They’re afraid!

@196

I think the health insurance companies are actually taken by surprise by the amount of people who sincerely wish them death. Maybe we will see some almost-meaningful change soon?

  • @[email protected]
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    1125 months ago

    Wish this happened three weeks ago when my wife’s chemo dosage approval got held up.

    I guess the lesson is to shoot early and shoot often.

  • @[email protected]
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    145 months ago

    Everyone commenting is just having fun, right? There is no one who actually believes this, I hope.

    • anti-idpol action
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      125 months ago

      I chucked though this would mean that the American solutions are…short-term? Headlines will fleet, the ruling class will become a little bit more vigilant. And then shit will return to business as usual. Unless this sparks a mass movement.

    • @[email protected]
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      1545 months ago

      I’m starting to think the whole “Violence is never the answer” is just yet another propaganda piece of the rich

      • @[email protected]
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        805 months ago

        Basically every large successful social change has been built on violence or the threat of it. King might have been a nice speaker and a friendly face, but violence brought people to the table.

        • YonderEpochs
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          5 months ago

          I strongly recommend a book called The Sword and The Shield, about the dual roles Malcom X and King played in the civil rights era. King very well understood the need for a credible threat of violence, and actually he grew closer to Malcolm X’s beliefs as time went on, and that is why he was killed.

          At our worst moments, when all else fails, violence is the only answer and everyone, deep down, knows that.

          Edit to add: washing King’s legacy via history so he appears as purely nonviolent is, I believe, a very deliberate strategy to make us easier to pacify. You’ll notice that no high school curricula (barring I’m sure some notable exceptions) have ever taught Malcolm X. Only King, and only his nonviolence! Civil rights safely defanged.

          • @[email protected]
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            65 months ago

            Thank you for the rec! I don’t read nonfiction really but I am thinking this is a great place for me to start. That sounds fascinating

            • YonderEpochs
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              75 months ago

              Sure thing! It was certainly eye opening, I’d stop short of calling it a page-turner myself, but I think it’s important to give myself a better education about our history than our classrooms were able to.

              Also, as a sometimes-neurotic reader, in case this is useful - nonfiction especially you can just choose which bits to read if that makes a difference for ya. It’s got a flow and a narrative of course, so you’ll lose a bit that way, but I’ve had struggles with other nonfiction books and needed to just try to get to the meat and forgive myself for that, lol. Turns out it’s totally allowed, no one even says anything!

          • Norah (pup/it/she)
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            185 months ago

            This is reminding me strongly about how the Black Panther Party was vilified and outlawed. California didn’t ban open carry for any other reason than to stop black people from being able too.

            • YonderEpochs
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              205 months ago

              A critically important piece of our history, yes! The notion of gun control practically at all in this country actually came about because black people organized. Not only did the Black Panthers openly carry while carefully witnessing / observing law enforcement in their community, they also ran many aid programs and focused on the need for education and self-reliance.

              And that had to be stopped, and it was.

              • @[email protected]
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                85 months ago

                A lot of racist/white supremacist intent underlined much of early gun control. Before concealed gun carry permits existed in a widespread manner in the late 80s, it was known that if you were the right skin color and weren’t carrying a shitty gun without said permit, cops looked the other way.

                White guy with a H&K or Sig Sauer? “Have a nice day day sir”

                Minority with a Jennings or Lorcin? Dangerous criminal lying in wait for their next victim

                the original Act of 1893 … was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers … and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied. It is a safe guess to assume that more than 80% of the white men living in the rural sections of Florida have violated this statute… and there has never been, within my knowledge, any effort to enforce the provisions of this statute as to white people

                Rivers H. Buford, associate justice of the Florida Supreme Court, Watson v Stone - 1941

        • @[email protected]
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          505 months ago

          He knew it too. When Gandhi got imprisoned, his movement turned violent. If you don’t listen to the peaceful protester, you’ll get the angry rioter.

          • Shindig
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            5 months ago

            Gandhi’s counterpoint was Subhas Chandra Bose all along.

        • Dragon Rider (drag)
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          75 months ago

          Aren’t the admins of that instance a bunch of statists who support the government having a monopoly on the use of legitimate violence? As a communist, drag can’t support any ideology where the means of production are owned by an elite class of government officials rather than by the people.

              • @[email protected]
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                5 months ago

                I would argue that’s an issue of perspective, were I to post things that are hypercritical of western propaganda on world, I would be and have been banned there too. Managing propaganda is not the same thing as the claims made above.

                Nowhere in that link was there claims that only the state has a monopoly on violence.

