Is the US a dystopia?

check the cast of Smile 2 imo

We had an assassination with immediate political effects recently.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Shinzo_Abe

― xyzzzz__, Friday, December 6, 2024 5:32 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

"Abe assassination" redirects here. Not to be confused with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

lol

lol

is there any chance this guy actually gets away

in any case, to summarize for Nabozo:

scenario 1: someone follows a mid-level UHC claims adjuster and kills them in the street.

p much nobody here is going to cheer that because a job is a job and this person is someone who is just trying to get by and few of us have the luxury of working for a company that isn't problematic.
-----------------------------------------------------------

scenario 2: someone follows the CEO of UHC and kills them

dude is the face of the company and has decision-making abilities and uses them to increase profitability and dick over customers resulting in their death, disability, or financial ruin.

sorry bruh turnabout fair play etc etc

If my position demanded using AI to cut costs to feed my greedy shareholders & by doing so it overrode medical advice given by the doctors of sick people to condemn them to less or no treatment, I probably wouldn’t do it. Your job demands an increase in human suffering? What are you, helpless?

Otm

No, I wouldn't do it, either.

I would have an easier time cheering the death of a politician who speaks openly about his desire for cruelty and actively bends the role to his will. But I also get that the CEO is a symbolic figure.
― jaymc

Part of the irony here is that possibly no one is more accountable to for-profit corporations than elected officials, thanks to lobbying and our terrible campaign finance systems and lack of or relaxed enforcement of regulations. Like...the politician is possibly even MORE of a figurehead, while the CEOs and corporate functionaries skate by unseen.

OTM

jaymc, are there other cases where this is clearer for you? The Sacklers, for example. It's hard for me to entirely see your POV here because capitalism being am under-acknowledged form of rule/governance is pretty key to my understanding of politics, so the idea that a CEO would be a cog while a politician is an autonomous agent is, bluntly speaking, wrong imo. Without getting too theory-brained here, privatized health insurance is a form of biopolitical and necropolitical governance that has way more control over most Americans' lives than the US govt does.

"Abe assassination" redirects here. Not to be confused with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.
lol

― budo jeru, Friday, 6 December 2024 bookmarkflaglink

Sorry just a massive fan of the Abe assassination.

This post is useful in helping me think about my discomfort. Yes, this is all true of the CEO, but I also feel on some level that he is a cog in the system. He is making these decisions not out of malice, presumably, but because is the CEO of an insurance company and that is what his position requires. I wouldn't personally want to be the CEO of an insurance company, but I assume a lot of people who rise to executive positions in the corporate world are just "good at business" (i.e., able to succeed within and uphold the capitalist system that structures society).

Yes, but an integral part of being "good at business" in this way is to have internalized an ideology that sees human lives as expendable, the suffering of others as a perhaps regrettable but inevitable part of building a good society where those Good At Business can thrive. Imo that is much more evil than a politician who is upfront about his hatefulness

xposts gyac and in orbit otm

xp at rob: i'm not sure it's as useful to try to distinguish and measure gov influence vs. private health insurance; it's more that they are interwoven

If the CEO is just another cog, does anyone bear moral responsibility for destructive decisions and actions by corporations?

The CEO is a cog in the sense that they can be immediately replaced if the stockholders aren't making enough money, which means they have very little autonomy is their actions (other than deciding to resign.) A politician cannot be replaced as easily, and can take votes that go against various donors' wishes if it will make them more popular with voters.

v dangerous to be a world leader named Abe

If the CEO is just another cog, does anyone bear moral responsibility for destructive decisions and actions by corporations?

That's the beauty of the system! The shareholders are mostly divorced from the day to day operations, the CEO is just an employee, everyone gets to feel that it's not up to them.

I pretty much agree with all of these arguments against jaymc’s thesis but I do think that people are underselling exactly how powerful a bureaucracy can be once it gets rolling and how hard it can be to change it, regardless of your position in it.

The CEO isn’t powerless in the slightest but the gestalt entity that is the corporation over which they preside can oftentimes do whatever it wants regardless of the CEO’s wishes, plus the CEO often has to answer to a board that has a financial interest in keeping the corporation as financially evil as possible.

