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Comment by heaterwedge | Hacker News Reader

> This seems just as much of a failure of society in dealing with these kind of nihilistic parasites sucking our society dry as anything else.

While nobody's shedding a tear here, we should be cautious about even softly embracing or downplaying vigilantism.

Worth remembering, and we've already seen it happen frequently: Vigilante justice can be wielded against controversial personas you support, and there will be just as much applause from the sidelines (from the other side).

That feeling can even extend to people you might consider innocent: See one of the other comments where someone is noting they wouldn't shed a tear over a particular company's *employees* being murdered.

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Fully agree with you, vigilante justice should not happen because we have a system protecting the citizens and doing them justice. Wait, do we actually have such a workable system? Because if not, vigilante justice is just around the corner.

Just be careful what you wish for :). Vigilante justice doesn't have a great history of being actual justice.

I wish those working laws and law system, can I get them pretty please? No? Which party in power does something for it? Instead of trying to scare people with the threat of vigilante, I'd rather appease them with the lure of a healthy system.

The answer to "X doesn't work" usually isn't "let's do the exact opposite of X because X isn't working".

There's just scads of historical evidence to support what a bad idea that usually is.

What is the answer?

Tell that to Dare Devil, or Spider-Man, or the Punisher. Seems America kinda idolizes vigilantes

The justice system doesn't have a great track record of being actual justice either.

How's France looking these days? still under bourbon rule?

its the usual 'problem' in this country - all of these reprehensible actions by these corporations are, by and large, legal.

being legal doesn't make it right or ethical though.

the legislators clearly think the system is fine and workable as evidenced by the legislature passed to allow profits over, quite literally, anything else in this country.

whilst i don't condone murder or vigilantism, i fully expect more of this because this is exactly what the 'system' has wrought. when you have nothing to lose, all options are on the table.

> the legislators clearly think the system is fine and workable as evidenced by the legislature passed to allow profits over, quite literally, anything else in this country.

But don't you think that a more civilized way to solve it is by voting and changing the legislators who think this is right?

I mean, the issue is when it goes from a sacrificed lamb CEO from a very disgraceful industry and replicates to the rest of society.

I've voted every single year of my adult life. It doesn't seem to be working.

    But don't you think that a more civilized way to 
    solve it is by voting and changing the legislators 
    who think this is right?

Absolutely, but corporations effectively control the government and who gets campaign funding.

The 2024 presidential election was won by the candidate who spent about 1/3rd less than their opponent, and we’ve seen many successful campaigns in the past decade funded by small donations beat corporate backed candidates. Funding isn’t everything, and it’s a cop out to co-sign vigilantism on such a glib basis: https://www.opensecrets.org/2024-presidential-race

Rule of law is a precious thing, even if it’s imperfect, as all human systems will inevitably be. We shouldn’t be cavalier about discarding it. The alternatives are much worse.

Nobody is claiming that outspending your rivals is some kind of automatic electoral win but nice job, uh, over there. (gestures at the remains of the strawman you tore apart)

Back on topic...

The relevant campaign spending figures here would be "minimum amounts of funding to run a viable campaign" and not "how much did the winner spend."

What I, unlike our recently deceased strawman, was pointing out is that without backing from corporations and the people who own them, your chances of winning elections to higher offices (congress, presidency) are close to zero. And the odds of enough similarly-untainted, like-minded people getting elected concurrently (or at least running campaigns popular enough to pressure those in office) is even more astronomically low.

But....

Campaign funding issues only scratch the surface of what it would take to achieve any kind of real reform re: freeing the government from corporate influence.

Because even if you, say, pull off some kind of underdog miracle and get elected to Congress without completely selling out... you're not going to accomplish shit without political capital, somehow bucking the other 534 members of Congress who have sold out.

> was won by the candidate who spent about 1/3rd less than their opponent

I guess the truth of that statement depends on whether or not you consider the $36 billion dollars that Musk has lost on Twitter to have been "spent" or not.

