I didn’t say that I believed in the equivalency of those two things. Just that two wrongs don’t make a right. There can be all different levels and kinds of wrongness.
Is this a personal attack? Or are you accusing someone else of sophistry?
I think he means the AI uses sophistry in deciding which claims to deny.
Yeah almost, the company and its officers are resorting to sophistry via AI in order to deny life saving medication to a large percentage of claimants.
Finding an excuse to deny someone insurance cover that they've actually paid for needn't be morally equivalent to murder to be heinous.
No, but @chrisstiles' critique of @ChastMastr is that ChastMastr only seems to be upset about the wrong of gunning someone down on the street,
but not the wrong of denying people health-coverage they they had paid for. But the two wrongs should be at least roughly equivalent, if the charge of a double standard is to hold up.
And, like I said, I'm personally agnostic about the equivalency, and that's why I'd be interested in hearing ChastMastr's explication of his views.
I didn’t say that I believed in the equivalency of those two things. Just that two wrongs don’t make a right. There can be all different levels and kinds of wrongness.
Is this a personal attack? Or are you accusing someone else of sophistry?
I think he means the AI uses sophistry to decide which claims to deny.
Oh, my apologies, @chrisstiles. No, I’m not okay with any of this.
And do you believe there to be an absolute moral equivalency between, on the one hand, using that AI to deny claims, and, on the other, gunning down a law-abiding citizen?
I didn’t say that I thought there was anything of the kind—just that two wrongs don’t make a right.
But I think that statement packs a bit less of a punch in a situation where the two wrongs are morally equivalent, and the second wrong is inflicted entirely upon the person who had commited the first wrong.
Well, what would you think about someone in Belfast 1979 who cheered on the murder of Lord Mountbatten, but voted Conservative, because there's more than one issue at stake, and he doesn't neccessarily prioritize republicanism?
I mean, maybe he's got a bunch of other issues more important to him than the one that he thinks justifies murder?
I would pity them. And I would understand. Ireland has suffered longest and hardest at British hands. Louis was a fine warrior. Did they cheer the murder of his daughter and two grandsons?
Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, the former Chief of the Imperial General Staff, once told him, "You are so crooked, Dickie, that if you swallowed a nail, you would shit a corkscrew".
A fine compliment in his case.
Three days of state mourning was announced in Burma (now known as Myanmar), while in India where he served as the last Viceroy and first Governor-General, a week of mourning was observed. The Gazette of India published an extraordinary obituary notice, the All India Radio broadcast a short tribute including statements by former Prime Minister of India Indira Gandhi who called him "an extraordinary personality, a lion, a born leader of men". Tribute to Lord Mountbatten, a television special on DD National was broadcast, led by Prime Minister Charan Singh; it included Indira Gandhi and other Indian leaders. Singh also signed the condolence book at the British High Commission, New Delhi. Providing condolences, the President of India Neelam Sanjiva Reddy said in a message to Queen Elizabeth II "Lord Mountbatten will always occupy a place of honor in India." PM Charan Singh remarked that Mountbatten's "drive and vigour helped in the difficult period after our independence".
Did they cheer the murder of his daughter and two grandsons?
Doesn't really matter for the purposes of my example. FWIW, though, it would be even odder for someone to think that the republican cause is so urgent that it justifies the murder of children, while still voting Conservative.
I am still trying to understand who, if anyone, in this threads, has argued that two wrongs make a right?
Well, "two wrongs = a right" is rarely argued in the affirmative. It's usually used in the negative, to rebut someone claiming that the wrongness of a second action is mitigated by the wrongness of the first. Or, at least, that it is inconsistent to condemn the second action, but not the first.
In the present discussion, to the extent that anyone is arguing that two wrongs make a right, it would be @chrisstiles, according to @ChastMastr.
An example of two wrongs equals a right. No one here will argue Hitler was a good guy. No one here would argue murder is right. Yet Bonhoeffer and other coconspirators took it on themselves to try to kill Hitler. If the assassination attempt had been successful, the war would have been over much sooner than it was. We sort of celebrate the risk Bonhoeffer and company took--at least in Lutheran circles.
To the issue of denying medical procedures that have already been paid for. That is not right, at least from the insurance perspective. If it is not specifically covered in the contract, the company has the obligation to deny payment. They would argue if they had to pay for everything insurance rates would substantially increase. True, their dividends to shareholders would also decrease.
An example of two wrongs equals a right. No one here will argue Hitler was a good guy. No one here would argue murder is right. Yet Bonhoeffer and other coconspirators took it on themselves to try to kill Hitler. If the assassination attempt had been successful, the war would have been over much sooner than it was. We sort of celebrate the risk Bonhoeffer and company took--at least in Lutheran circles.