In conclusion, I don’t think anyone on this board is wrong, you’re all just looking at different vectors of the same problem.

Aren’t there plenty of opportunities to be a CEO at places other than the killing the sick factory?

It's a particularly ghoulish industry agreed but imo you're unlikely to find a company to be CEO of that isn't morally abhorrent to some degree, tho obv there are gradations.

This is why I would never allow any child of mine to become a CEO.

xp at rob: i'm not sure it's as useful to try to distinguish and measure gov influence vs. private health insurance; it's more that they are interwoven

― budo jeru, Friday, December 6, 2024 10:59 AM (two minutes ago)

for sure! I agree they're inseparable. I was avoiding using the word neoliberalism, but that's what I'm talking about, more or less.

anyway, I'm more pushing against a kind of default libertarianism that sees the State as the primary source of domination and social control and Capital as being almost mystically market-driven (tbc that's not a comment on jaymc's post; possibly it's irrelevant to make this point here). Health insurance and healthcare companies quite literally make decisions about who lives and who dies -- they should be seen as forms of government. Naturally, this is quite obvious as soon as you live somewhere where healthcare is run by the state

"You're not leaving that room, young man, until you change that business major!"

jaymc, are there other cases where this is clearer for you? The Sacklers, for example.

That's an interesting analogy, and maybe the reason that the Sacklers are more clearly evil to me is that there has been a long-running campaign to publicize the Sacklers as evil.

This thread's been on fire the last 24 hours. Thanks, y'all. It will help focus my responses when I hang out with one of my best friends this weekend, a low-level Preferred Care Partners employee who will probably get weepy about this death.

That's an interesting analogy, and maybe the reason that the Sacklers are more clearly evil to me is that there has been a long-running campaign to publicize the Sacklers as evil.

― jaymc,

I've seen plenty of stories since at least 2018 about United's perfidious activities. Is it because until the last two days it was harder to make insurance CEOs into Marie Antoinettes?

the Sacklers fucked up by essentially acting like a drug cartel. One thought I had about the reaction to this guy's murder was to wonder if the scolds would also object to gleeful reactions to the murder of a mob boss.

The sun turned cold over Wall Street and the town of Manhattan mourned
They said a mass in the old church near the house where he was born
And someday if God’s in heaven overlooking His preserve
I know the man that shot him down will get what he deserves

i will say that another positive thing about this is that it makes apparent who the craven bootlickers are—

Health insurance and healthcare companies quite literally make decisions about who lives and who dies -- they should be seen as forms of government.

Remember when the slogan against Obamacare was that it would include - gasp - death panels, who would decide who lives and who dies? Good times, good times.

I've seen plenty of stories since at least 2018 about United's perfidious activities

Huh, guess I haven't been paying attention.

The CEO isn’t powerless in the slightest but the gestalt entity that is the corporation over which they preside can oftentimes do whatever it wants regardless of the CEO’s wishes, plus the CEO often has to answer to a board that has a financial interest in keeping the corporation as financially evil as possible.

In conclusion, I don’t think anyone on this board is wrong, you’re all just looking at different vectors of the same problem.

― DJP

Absolutely. The non-corporeal-ness of the corporation makes it impossible to hold anyone responsible and yet somehow the total system is too big to stop, too big to fail, too big to blame. That's the dystopic part. Bureaucracy substitutes for and neutralizes any possible solutions.

If this partic CEO didn't personally "deserve" to be targeted for violence (although cf gyac and Daniel et al arguably by some moral calculus he does but whatever), he's as much a random victim of the system as much as VAST numbers of people who suffered or even died bc their healthcare was denied or they were financially ruined. The system didn't care who they were or that their lives had meaning....well, welcome to the same standard being applied at 1/100,000,000th of the scale.

I don't know how many more ways to say the same thing.

I don't know how many more ways to say the same thing.

Yeah I feel you on that, it’s part of why I have been quiet/lurking here

Damn that’s horrible https://t.co/lihibcMpsU

— People's City Council - Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) December 6, 2024

btw On the other end of this spectrum--hung jury in the Subway Murderer trial

calling in tips to NYPD suggesting various Hanna Barbera characters did it

This thread's been on fire the last 24 hours. Thanks, y'all. It will help focus my responses when I hang out with one of my best friends this weekend, a low-level Preferred Care Partners employee who will probably get weepy about this death.

