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<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_Saddam_Hussein>
I'm not claiming that the trial / execution adhered to any particular standards, just that as an example of an extrajudicial killing the story's a bit shaky.
There are other examples to choose from, including the utterly nonjudicial killings of Osama bin Laden (by US forces) or Muammar Gaddafi (by Libyan rebels with at least notional US support). There's a long list of US targeted assassinations as well, from Anwar al-Awlaki (2010), with another 35 intended targets and 200 killed, see: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Targeted_killing#Use_by_United...>.
(I'm also not litigating the appropriateness of those actions, rather they're offered as instances where the US government has acted within recent memory to kill designated enemies without judicial process.)
I get the point you're making. But I suspect it might just as easily go the other way: the 10% chance of assassination would justify having your security detail, probably paid for on the company dime, but affordable even if you're "only" making $10M/year. And once you have that candy shell and the "me against them" mentality, you might just go further with the bloodsucking.
IOW: Maybe the current situation IS tempered already. :-(
Your post is ironically just a pro-terrorism argument. You want terrorism targeted at CEOs to change their behavior.
There are a million different viewpoints on what acts are harmful and how to minimize or prevent those harms. It's better that we use things like voting and laws and courts to collectively reach consensus on when to use violence, rather than individuals killing people who disagree with them.
You can argue that this CEO should have been arrested for some crime and you can argue that said crime should carry the death penalty upon conviction. But that doesn't mean it's valid for a random person to be judge, jury and executioner based on their own personal concept of justice.
Not endorsing the practice, merely pointing out that to put someone to death in the U.S. defined notion of due process, no more than about 2 dozen key people's assent/cooperation need be attained.
Surely you mean no less than two dozen?
sure looks personal
--Gandalf
Regardless of your personal feelings if you kill someone in defense of yourself or your property it’s going to matter a lot what state you did that in.
If the evaluation is flawed... do you see why it's not a good idea?
Examples from the healthcare, banking, pharmaceutical (notably Purdue) or petrochemical industries might be particularly appropriate.
My read of the street is that the institution of law and courts has been assessed as insufficient and/or terminally dysfunctional.
What's the view you're defending? That CEOs should be murdered when some arbitrary citizen ready to do murder thinks the CEO is guilty enough?
I totally think law and order is dysfunctional. I don't know if people will actually resort to murder, but I could understand why they would do it. (It's far easier to talk about it than to do it.)
But it is not a good solution to the problem. The system of "murder people when we are upset" will certainly be at least as dysfunctional as the current one, if not more. Law being taken into the hands of whoever has weapons and the will to do it is what happens in narco states. Who prefers that?
One would think that this is a target-rich environment, and yet there don't seem to be many cases of that occurring. You've not answered my own question (choosing to rather spectacularly misinterpret and misstate my comment instead). I've put the question (phrased several ways) to an LLM which first responded with a set of decades-old fraud (e.g., creditor/shareholder victims) cases, and then point blank refused to suggest who might be prosecuted, or even who has been discussed as being plausibly prosecuted (interesting set of guardrails).
The law for whatever reasons --- I can think of several and there are many which have been expressed both recently and going back through time, Anatole France's observation of the law and its majestic equality would be among the classic and better known --- seems not to take an interest into affronts against the public at large.
I think my point was clearly expressed as originally put, if you've any difficulties in interpreting this, please say how and where: My read of the street is that the institution of law and courts has been assessed as insufficient and/or terminally dysfunctional.
The alternatives are not good, a point on which I suspect we're agreed. But they'll be reached for where institutions consistently fail, if I read history correctly.
And to draw on another recent HN thread, if the purpose of a system is what it does, then the system isn't broken but is performing as intended. Which would itself be a problem.
(See: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42313947> among numerous others: <https://hn.algolia.com/?q=stafford%20beer>.)
> If you can fairly and correctly evaluate which CEOs are especially blood sucking, simply taking their money and sending them to prison for a while will have the same effect and be far less ethically dubious.
But that would require the buy in and cooperation of the state, which probably wouldn't work any better than the current political/judicial system, because elites like CEOs have disproportionate influence in controlling state behavior. The system is setup to primarily protect and serve people like them.
I think the GP's idea was to add an extra-judicial check on CEO behavior that could be implemented by a motivated individual, and thus would be much harder for CEOs to subvert. Even the threat of assassination could have a restraining effect, because who wants to live in a bunker surrounded by guards? The blood-sucking CEO wouldn't be able to enjoy his ill-gotten gains.
One (somewhat small) problem with the GP's idea is its focus on CEOs. One feature of capitalism is how it can obscure culpability and create scapegoats to misdirect anger and protect the principles. A CEO definitely has fault and responsibility for the company's actions, but he's ultimately a minion of the company's owners. Above the CEO things often get shadowy.
Courts and laws have become corrupted, but you tink letting people at random make their own justice will not be corrupted?
One of the reasons this even sounds remotely possible to you is we have not abandoned the idea of the rule of law. If it were abandoned outright, the CEOs (or whatever) would never be outside of protected areas and without guards and such. Ordinary citizens however, would not afford protection.
Perhaps the exception that proves the rule.