Is that the case if you include the fact that Fox News is effectively a wing of the Republican party? It seems to me that Republicans don't need to spend more since they have an entire outside propaganda apparatus.

It's also not just funding. It's funding, gerrymandering, the electoral college, lobbying, the Supreme Court, voter suppression, etc.

The wealthy have captured the levers of government and wield them against the working class, and it's only getting worse.

Captured them? Made them, they did.

When democracy doesn't work, the citizens have a duty to turn to violence against their government. They not only SHOULD do it, they MUST. That is the fundamental principle this country was founded upon.

The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread. -- Anatole France

The only problem I can actually name with vigilante justice is that it can be error-prone. Otherwise it's only an encroachment upon the state's monopoly on the dispensation of justice, and I'm not seeing a moral objection to that. And the state's approach to justice is also quite error-prone.

It's a narrow view of justice that equates it to well aimed violence.

>we should be cautious about even softly embracing or downplaying vigilantism.

Agreed. However, there's been kind of a lot of noise being made the last year or two about "it's time to sharpen the guillotines" WRT the concentration of wealth, and as a society in the US our collective reaction seems to be "let them eat cake".

Yes, it's unfortunate and we very well might be headed towards a French Revolution era.

I hope people on both sides of those phrases remember how many benign people were killed during the French Revolution, to say nothing of how many "true believers" were as well (Robespierre was also executed by guillotine).

Revolutions are fascinating. The Reign of Terror served as a warning to plenty of non-peasants. But, to get there, the army of the monarchy had to kill thousands of peasants without any warning or recognition of their humanity. So I think people who know the Revolution wonder whether people are reacting like we’re at the beginning, or the middle.

The French Revolution is generally agreed to have started with the third estate forming their own assembly and storming the Bastille a month later to depose the king.

Whatever you think of Jan 6, we clearly haven't deposed the President nor has any vocal section of Congress formed their own legislature so any argument that the revolution has actually begun seems specious or is stretching the definition of the word "revolution" so much as to be meaningless.

Revolutions usually involve going through a door of no-return, and there's little evidence to suggest we've hit that point. Congress could, tomorrow, announce a wealth tax and sweeping reforms and etc and most aggrievances would be resolved.

We don't say a ball is on the ground just because it's in freefall and likely to be on the ground shortly barring any last-second intervention.

Yet the right-wing narrative building since 2016 is that Trump and close legislative allies are counter-revolutionary. “You’re not going to have a country anymore” is not suggesting a return to a 1950s tax regimen.

Oh here’s my other favorite part of this discussion: Which revolution are we talking about? Left vs right? Wealthy vs poor? Capitalism vs Socialism (yes, that is very different from the previous one)? All extremely different revolutions even if they’re all bubbling to the surface now!

Hopefully when the glorious revolution comes, it’s the one people are hoping for and not one of the other ones.

There are plenty of people who will find this murder and the reasoning behind it abhorrent but still support violent overthrow of existing power structures.

Hearhear. I suppose the first tenet of conservatism in light of the education of founders of America is that rapid change in social order tends to be a net negative. Other preoccupations have been bolted on, but now we see a Republican Party that itself is changing faster than the Democratic Party.

“THERE were two “Reigns of Terror,” if we would but remember it and consider it; the one wrought murder in hot passion, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon ten thousand persons, the other upon a hundred millions; but our shudders are all for the “horrors” of the minor Terror, the momentary Terror, so to speak; whereas, what is the horror of swift death by the axe, compared with lifelong death from hunger, cold, insult, cruelty, and heart-break? What is swift death by lightning compared with death by slow fire at the stake? A city cemetery could contain the coffins filled by that brief Terror which we have all been so diligently taught to shiver at and mourn over; but all France could hardly contain the coffins filled by that older and real Terror—that unspeakably bitter and awful Terror which none of us has been taught to see in its vastness or pity as it deserves.”

― Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

Timely as ever

"Vigiliante justice" is an oxymoron.

`Insurance premium` is an oxymoron even more so for non-native English speakers.

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