Except that given Hitler's horrible actions up to that point, and the likelihood that he would continue with such actions, there's an argument to be made that killing him wasn't really a wrong anyway. Except maybe in the legal sense, in that it fit the definition of murder.
You keep saying that, but in practice the first wrong didn't seem to particularly excise you.
Forgive me, but how the hell would you know what has excised me about the healthcare system we have in the US? Would I have needed to start threads, here on the Ship, on that before the CEO was gunned down to show some kind of bona fides to you?
And I haven't said a single thing about these things being equivalent--just that, again, and again and again and again and again, that
Two wrongs don't make a right.
That's it.
I consider the evils (both in the sense of bad things and the sense of moral evils) of the US healthcare system, and of giant corporations in general, to be really obvious, especially to my own political (liberal) "side." But:
Someone gunning down a CEO is a new thing we haven't seen here before
The people I'm seeing cheering about this online--maybe because I really don't have conservative Facebook friends for the most part--are on my own political (liberal) "side," and I've generally considered us to be the side "peace and love and not being violent," so
This seems like a change for the worse
Especially in the wake of increasing US political radicalization with stuff like January 6 on the right-wing side
And I've been worried for some time now that, just as back in the 80s, no one would have predicted evils like January 6, if we're not careful on the left, we could go down that path too someday
But I was thinking that that would be decades in the future, not so soon as this
(Virtually all of which I've been saying, but no one seems to be bothering to listen.)
An example of two wrongs equals a right. No one here will argue Hitler was a good guy. No one here would argue murder is right. Yet Bonhoeffer and other coconspirators took it on themselves to try to kill Hitler. If the assassination attempt had been successful, the war would have been over much sooner than it was. We sort of celebrate the risk Bonhoeffer and company took--at least in Lutheran circles.
Except that given Hitler's horrible actions up to that point, and the likelihood that he would continue with such actions, there's an argument to be made that killing him wasn't really a wrong anyway. Except maybe in the legal sense, in that it fit the definition of murder.
Absolutely agreed. I would consider it covered as a wartime action against an enemy in a way that I don't consider murdering the CEO.
I really, really, REALLY think the whole business of "ChastMastr said X! This must mean he really means Y!" when I effing haven't said or in any way implied Y is false nonsense, and I'm getting a vibe of "Have you stopped beating your wife?" from it. Please stop it.
I am still trying to understand who, if anyone, in this threads, has argued that two wrongs make a right?
Well, "two wrongs = a right" is rarely argued in the affirmative. It's usually used in the negative, to rebut someone claiming that the wrongness of a second action is mitigated by the wrongness of the first. Or, at least, that it is inconsistent to condemn the second action, but not the first.
In the present discussion, to the extent that anyone is arguing that two wrongs make a right, it would be @chrisstiles, according to @ChastMastr.
Technically, I said it in general (for the reasons listed in my last comment), and after that I've been responding to @chrisstiles after he said
Your jermiads of impending barbarism only started after the second.
(I find the idea that I have to defend the notion that murdering someone in the street is not morally right really jarring. What the hell universe have I blundered into?)
You keep saying that, but in practice the first wrong didn't seem to particularly excise you.
Forgive me, but how the hell would you know what has excised me about the healthcare system we have in the US?
Well, you weren't complaining about a rising problem of barbarism until now.
Sorry, I had no idea that you were sitting on my shoulder like Jiminy Cricket for God knows how many years, listening to my discussions with people, or seeing my comments on other parts of the Internet, or reading my thoughts on the matter.
(Not that it affects this one whit even if I hadn’t been expressing those concerns for years and years now. You can be concerned about one thing without having to prove to random strangers that you’re sufficiently concerned about the other thing.)
@chrisstiles@ChastMastr Personal disputes should go to Hell, but given the calendar I suggest a Christmas truce.
Doublethink, Admin
I’d certainly prefer to not have another dispute in Hell (or frankly anywhere else). I think I’ve said my piece. (I’m guessing “Chasing Shadows” was an auto-fill for me.) Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!
I would not say the gunning down of Brian Thompson is the first time a CEO has been gunned down. But, at the moment, this is all I can find. Something tells me, though, given our propensity for guns in the US, it is not the first time.
I do agree America has become more radicalized recently, but I would say this runs in waves throughout our history. The Revolution was one example, the civil war another, the repression of the unions in the mid 1900s, the Viet Nam War, the Civil Rights movement.
The left has been radicalized many times. Remember the Black Panthers? The Union movement was pretty radical back when they were forming. John Brown attacking the Armory in Virginia, the Kansas struggle to be a free state. The Revolution?
I have to say the killing of Brian Thompson has pricked a deep-seated resentment against the American Health Insurance system--but there is also the side disparity between the wealthy and lower classes.