I know nothing, but reading the news "CEO assasinated" my first thought is he was murdered by a rival organisation.
CEOs are not martians. They're some of "the people" we are talking about. They rose to the top through ruthlessness and disregard for laws and such. You think giving up on laws will make them less powerful?
I.e. yes, we absolutely should prosecute more white collar crime.
And the "let whoever is upset try to murder the respective CEO" analysis has no problems? I think it has more.
If we’re in a world with such lobbying... do you see why prosecution might fail despite its merits?
Stated another way, society's end of the social contract is to make sure that people generally aren't upset enough to commit murder.
> Imagine a world where the especially blood-sucking CEOs have a 1/10 chance of being assassinated.
Assassination isn’t prosecution.
My point is, it’s the fantastical world that actually prosecutes corporate managers for their criminal decisions. Shit, it’s the fantastical world that has American laws which make it illegal for UHC to have the business practice of denying claims by default unless/until they’re positively proven necessary beyond any sliver of doubt.
I am not trying to say murder will work to correct corporate behavior, I’m saying that it’s the thing we can see actually happens as an attempt to correct the behavior. It’s not hard to find many examples in this thread of people who think corps get away with too much. That is how one can tell there is a lack of prosecution and/or protection laws.
The real world has unfortunate circumstances that encourage this kind of crime because America does not have effective laws/enforcement which curtail the power of the corporations who write said laws. That’s the fantasy. We don’t live in a world where execs can be prosecuted for most of their anti-social decisions, let alone are.
I never made a value call about what’s fair, I only pointed out that the idea of prosecution in this context is a fantasy.
You're talking about civil disobedience here, which typically doesn't involve murder.
> (how is lethal injection different than assassination? I think it's basically the same)
I'm opposed to capital punishment, but I see a huge difference between the two even though they both involve killing someone. The death penalty only comes after a legal process and court deliberation. Assassination is unregulated. That's a pretty large distinction.
> Don't you think that the regular expectation of this might make them a little less blood-sucking?
No, I don't. It would make them do their bloodsucking differently in order to minimize their risk, but I don't think it would make them cut back.
True, there is a distinction but in some cases since there is no alternative, it might be the next best thing.
Because what you are describing is literally anarchy. It’s antithetical to our foundational principles as a society.
> I bet not many Americans would object to taking out terrorists, especially some who have caused a lot of damage like 9/11.
Opposition to the war on terror is not a fringe position in the United States.
> What about Timothy McVeigh? The U.S. assassinated him basically (how is lethal injection different than assassination? I think it's basically the same).
Well you’re wrong. Timothy McVeigh was tried and convicted. That’s literally the difference between assasination and the death penalty. Opposition to the death penalty is also not a fringe position and many states no longer practice capital punishment.
> And what about this? Imagine a world where the especially blood-sucking CEOs have a 1/10 chance of being assassinated.
How do you identify the 1/10?
> Don't you think that the regular expectation of this might make them a little less blood-sucking?
I don’t know what the effect would be, why are you so confident you do?
> I wonder why it's morally acceptable for a country to send an army to assassinate some guy causing trouble or for the police to kill a terrorist holding hostages, but when another rich guy takes charge of a machine killing many more people than the average terrorist, assassinating them is taboo?
Do you really wonder? Do you really, honestly not know the difference? I find that very hard to believe.
A little anarchy now and then may not be a bad thing if it upsets the exisitng power structure. And the founding principles do not imply that the current society is what the founding principles were meant to imply.
> I don’t know what the effect would be, why are you so confident you do?
I am not completely confident but it's a reasonable assumption.
> Do you really wonder? Do you really, honestly not know the difference? I find that very hard to believe.
Of course there is a difference, because they are different situations. But I don't think there is a moral difference.
If the society has failed, people will use violence to build a replacement. This is the system. Its always been the system. What you are saying here, is that stability is more important than fixing a system that is killing people.
>Opposition to the war on terror is not a fringe position in the United States. And non violent opposition didnt really end it in any reasonable time frame.
>How do you identify the 1/10? The bullets and blood will be a pretty good indicator.
>Do you really wonder? Do you really, honestly not know the difference? I find that very hard to believe.
The difference is that foreign murder doesn't challenge the stability and comfort that the state provides you, where as local murder might spread to you, and you might need to change your behavior to avoid it. Its just plain old discomfort and hypocrisy. To paraphrase a common internet saying, the f*king around is fine, you simply dont want to find out.
Is it fixing the system or replacing it? You can’t have it both ways.
I'm not sure it actually is. The foundational principle of society is basically the social contract "Individuals give up the right to exert violence in exchange for society providing safety and benefit."
If society fails to uphold its end of the bargain, then it seems logical that the individual is no longer obligated to hold up their end.
Yes, the healthcare system has flaws. But those flaws are fixable. In living memory we have seen dramatic improvements in the healthcare industry. Murder isn’t the solution here.
Vietnam recently sentenced someone to death for embezzling ~$12 billion[1].
For example, I believe in peace and wish peace upon the world but I am not a pacifist and believe that a variety of techniques are necessary to prevent the world from becoming a techno-tyranny.