Yeah, I want to say I appreciate that the discussion here has helped me think through my complicated feelings. Contra Dan's post upthread, I wouldn't say I have a "thesis" about any of this, just some instincts that could certainly stand to be interrogated and refined.

This interview with a corporate security guy is interesting.

It was remarkable how much fury this story unleashed at the health-care system. Are there certain industries where you have to tell your clients, “You guys have to be extra careful because people don’t like you?”
Health care is at the top of the list. It’s emotionally charged. When people are engaging with the health-care system, it’s not usually on their best day. In the threat-management industry, we talk about red-flag indicators that can indicate if somebody might be traveling along the pathway toward violence. These include financial hardship, the loss of a loved one, degradation of health, the potential loss of a home. A lot of the time, when people intersect with the health-care system, four or five of these things are already stacked up against them.

...

Your clients are potentially targets of violence, but they also have the power to affect the environment. If there’s public anger toward this class of people, this class of people has the ability to lower the temperature.
There may be some elements of truth to that. The CEO obviously has an ability to impact the way that people are cared for under their umbrella. We’re talking with our clients about the organizational duty of care to protect executives from this type of harm. In an industry-leading executive-protection program, itineraries are reviewed, venues are assessed, topics are dissected, and public sentiment is analyzed on a daily basis in order to understand whether the principals are entering an environment that could be dangerous.

Is part of your duty of care to try to change the temperature of the room? Could your clients say to themselves, “We are very powerful people. We are the ones who deny care. Do we change how we interact with our customers and the public?”
I think that takes a very, very mature executive and a team that really understands the human condition. I don’t know that those types of themes dominate boardrooms. I do know there are companies out there that do care for people in that way and understand that caring for people properly is one of the better ways to de-escalate situations.

I’ll say that in order to inform that type of a process, you have to be consuming a tremendous amount of information and intelligence to learn about the room that you’re in and leading, and to learn about your clients and your customers. And a lot of that comes from places where a lot of companies don’t like to look.

I do think there's a wide acceptable range of personal reactions to news like this, tbh. The issue is when, similar to the submarine incident, someone barges into the thread suggesting the understandably flippant remarks are fucked up, like we're all press secretaries or something. Which is why Nabozo rightfully got clowned for being a scold but others that merely shared their personal feelings didn't.

It's a private message board full of people that know each other well, none of us bought a billboard saying LOL CEO U DED or burned insurance cards in effigy.

Mom just said to TV the Anthem Blue Cross CEO better watch out (not out of concern) and I just about choked laughing.

This used to be a reserved lady who went to church and voted for McCain and Romney

Even a friend of mine who is very, very anti-gun and gets really emotionally tied to gun violence and it's impacts responded to this with a, "well, maybe they shouldn't deny so many claims and cause so many deaths".

Health care is at the top of the list. It’s emotionally charged. When people are engaging with the health-care system, it’s not usually on their best day.

reminds me that in china there is a long history of violence against or murder of doctors by the families of patients who blame the doctors for any deterioration in the patient, whether or not it's justified

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_against_doctors_in_China
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3271288/fatal-stabbing-chinese-doctor-fuels-calls-stronger-laws-protect-medical-staff

on the whole doctors are not the crux of the problem and people in the USA do not tend to blame a doctor when they recommend a treatment or therapy and the insurance company denies coverage.

yes, thanks for refuting the point that i did not make

I find it odd when companies give money to both presidential candidates

https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/unitedhealth-group/summary?id=D000000348

why? they’re trying to assure that they will continue to reap financial benefit for shareholders no matter which administration comes into power. it’s not that hard to figure out.

Good Guardian article about online rage over the insurance industry:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/dec/05/unitedhealthcare-brian-thompson-killing-online-reaction

meanwhile

https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:c6k2ozisr2bbitsafwwyistf/bafkreifmptkav4fug3zcesj3mujo6f7vplxto5no2h7qymuxuhhbrigyxq@jpeg

Where is that?