                Edit: And I have absolutely been critical of Russia on their communities. As for the China critiques, I imagine they’re tired of the same western propaganda ad nauseum

      • @[email protected]
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        105 months ago

        Yes. Yes it is, it has been for years and years. They figured out that if they get us to believe violence is inherently bad and should never be resorted to, then they can safely ignore us. It starts early too, with that complete crock of shit about ignoring bullies making them go away.

        Violence should never be the first solution, but the threat of it needs to be there if the first attempt fails, and resorting to violence should happen as soon as it becomes apparent that nonviolent methods are not being regarded in good faith.

      • @[email protected]
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        5 months ago

        I never understood how our country - proudly founded through the uprising of the downtrodden to overthrow their oppressor with violence - could ever honestly think that violence is never the answer. Our national anthem has a stanza specifically dedicated to the rockets and bombs “we the people” used against the British.

  • @[email protected]
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    245 months ago

    This is just trying to adapt to stay alive (the industry, not the people) when they really should be utterly destroyed in favor of single payer healthcare. Don’t let up because they’re behaving like they have a gun pointed at their corporate person and promising the holder anything to keep making billions.

    • @[email protected]
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      25 months ago

      That’s literally what the second amendment is about.

      The idea isn’t necessarily to overthrow the military with a coup. It’s to make those in power afraid to piss off enough people that they can’t walk down the street without some random person with a gun going after them.

      • @[email protected]
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        155 months ago

        Idk why anyone is surprised by the outcome of one political party fighting so hard for the ammo box while gutting the other boxes. Like what did they expect?

        • @[email protected]
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          25 months ago

          That’s part of the American mythos that’s honestly not much more than brainwashing. There is no “revolutionary American spirit.” Not since the country was founded, actually. Sure, leaving the British, but then…nothing. I don’t think we can call something that last happened in the 1700s “part of who we are.” We are the face of global hegemony and capitalism.

          We’re not all still sperm just because that’s how we became people, yknow what I mean?

    • gordon
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      135 months ago

      The French have a long history of politically motivated violence

    • Doom
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      275 months ago

      Hey man we tried to get them banned and shit, they said no so I guess we gotta do it their way

    • @[email protected]
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      215 months ago

      Wait until you get a $50,000 health insurance bill for non-existent procedures that the doctor and insurance company made up and no one will believe your side of the story.

  • @[email protected]
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    475 months ago

    Yea no way that’s true. I mean I wish it was but these greedy fucks aren’t gonna stop being greedy.

    • @[email protected]
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      5 months ago

      It could be a calculated loss strategy that buys them good optics.

      While this story is in the news cycle people have the opportunity to build positive bias by having their claims approved for a few days.

      Edit: Not to say that it is true at all, but it would be a valid strategy for them for a week or so

    • @[email protected]
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      155 months ago

      They could be more cooperative for a couple of weeks while this story dies out, if people forget, they will increase the denies even more the recuperate the missed revenue.

  • @[email protected]
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    955 months ago

    So… The murder of a CEO of a horrible company leads to better conditions for everyone?

    I would probably break a ton of rules on lemmy to suggest any further actions based on this result, so I’m not going to.

    ^But, you know…^

    • @[email protected]
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      5 months ago

      Unfortunately I’m afraid this will only be a very short term gain for society. In the longer term CEO-s will just muscle-up. They’ll hire a whole bunch more security and bodyguards, armored vehicles, taller, concrete fences around their properties and show their faces even less in public. All on company expense, so from our, their consumers’ money of course. They will become even more isolated, secluded and cut off from society, more paranoid and resentful about the rest of us, mere ‘plebs’.

      I’m not saying I don’t understand why people are celebrating. But I don’t think that this murder will help steer back society, inequality and corporate greed into a healthier, better direction. Instead it is just another step along the path to the dystopian future shown in so-so many sci-fi literature and movies. Where 99% of society has been delegated to a complete slave-like status, with ZERO financial security, self-determination, healthcare access and freedom while they spend day and night labouring endlessly, just to not starve or freeze to death. Which they still might, if they get in an accident or an illness which bankrupts them.

      Meanwhile the 1% will reap ALL the benefits from the work of all the rest of us and they’ll live like no king has ever lived before. Possibly their lifes extended to hundreds of years, flying around the planet between their mansions from party to party.

      Murdering one or two CEO-s will not prevent this future I think. We will need a much, much wider show of rejection of this future if we want to stop it. We will need protests, demonstrations and show of unity. The rich will try to prevent this in every possible way. They will call the protesters terrorists, fundamentalists. Police will treat them as criminals and jail or even kill many of them. But if the society-wide rejection of this dystopian future is not shown in full force, it WILL HAPPEN.