The new Trump administration is not going to reduce the existing problems. It will only exacerbate what is already there and create even more.
I do agree America has become more radicalized recently, but I would say this runs in waves throughout our history.
I have to say the killing of Brian Thompson has pricked a deep-seated resentment against the American Health Insurance system--but there is also the side disparity between the wealthy and lower classes.
Right, these things have to be viewed in context of society as a whole. If large parts of a system are run in a way that devalues the lives of a certain section of society that ends up having impacts elsewhere - it's the imperial boomerang at a smaller scale.
What does that AI story illustrate? That the environment exists for companies to indulge in social murder to shore up profits. Assuming they end up getting prosecuted what's the penalty going to be? A fine which just sets a floor on how much profit you have to make before it's a viable strategy?
I would not say the gunning down of Brian Thompson is the first time a CEO has been gunned down. But, at the moment, this is all I can find. Something tells me, though, given our propensity for guns in the US, it is not the first time.
Anarchist Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate the vile Henry Clay Frick. Frick was Andrew Carnegie's man on the ground in breaking the Homestead Strike, as well as other numerous anti-union actions. Frick didn't kill anyone directly, but hiring a private army of Pinkertons to beat and kill people seems like the kind of "morally wrong but technically legal under the laws of the time" practice that's apparently at the heart of UnitedHealthcare's business model.
An example of two wrongs equals a right. No one here will argue Hitler was a good guy. No one here would argue murder is right. Yet Bonhoeffer and other coconspirators took it on themselves to try to kill Hitler. If the assassination attempt had been successful, the war would have been over much sooner than it was. We sort of celebrate the risk Bonhoeffer and company took--at least in Lutheran circles.
Except that given Hitler's horrible actions up to that point, and the likelihood that he would continue with such actions, there's an argument to be made that killing him wasn't really a wrong anyway. Except maybe in the legal sense, in that it fit the definition of murder.
Absolutely agreed. I would consider it covered as a wartime action against an enemy in a way that I don't consider murdering the CEO.
I'm not sure about that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German citizen and a member of the Abwehr. In what sense was Hitler a legitimate enemy target for Bonhoeffer under the law of war? Yes, we give a lot of leeway to the state when it comes to acts of violence, but I'm not sure it goes as far as a legal right to kill your head of state. If anything, we usually penalize that kind of thing even more severely if it happens during wartime.
The new Trump administration is not going to reduce the existing problems. It will only exacerbate what is already there and create even more.
The on-going comedic sideshow in all this has been the efforts of conservative media to portray the shooter's fans as left-wing.
But while it's been hilarious to watch them blatantly misreading the room on this, in a sense, I wish they had were right, and the pro-shooting people WERE interpreting the issue in a left-wing light. Because that offers the only solutions that will address the underlying problems.
An example of two wrongs equals a right. No one here will argue Hitler was a good guy. No one here would argue murder is right. Yet Bonhoeffer and other coconspirators took it on themselves to try to kill Hitler. If the assassination attempt had been successful, the war would have been over much sooner than it was. We sort of celebrate the risk Bonhoeffer and company took--at least in Lutheran circles.
Except that given Hitler's horrible actions up to that point, and the likelihood that he would continue with such actions, there's an argument to be made that killing him wasn't really a wrong anyway. Except maybe in the legal sense, in that it fit the definition of murder.
Absolutely agreed. I would consider it covered as a wartime action against an enemy in a way that I don't consider murdering the CEO.
I'm not sure about that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German citizen and a member of the Abwehr. In what sense was Hitler a legitimate enemy target for Bonhoeffer under the law of war? Yes, we give a lot of leeway to the state when it comes to acts of violence, but I'm not sure it goes as far as a legal right to kill your head of state. If anything, we usually penalize that kind of thing even more severely if it happens during wartime.
I think it would be more of a civil war action, since he was a German citizen trying to overthrow the dictator of his country.
St. Thomas Aquinas is mentioned here:
In Thomas Aquinas's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Aquinas gave a defense not only of disobedience to an unjust authority, using as an example Christian martyrs in the Roman Empire, but also of "one who liberates his country by killing a tyrant."
(I have no more to add to this discussion for the time being, I think I’ve said everything that I reasonably need to, I’m very tired of debate for now, and it’s Christmas Eve. So I wish everyone a very merry Christmas or a very happy holiday or at least a happy day depending on what they may or may not celebrate.)
I think it would be more of a civil war action, since he was a German citizen trying to overthrow the dictator of his country.
St. Thomas Aquinas is mentioned here:
In Thomas Aquinas's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Aquinas gave a defense not only of disobedience to an unjust authority, using as an example Christian martyrs in the Roman Empire, but also of "one who liberates his country by killing a tyrant."
