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Comment by coryfklein | Hacker News Reader

You stand at the fork in the tracks. Pulling the lever will divert the train from a track with 10,000 people on it, to a track with 1 person on it. Do you pull the lever?

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Well, I know the one person will die if I pull the lever. But I don’t have any reason to think that pulling it will save the other ten thousand. In fact, it probably won’t—it’s a big train that will find its way to that track eventually, and the only way people have been saved in other countries is legislation to move everybody off the tracks, but that’s too much work for me. What pulling the lever will do is make me feel important. I can convince everybody to read my manifesto that’s equal parts Unabomber and the Joker; if I don’t pull the lever nobody will care what I have to say. What’s a human life in comparison to that?

I believe the OP was referring to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

That much was obvious. The trolley problem is so famous because it really is an ambiguous moral problem. The OP brought it up to imply murdering Brian Thompson was justified, in that now some other people will live who would otherwise die. This idea is a fantasy, however, which besides having no evidence to back it, doesn’t even make sense once examined with a modicum of criticality. Once the remnants of the dream of vigilantism are brushed away, this wannabe trolley problem becomes plain: it’s nothing but an unjustifiable murder by a mentally disturbed egotist who thinks he has the right to play executioner.

This is real life, not a Punisher comic. Democracy ain’t easy, and as soon as a hurdle appears people itch to find an easy workaround, but there’s no way around doing the hard work of fixing the system.

You didn’t read the link.

> This variation is similar to The Fat Man, with the additional assertion that the fat man who may be pushed is a villain who is responsible for the whole situation: the fat man was the one who tied five people to the track, and sent a trolley in their direction with the intention of killing them. In this variation, a majority of people are willing to push the fat man.[38] Unlike in the previous scenario, pushing the fat villain to stop the trolley may be seen as a form of retributive justice or self-defense.

the Fat Villain variation still prevents the death of the innocents.

No such direct relationship can be assumed about murdering a healthcare CEO

There are 10,000 people waiting to take the place of the now unfortunate after the train runs over him.

So, more trains with hundreds of thousands will topple over until the tracks are fixed.

Your healthcare system principles are the problem. Healthcare can't function the same way Automotive industry or Oil Wells work. Heck, it can't even work the same as Auto insurance. For moral reasons only, because profitability is great.

This is less a trolley problem and more of a fat villain problem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem#The_Fat_Villai...

How exactly does killing a CEO save 10k people?

Hint: it doesn't. In fact, the only result I can imagine from this is the opposite. After all, UHC will probably need to pay their CEO (if anyone takes the job) more for a while, to overcome the risk of being murdered. So if CEO pay meant fewer claims being paid out, after this they'll probably pay out even fewer.

Your argument is that the reason they were not paying out more claims is because they had to compensate their CEO?

This isn't my argument. This is the argument of many people who think the murder is justified, including the parent comment which implied this is a simple 1 person vs 10,000 people trolley problem.

I am pointing out how silly that line of thinking is.

With this line of reasoning, the french revolution was about the stipend of the King.

Have you ever seen The Dark Knight? There's this quote about sending a message.

Gotcha, so 10k lives weren't actually saved, but a "message" was sent.

Cool.

Makes perfect sense to justify killing people on the sidewalk in real life by quoting philosophy from the Joker. That’s the sign of a strong and correct moral foundation.

Technically two people on it, one of them being yourself. Changes the rationale quite a bit.

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