        • @[email protected]
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          75 months ago

          The amount of weight a drone can carry is pretty limited. And the low tech easily made at home explosives are fairly heavy.
          However, even if it was viable, the 1% will have everything right down to paper airplanes made illegal.

          • @[email protected]
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            45 months ago

            Russia uses armoured ground drones that look like mini tanks with armor resistant to bullets. They are used as explosive suicide drones. While there are large quadcopters for payload applications, this is the easiest delivery method.

      • @[email protected]
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        35 months ago

        There is a good onion piece on how the media is struggling to find a motive along the permitted divisiveness issues it helps narrate.

        This is temporary. Surely the pro hamas antifa climate alarmist radical left will need to a harsher crack down, or Iran will win. They hate our freedom of having “the best healthcare in the world”, and the great innovation leader that UNH is for technology/AI advancement in cutting “wasteful” cost. We cannot let radical communists interfere in “America’s greatness”

      • @[email protected]
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        85 months ago

        Let them turtle up. It won’t save them. This is the fourth turning. And they’re on the menu.

      • @[email protected]
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        65 months ago

        Unfortunately I’m afraid this will only be a very short term gain for society. In the longer term CEO-s will just muscle-up. They’ll hire a whole bunch more security and bodyguards, armored vehicles, taller, concrete fences around their properties and show their faces even less in public. All on company expense, so from our, their consumers’ money of course. They will become even more isolated, secluded and cut off from society, more paranoid and resentful about the rest of us, mere ‘plebs’.

        All of their security needs to be working 100% correctly 100% of the time. Anyone going after them only needs one time with one opening. They can never be safe forever. Maybe it turns into sniper nests, maybe it turns into hacked together hobby drones with bombs.

        At the end of the day there is nothing they can do if the 99% rise against them.

  • Queen HawlSera
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    35 months ago

    Capitalists will only behave if they’re afraid or if it’s profitable. The latter is rarely the case.

  • @[email protected]
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    185 months ago

    Regardless of stance on assassinations, very big positives can come from this event.

    Congress/GOP is less likely to eliminate medicare, and the insurance sector is behaving in “self regulation” the GOP says all companies can do.

  • @[email protected]
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    215 months ago

    That’s how it works.

    Usually the quote is about all political power coming from the end of a rifle, but I guess this time it was a pistol.

    • @[email protected]
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      245 months ago

      The quote I’ve always heard is “Change comes through the barrel of a gun” so it still works with a pistol.

      • @[email protected]
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        5 months ago

        “Power comes from the end of a rifle” is the version that I’ve heard that comes to mind. But the point stands, it’s a metaphor, and the metaphor is about when the use of violence is acceptable, not what type of violence is used.

        And I suppose pistols are rifled.

            • @[email protected]
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              15 months ago

              The shot still not heard around the world. At least by anyone screwed by insurance companies, I believe it’s a pre-existing condition called “Deafness to justified anger being served”

        • @[email protected]
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          125 months ago

          The usual translation is “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” It’s a Mao Zedong quote.

          • @[email protected]
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            5 months ago

            Thank you, now that I hear it, yeah. I forgot it was a translation that I was remembering, and thus more easily misremembering.

            Edit: Though I think the first version I read was “stem” rather than “barrel”. That was probably just the translator being…flowery…though.

  • Onno (VK6FLAB)
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    1635 months ago

    The reason that insurance companies currently exist is to make money. That’s the ONLY reason. Until that changes, the system is likely to get worse, not better.

    • @[email protected]
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      325 months ago

      This, so much. If a CEO makes a conscientious decision that makes stockholders less money, he gets fired. Stockholders sue companies over decisions that are considered less profitable.

      And I don’t mean people who invest their 401k’s in mutual funds bullshit. I mean the activist multi millionaire assholes that own full percentage points of companies. These people are the ones that lobby companies and politicians and shape the legal and market landscape.

      These fucking people have zero accountability to anyone.

      And they convince themselves they have every right to be that way.

      • @[email protected]
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        185 months ago

        I mean the activist multi millionaire assholes that own full percentage points of companies. These people are the ones that lobby companies and politicians and shape the legal and market landscape.

        aka The Big Club

        (NSFW - language)

    • @[email protected]
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      5 months ago

      Essentially they exist to make the cost of the risk they agree to bear reasonable and affordable to their customers.

      The second they fail to serve that purpose they become useless.

      Their very existence depends on the same thing that has made them into the shitstains they are: Greed.