Seems a bit spurious to argue that any assassination can be justified if the assassin later says "he was a tyrant and I'm doing a civil war". It's certainly a long way from claiming to be "concerned about people actually believing that murdering people in the street is morally acceptable, or even laudable". This probably falls under the "Hitler exception" to moral judgments, where the fact that "murder is . . . horrible and wrong" suddenly doesn't matter as much if the hypothetical victim is literally Hitler. Some kind of flimsy excuse will be trotted out to justify murdering the exceptionally evil and powerful. The only real dispute here is where does that line get drawn.
I think it would be more of a civil war action, since he was a German citizen trying to overthrow the dictator of his country.
St. Thomas Aquinas is mentioned here:
In Thomas Aquinas's commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard, Aquinas gave a defense not only of disobedience to an unjust authority, using as an example Christian martyrs in the Roman Empire, but also of "one who liberates his country by killing a tyrant."
Seems a bit spurious to argue that any assassination can be justified if the assassin later says "he was a tyrant and I'm doing a civil war". It's certainly a long way from claiming to be "concerned about people actually believing that murdering people in the street is morally acceptable, or even laudable". This probably falls under the "Hitler exception" to moral judgments, where the fact that "murder is . . . horrible and wrong" suddenly doesn't matter as much if the hypothetical victim is literally Hitler. Some kind of flimsy excuse will be trotted out to justify murdering the exceptionally evil and powerful. The only real dispute here is where does that line get drawn.
We disagree.
I think that tacking on words and phrases like "claiming to be" concerned about something when someone has said that they are concerned about something, and "Some kind of flimsy excuse will be trotted out" is rude and inappropriate.
It's possible to disagree without adding this stuff that implies that someone is arguing in bad faith.
I think we can probably say that The Adjustor is as legally in the wrong as John Brown was. Yup, there are definitely legitimate statutes on the books against seizing control of federal armouries, just as there are legitimate statutes on the books against killing people outside of immediate self-defense.
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
So the only question is...
Does the respective gravity of the two evils justify operating violently outside of the law? Specifically, for my comparison, is the tormenting of medical patients via legal nit-picking over voluntary contracts morally equivalent to the tormenting of unpaid workers via involuntary slavery?
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
Yeah, but why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war, but not Health Insurance Tycoons vs Their Victims?
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
Yeah, but why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war, but not Health Insurance Tycoons vs Their Victims?
Because one of them was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world, and the other was not?
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
Yeah, but why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war, but not Health Insurance Tycoons vs Their Victims?
Because one of them was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world, and the other was not?
So if Hitler had stuck to the T4 programme (murdering disabled people deemed too expensive) that wouldn't have justified killing him? But moving on to non-disabled people did?
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
Yeah, but why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war, but not Health Insurance Tycoons vs Their Victims?
Because one of them was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world, and the other was not?
So if Hitler had stuck to the T4 programme (murdering disabled people deemed too expensive) that wouldn't have justified killing him? But moving on to non-disabled people did?
That’s not remotely what I said, or even suggested, or for that matter was asked.
I was asked “why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war” and I said Hitler “was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world.”
Morally it seems to me that CEOs of health insurance companies are more closely equivalent to quack snake oil con artists than to murderers. They aren't killing people - they're selling products that give ill people hope for treatment that then don't actually treat the illness. And they're probably engaged in discrediting people who will actually treat the problem. So even if it's not as bad as murder that's pretty bad.
The thing is, we generally disapprove of vigilante justice even for murderers. The rule of law is important.
Even on utilitarian grounds, the likelihood that assassination of wrong doers leads to reform of the system is rather outweighed by the likelihood that it normalises private violence against political opponents.
The thing is, we generally disapprove of vigilante justice even for murderers. The rule of law is important.
Even on utilitarian grounds, the likelihood that assassination of wrong doers leads to reform of the system is rather outweighed by the likelihood that it normalises private violence against political opponents.
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
Yeah, but why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war, but not Health Insurance Tycoons vs Their Victims?
Because one of them was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world, and the other was not?
So if Hitler had stuck to the T4 programme (murdering disabled people deemed too expensive) that wouldn't have justified killing him? But moving on to non-disabled people did?
That’s not remotely what I said, or even suggested, or for that matter was asked.
I was asked “why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war” and I said Hitler “was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world.”
That’s it.
Where do you draw the line? At what point in Hitler's period in power did killing him become a legitimate response?
Morally it seems to me that CEOs of health insurance companies are more closely equivalent to quack snake oil con artists than to murderers. They aren't killing people - they're selling products that give ill people hope for treatment that then don't actually treat the illness.
To an extent; except your caveat about discrediting people needs to be extended much further.
