Remember this?
UnitedHealth uses AI model with 90% error rate to deny care, lawsuit alleges
Someone up thread brought up that someone in a position such as a health care CEO can cause a tremendous amount more of suffering than death row inmates might have caused. That is an interesting point.
It has also crossed my mind that if, once a week, the richest person on the planet were killed, eventually fear would outweigh greed, and remaining folks of extraordinary means would be likely to be pushed toward justice.
And yet…
I am not a killer. I live in a country where I don’t want to see the kind of assassinations I read about abroad. I want the rule of law to prevail. I’m cognizant that if a movement took off where powerful, “evil” people were killed, there would probably be an opposite reaction that could lead to snowballing violence.
Overall, this is a complex subject. Reasonable arguments can be made and supported by various ethical frameworks. I imagine good people are likely to experience cognitive dissonance when reading this news.
tl;dr murder bad, fairness & widespread prosperity good
also
We still have egalitarian-minded Americans with disposable income and free time who have not yet devoted those resources to agitating for change. I would imagine this factor, of potential opportunities not yet exhausted, diminishes the power of arguments for the righteousness of extrajudicial processes. (Most every night after work I choose to NOT devote my time to activism.) In contrast, if no free personhours remained not occupied by labor, sleep, or activism, I imagine vigilante behavior would be easier to defend in a debate.
