propaganizing that instinct out of people. But the material conditions of American Life have brought the sentiment roaring back.
Basically there are 2 paths. Either way is going to be a revolutionary upturning of the status quo. Either there will be another FDR who reins in the worst impulses of Capital. Or the citizenry will do it for them.
That or GovCo goes full authoritarian to control the population. But that has the potential to spark a civil war. After all, we have more guns than people to use them. A few massacres around the country would spark a real resistance.
Ha, I wish.
Hopefully we will move towards a more equitable society, but Fascists also have a track record of exploiting the sort of instability American society has been faced with during this century so far. If we don’t handle this carefully, it could go badly. Which is saying a lot, given the last decade.
I doubt it. There’s a good chance that we will see copycat killers. That’s a well known phenomenon, but it is not a change in society.
High-profile events can catalyze changes. Violence has been committed. A person died. That creates a sense of urgency. Americans have discovered that there is a broad consensus that something ought to be done about health care. We’ll see.
But I do not see any appetite for a societal change. Americans look at individuals, not at systemic factors. The USA has, by far, the highest incarceration rate in the world. It costs the taxpayer a lot of money to feed and house all those people, not to mention that the rest of society misses out on all the productive labor they could do. The US likes to punish individuals for perceived wrong-doing, but it does not look at systemic factors.
US society now wants more bad guy CEOs punished. That’s not a change and it will not lead to a change. People aren’t even thinking about how the law could be changed to punish these bad guys, or what they personally could do alone or by collective action. They are waiting for heroes.
Americans want V (for Vendetta) to save them while they watch the show. Many think that Elon Musk is Ironman. That’s part of the malaise.
People want individuals to take care of things and so individuals need the power to do so. Well, billionaires are people who have been given the power to take care of business (excuse the pun). And if they don’t do it right, it’s because they are greedy or have some other individual flaw.
Maybe not eat. Most of them are old and probably way to tough to chew.