It's more like a snake oil salesman who insisted on sticking around, then passed legislation to make it compulsory to buy their wares, more legislation to prevent people selling genuine medicine but as a grudging concession and salve to the conscience of society at large agree to pull their snake oil at random out of a bag that contained 95 bottles of patent medicine and 5 bottles of real medicine (then tried to hack the bag filling factory).
At which point a neutral observer might conclude that this level of rules lawyering is also corrosive to the rule of law, and may actually be more of a long term menace to society than the occasional lone gunmen, because in the first case you'll get more pusillanimous liberals arguing Mr Snake Oil's right to do business (and he's so civic minded in his charitable giving).
Using issues where people are personally invested as analogies in unrelated discussions has a tendency to drag threads off course toward those issues, as well as excluding people personally affected from the discussion, so please avoid using them if at all possible.
A number of the analogies on this thread (the Holocaust, slavery...) are highly emotive and liable to generate more heat than light. Please try to discuss the topic at hand without them.
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
Yeah, but why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war, but not Health Insurance Tycoons vs Their Victims?
Because one of them was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world, and the other was not?
This is what I mean that this is a dispute about where to draw the line rather than some absolute principle that murder is always wrong. We accept the idea that Bonhoeffer's participation in an ultimately unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler is morally acceptable in ways that most of wouldn't consider the actual assassination of Abraham Lincoln to be acceptable, despite the fact that it checks all the boxes @ChastMastrsaid made such killings permissible. (An actual civil war, and Booth seriously and vocally believed Lincoln was a tyrant.) Most of us are willing to make an exception to what we otherwise insist are hard and fast rules when it comes to Hitler because he was literally Hitler.
Morally it seems to me that CEOs of health insurance companies are more closely equivalent to quack snake oil con artists than to murderers. They aren't killing people - they're selling products that give ill people hope for treatment that then don't actually treat the illness. And they're probably engaged in discrediting people who will actually treat the problem. So even if it's not as bad as murder that's pretty bad.
Despite the title of this thread, most health insurance companies aren't really in the healthcare business*. It would be more accurate to describe them as in the financial services sector. Their business model is to use premiums paid for future healthcare for investment, profiting off the returns. Naturally if this is your business model actually paying for the healthcare of premium payers ("medical loss ratio" in the parlance of the industry) is something you want to minimize. It also makes it the classic case for strong outside regulation, since it involves present payments for future services.
*Kaiser is an exception, having its own network of in-house healthcare providers.
I think an assassin only gets away with the civil war defense if there is a civil war and his side wins. Even then, his life expectancy may not be much.
Can anyone think of another service pretty much everyone in the US must have that serves us so poorly? Is there anything that really compares to health insurance companies? I'm drawing a blank.
While it can be difficult to do without a car where I live, car ownership is optional, therefore car insurance is optional, and mostly you just pay for coverage you rarely if ever use (I've never made a claim). Home mortgages require insurance, but I rent - no insurance required. Some leases and rental agreements require renter's insurance, but its like car insurance - you're most likely just going to pay money and not make a claim. It's hard to do without a bank account, but while the big banks aren't great, credit unions are reliable alternatives, plus the banks aren't actively abusing sick people the way health insurance companies are.
I guess you could argue that housing in general is pretty fucked up. Whether it's people paying their own mortgages or people paying rent that pays their landlord's mortgage most of the money involved seems to profit the banks.
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
Yeah, but why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war, but not Health Insurance Tycoons vs Their Victims?
Because one of them was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world, and the other was not?
So if Hitler had stuck to the T4 programme (murdering disabled people deemed too expensive) that wouldn't have justified killing him? But moving on to non-disabled people did?
That’s not remotely what I said, or even suggested, or for that matter was asked.
I was asked “why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war” and I said Hitler “was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world.”
That’s it.
Where do you draw the line? At what point in Hitler's period in power did killing him become a legitimate response?
I'd have to do research into the timeline of events to figure that out. But again, the murder of the CEO is a very different thing.
in ways that most of wouldn't consider the actual assassination of Abraham Lincoln to be acceptable, despite the fact that it checks all the boxes @ChastMastr said made such killings permissible. (An actual civil war, and Booth seriously and vocally believed Lincoln was a tyrant.)
Except the Confederacy was wrong, and Booth was also wrong, whatever he believed.
I guess you could argue that housing in general is pretty fucked up. Whether it's people paying their own mortgages or people paying rent that pays their landlord's mortgage most of the money involved seems to profit the banks.
Don't forget the landlords building up massive portfolios of property paid by housing benefit.
Using issues where people are personally invested as analogies in unrelated discussions has a tendency to drag threads off course toward those issues, as well as excluding people personally affected from the discussion, so please avoid using them if at all possible.
A number of the analogies on this thread (the Holocaust, slavery...) are highly emotive and liable to generate more heat than light. Please try to discuss the topic at hand without them.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Well, given that the whole topic of the thread is a murder that is arguably political, it seems pretty likely that comparative examples will come up when debating the morality of the crime.
Is it okay to just say something like "Suppose someone assassinates a tyrant bent on domestic oppression and world domination etc?"
Using issues where people are personally invested as analogies in unrelated discussions has a tendency to drag threads off course toward those issues, as well as excluding people personally affected from the discussion, so please avoid using them if at all possible.
A number of the analogies on this thread (the Holocaust, slavery...) are highly emotive and liable to generate more heat than light. Please try to discuss the topic at hand without them.
Using issues where people are personally invested as analogies in unrelated discussions has a tendency to drag threads off course toward those issues, as well as excluding people personally affected from the discussion, so please avoid using them if at all possible.
A number of the analogies on this thread (the Holocaust, slavery...) are highly emotive and liable to generate more heat than light. Please try to discuss the topic at hand without them.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Well, given that the whole topic of the thread is a murder that is arguably political, it seems pretty likely that comparative examples will come up when debating the morality of the crime.
Is it okay to just say something like "Suppose someone assassinates a tyrant bent on domestic oppression and world domination etc?"
Just watched an Inside Edition report built around telling us what Luigi Mangione had for his Christmas dinner in jail.
Despite blatantly coasting on the folksiness of it all, the anchorwoman made sure to throw in a reference to the "misguided adulation" surrounding Mangione.
After a brief foray into legal discussion, the report finished with the news that the burgundy sweater LM wore to court has sold-out online.
Can anyone think of another service pretty much everyone in the US must have that serves us so poorly? Is there anything that really compares to health insurance companies? I'm drawing a blank.
You've mentioned other things that suck, but it's possible that healthcare is the worst. Although I'd like to nominate the US government. It's a service we have to have, we can't avoid paying for it, and frankly, it's awful.
Can anyone think of another service pretty much everyone in the US must have that serves us so poorly? Is there anything that really compares to health insurance companies? I'm drawing a blank.
You've mentioned other things that suck, but it's possible that healthcare is the worst. Although I'd like to nominate the US government. It's a service we have to have, we can't avoid paying for it, and frankly, it's awful.
Medicare looks pretty awesome, though. Maybe just in comparison to private health insurance?
Comments
You keep saying that, but in practice the first wrong didn't seem to particularly excise you.
Yeah almost, the company and its officers are resorting to sophistry via AI in order to deny life saving medication to a large percentage of claimants.
No, but @chrisstiles' critique of @ChastMastr is that ChastMastr only seems to be upset about the wrong of gunning someone down on the street,
but not the wrong of denying people health-coverage they they had paid for. But the two wrongs should be at least roughly equivalent, if the charge of a double standard is to hold up.
And, like I said, I'm personally agnostic about the equivalency, and that's why I'd be interested in hearing ChastMastr's explication of his views.
But I think that statement packs a bit less of a punch in a situation where the two wrongs are morally equivalent, and the second wrong is inflicted entirely upon the person who had commited the first wrong.
I would pity them. And I would understand. Ireland has suffered longest and hardest at British hands. Louis was a fine warrior. Did they cheer the murder of his daughter and two grandsons?
Field Marshal Sir Gerald Templer, the former Chief of the Imperial General Staff, once told him, "You are so crooked, Dickie, that if you swallowed a nail, you would shit a corkscrew".
A fine compliment in his case.
wiki
Doesn't really matter for the purposes of my example. FWIW, though, it would be even odder for someone to think that the republican cause is so urgent that it justifies the murder of children, while still voting Conservative.
Well, "two wrongs = a right" is rarely argued in the affirmative. It's usually used in the negative, to rebut someone claiming that the wrongness of a second action is mitigated by the wrongness of the first. Or, at least, that it is inconsistent to condemn the second action, but not the first.
In the present discussion, to the extent that anyone is arguing that two wrongs make a right, it would be @chrisstiles, according to @ChastMastr.
To the issue of denying medical procedures that have already been paid for. That is not right, at least from the insurance perspective. If it is not specifically covered in the contract, the company has the obligation to deny payment. They would argue if they had to pay for everything insurance rates would substantially increase. True, their dividends to shareholders would also decrease.
Except that given Hitler's horrible actions up to that point, and the likelihood that he would continue with such actions, there's an argument to be made that killing him wasn't really a wrong anyway. Except maybe in the legal sense, in that it fit the definition of murder.
Forgive me, but how the hell would you know what has excised me about the healthcare system we have in the US? Would I have needed to start threads, here on the Ship, on that before the CEO was gunned down to show some kind of bona fides to you?
And I haven't said a single thing about these things being equivalent--just that, again, and again and again and again and again, that
Two wrongs don't make a right.
That's it.
I consider the evils (both in the sense of bad things and the sense of moral evils) of the US healthcare system, and of giant corporations in general, to be really obvious, especially to my own political (liberal) "side." But:
(Virtually all of which I've been saying, but no one seems to be bothering to listen.)
Absolutely agreed. I would consider it covered as a wartime action against an enemy in a way that I don't consider murdering the CEO.
I really, really, REALLY think the whole business of "ChastMastr said X! This must mean he really means Y!" when I effing haven't said or in any way implied Y is false nonsense, and I'm getting a vibe of "Have you stopped beating your wife?" from it. Please stop it.
Technically, I said it in general (for the reasons listed in my last comment), and after that I've been responding to @chrisstiles after he said
Well, you weren't complaining about a rising problem of barbarism until now.
Sorry, I had no idea that you were sitting on my shoulder like Jiminy Cricket for God knows how many years, listening to my discussions with people, or seeing my comments on other parts of the Internet, or reading my thoughts on the matter.
Seriously, dude, WTF?
Doublethink, Admin
(ETA correct tag, DT)
I’d certainly prefer to not have another dispute in Hell (or frankly anywhere else). I think I’ve said my piece. (I’m guessing “Chasing Shadows” was an auto-fill for me.) Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!
(ETA correct tag, DT)
I do agree America has become more radicalized recently, but I would say this runs in waves throughout our history. The Revolution was one example, the civil war another, the repression of the unions in the mid 1900s, the Viet Nam War, the Civil Rights movement.
The left has been radicalized many times. Remember the Black Panthers? The Union movement was pretty radical back when they were forming. John Brown attacking the Armory in Virginia, the Kansas struggle to be a free state. The Revolution?
I have to say the killing of Brian Thompson has pricked a deep-seated resentment against the American Health Insurance system--but there is also the side disparity between the wealthy and lower classes.
The new Trump administration is not going to reduce the existing problems. It will only exacerbate what is already there and create even more.
Right, these things have to be viewed in context of society as a whole. If large parts of a system are run in a way that devalues the lives of a certain section of society that ends up having impacts elsewhere - it's the imperial boomerang at a smaller scale.
What does that AI story illustrate? That the environment exists for companies to indulge in social murder to shore up profits. Assuming they end up getting prosecuted what's the penalty going to be? A fine which just sets a floor on how much profit you have to make before it's a viable strategy?
Anarchist Alexander Berkman attempted to assassinate the vile Henry Clay Frick. Frick was Andrew Carnegie's man on the ground in breaking the Homestead Strike, as well as other numerous anti-union actions. Frick didn't kill anyone directly, but hiring a private army of Pinkertons to beat and kill people seems like the kind of "morally wrong but technically legal under the laws of the time" practice that's apparently at the heart of UnitedHealthcare's business model.
I'm not sure about that. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was a German citizen and a member of the Abwehr. In what sense was Hitler a legitimate enemy target for Bonhoeffer under the law of war? Yes, we give a lot of leeway to the state when it comes to acts of violence, but I'm not sure it goes as far as a legal right to kill your head of state. If anything, we usually penalize that kind of thing even more severely if it happens during wartime.
The on-going comedic sideshow in all this has been the efforts of conservative media to portray the shooter's fans as left-wing.
But while it's been hilarious to watch them blatantly misreading the room on this, in a sense, I wish they had were right, and the pro-shooting people WERE interpreting the issue in a left-wing light. Because that offers the only solutions that will address the underlying problems.
I think it would be more of a civil war action, since he was a German citizen trying to overthrow the dictator of his country.
St. Thomas Aquinas is mentioned here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrannicide#Medieval_thought
Seems a bit spurious to argue that any assassination can be justified if the assassin later says "he was a tyrant and I'm doing a civil war". It's certainly a long way from claiming to be "concerned about people actually believing that murdering people in the street is morally acceptable, or even laudable". This probably falls under the "Hitler exception" to moral judgments, where the fact that "murder is . . . horrible and wrong" suddenly doesn't matter as much if the hypothetical victim is literally Hitler. Some kind of flimsy excuse will be trotted out to justify murdering the exceptionally evil and powerful. The only real dispute here is where does that line get drawn.
We disagree.
I think that tacking on words and phrases like "claiming to be" concerned about something when someone has said that they are concerned about something, and "Some kind of flimsy excuse will be trotted out" is rude and inappropriate.
It's possible to disagree without adding this stuff that implies that someone is arguing in bad faith.
And styling the overall conflict as a "civil war" doesn't make your rag-tag mob into a state-level actor, exempt from the laws governing all the other rag-tag mobs.
So the only question is...
Does the respective gravity of the two evils justify operating violently outside of the law? Specifically, for my comparison, is the tormenting of medical patients via legal nit-picking over voluntary contracts morally equivalent to the tormenting of unpaid workers via involuntary slavery?
Just as an important note, in case there is confusion in this, I myself am not suggesting the killer of the CEO is in the “civil war” category—I’m thinking of the plot to kill Hitler as, potentially, being in that category.
Yeah, but why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war, but not Health Insurance Tycoons vs Their Victims?
Because one of them was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world, and the other was not?
So if Hitler had stuck to the T4 programme (murdering disabled people deemed too expensive) that wouldn't have justified killing him? But moving on to non-disabled people did?
That’s not remotely what I said, or even suggested, or for that matter was asked.
I was asked “why does Hitler vs His Domestic Enemies get canonized as a civil war” and I said Hitler “was an actual dictator who was ruling the country with an iron fist and trying to take over the world.”
That’s it.
The thing is, we generally disapprove of vigilante justice even for murderers. The rule of law is important.
Even on utilitarian grounds, the likelihood that assassination of wrong doers leads to reform of the system is rather outweighed by the likelihood that it normalises private violence against political opponents.
Agreed.
Where do you draw the line? At what point in Hitler's period in power did killing him become a legitimate response?
To an extent; except your caveat about discrediting people needs to be extended much further.
It's more like a snake oil salesman who insisted on sticking around, then passed legislation to make it compulsory to buy their wares, more legislation to prevent people selling genuine medicine but as a grudging concession and salve to the conscience of society at large agree to pull their snake oil at random out of a bag that contained 95 bottles of patent medicine and 5 bottles of real medicine (then tried to hack the bag filling factory).
At which point a neutral observer might conclude that this level of rules lawyering is also corrosive to the rule of law, and may actually be more of a long term menace to society than the occasional lone gunmen, because in the first case you'll get more pusillanimous liberals arguing Mr Snake Oil's right to do business (and he's so civic minded in his charitable giving).
The Purgatory guidelines state
A number of the analogies on this thread (the Holocaust, slavery...) are highly emotive and liable to generate more heat than light. Please try to discuss the topic at hand without them.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
This is what I mean that this is a dispute about where to draw the line rather than some absolute principle that murder is always wrong. We accept the idea that Bonhoeffer's participation in an ultimately unsuccessful plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler is morally acceptable in ways that most of wouldn't consider the actual assassination of Abraham Lincoln to be acceptable, despite the fact that it checks all the boxes @ChastMastr said made such killings permissible. (An actual civil war, and Booth seriously and vocally believed Lincoln was a tyrant.) Most of us are willing to make an exception to what we otherwise insist are hard and fast rules when it comes to Hitler because he was literally Hitler.
Despite the title of this thread, most health insurance companies aren't really in the healthcare business*. It would be more accurate to describe them as in the financial services sector. Their business model is to use premiums paid for future healthcare for investment, profiting off the returns. Naturally if this is your business model actually paying for the healthcare of premium payers ("medical loss ratio" in the parlance of the industry) is something you want to minimize. It also makes it the classic case for strong outside regulation, since it involves present payments for future services.
*Kaiser is an exception, having its own network of in-house healthcare providers.
While it can be difficult to do without a car where I live, car ownership is optional, therefore car insurance is optional, and mostly you just pay for coverage you rarely if ever use (I've never made a claim). Home mortgages require insurance, but I rent - no insurance required. Some leases and rental agreements require renter's insurance, but its like car insurance - you're most likely just going to pay money and not make a claim. It's hard to do without a bank account, but while the big banks aren't great, credit unions are reliable alternatives, plus the banks aren't actively abusing sick people the way health insurance companies are.
I'd have to do research into the timeline of events to figure that out. But again, the murder of the CEO is a very different thing.
@Crœsos said
Except the Confederacy was wrong, and Booth was also wrong, whatever he believed.
And I have no more to add to the subject.
Don't forget the landlords building up massive portfolios of property paid by housing benefit.
Well, given that the whole topic of the thread is a murder that is arguably political, it seems pretty likely that comparative examples will come up when debating the morality of the crime.
Is it okay to just say something like "Suppose someone assassinates a tyrant bent on domestic oppression and world domination etc?"
Understood.
Hosting queries to in Styx.
Doublethink, Admin
Despite blatantly coasting on the folksiness of it all, the anchorwoman made sure to throw in a reference to the "misguided adulation" surrounding Mangione.
After a brief foray into legal discussion, the report finished with the news that the burgundy sweater LM wore to court has sold-out online.
You've mentioned other things that suck, but it's possible that healthcare is the worst. Although I'd like to nominate the US government. It's a service we have to have, we can't avoid paying for it, and frankly, it's awful.
Medicare looks pretty awesome, though. Maybe just in comparison to private health insurance?