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What we know about CEO shooting suspect

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Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#831
post #544

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It wouldn't be the first time the police/three letters agencies lie about how they identified/located a suspect to not leak potentially illegal surveillance processes

It seems far more likely to be a case of incompetence. Law enforcement actually has an extremely low rate of "solving" cases, especially if you exclude all the "solved" cases where the suspect is caught on scene or that end in a plea bargain (i.e. did not have to establish sufficient evidence in the first place). Ever since he got "caught" (if you can call someone literally telling the police where he is "the police…

> all I've been hearing about is how the police wants to use DNA evidence and bullet "fingerpints" [...] and other CSI woo to now tie the actual crime to him

I don't know about your country, but in my country if you look like the person shown on CCTV committing a crime, you're wearing the same jacket, you're carrying the same illegal gun, and you're carrying a handwritten manifesto justifying the crime?

That's enough evidence for a normal jury of normal people to convict. The cops don't really need to add any DNA or CSI woo, juries are capable of exercising common sense.

Only way there's reasonable doubt here is if the guy's carrying the first place trophy for the CEO shooter lookalike contest.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#832

What's important is what we learned about society's appetite for political violence against the upper class. What isn't important is the actual actor.

I think you mean the appetite for political violence of people who are chronically online and lacking connection with reality

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#833

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>media really over-estimated this persons competence It is a bit of psychological blindness where we convince ourselves that random murders aren't as easy as they really are. The truth is that almost anyone -- including people with lots of security theater -- can be nullified by random people. This is quadruply true in the era of drones.

How rulers like Putin survive so long though?

By making it appear, and actually, much harder. More surveillance, more body guards, stronger loyalty checks can get you a lot of security.

And let's be honest. Who would take a bullet for this CEO of one of the most despised corporations in USA (that's saying something).

I honestly think, that the general distaste for this particular industry, is why the law enforcement had such a hard time catching him.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#834

Murder is only justified when it's your business model and behind numbers and profit margins in an Excel sheet are the real people you are sentencing to a lifetime of suffering and/or death.

A quick look at United Health's P/L shows a 6% profit margin. This does not quite support the popular rhetoric of a corporation in search of relentless margin (unless the argument is they are bad at it despite all efforts).

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#835
post #730

Murder is only justified when it's your business model and behind numbers and profit margins in an Excel sheet are the real people you are sentencing to a lifetime of suffering and/or death.

Only the CEO or everyone that works there?

That's the scary part. It's very tempting to just sentence someone like this. But more you dwell on it, the worst it gets. There is a reason why death penalty is considered an extreme.

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#836

A few days ago, HN had "The pitchforks are coming for us plutocrats."[1] I wrote, no, otherwise the US wouldn't have elected a billionaire as a populist president. Maybe that was wrong. The US has historically been a safe space for the rich. There's never been anything like the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or the Maoist revolution. The people in charge of the American Revolution were mostly well off.…

Unlikely. Here’s what will happen instead: Corporations will beef up security and keep doing what they were doing before. Police and government will increase surveillance budgets, citing this event as reasoning. And no one will interpret this act of violence as anything other than a random event to prevent. You don’t get structural change by extreme singular events. That’s not how it works.

Archduke Ferdinand has entered the chat ...

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#838
post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Neither of your theories answer the question -- how did he know that the CEO was staying in a hotel other than Hilton (conference venue) and would arrive by foot 1 hour and 15 minutes before conference opens at 8am (CEOs do not typically arrive so early in advance). The shooter was caught on camera talking on a burner phone 15 minutes before shooting. Who did he talk to? Was he acting alone or received some help? The…

This is my sticking point as well. The bullet messages only made sense for this specific guy and that’s a whole lot of work to engrave bullets, take a multi-state bus ride, camp out in a hostel, etc if you’re not 100% sure the guy is going to be there. I’d feel more confident if he’d staked the route out for multiple days or if there was a plausible backup plan like breaking in to the CEO’s hotel or the conference.

This is exactly what us hunters do year after year, time and time again. Drive for hours, hike for miles. Gathering what information we can. Then at some point we have to make assumptions and commit to some scenario in hopes it pans out the way you assume.

A tremendous amount of time and effort is spent with it all riding on a few, hopefully, well placed assumptions. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn't. Usually your acquaintances only hear about the times the hunt works out. Same with this. We only hear about it, because it worked out for the hunter

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#839

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Refusing to pay for medical care is hardly murder. It’s a standard monetary dispute, and we have a due process for these. If you think that so many claims are being unreasonably denied, why not start a company offering bridge loans, and funding legal challenges? Maybe the courts are too inefficient to handle these disputes, but that’s an argument for reforming the courts, not for shooting executives.

In some countries if you don't give care to someone who is in danger of dying you are yourself responsible for murder. This is what these health insurance companies are doing routinely. Murder by inaction and calling it anything else is playing in their hands. The fact that courts are costly and slow is exactly why these companies use them to "delay".

> In some countries if you don't give care to someone who is in danger of dying you are yourself responsible for murder.

So everyone in said countries is guilty of murder because they're not donating 100% of their time and energy to helping cure cancer?

That's not at all how this works. You can't just legislate infinite resources into existence. And infinite resources is exactly what it would take to give everyone a 100% perfect standard of care.

Deciding what's covered and what isn't is literally the whole job of an insurance company. Otherwise we could just put money into a pot and let anyone take out any amount they feel like, whenever they feel like it, for whatever purpose they deem necessary at their sole discretion. (And if that sounds like a good idea to you, I'd urge you to think things through a bit more carefully before you waste your money by trying it.)

Re: What we know about CEO shooting suspect

#840
post #592

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought it was a joke when I saw the posts on the Reddit homepage celebrating the murder and even the murderer. Partly because I thought Redditors were above that type of thing, but also because I thought it was against their TOS. It's a real reminder of how little sympathy people can have about people who they consider the enemy or the "other". I'm almost certain nearly all of the people celebrating the murder bel…

Honest question, do you think there is a point where someone has earned death? For example, was the mission to kill Bin Laden wrong? Was the mission to kill the Iranian General in Iraq wrong? Is it wrong to kill someone via the death penalty for the rape and murder of a child? Many people fundamentally believe those things are good examples of killing other humans. And realistically, those people are responsible for…

There is a difference between “earning a death” as some sort of justice, and killing being justified to prevent further harm. The death penalty is more of an example of earning death, as it is a punishment more than it is to prevent the person doing harm. Whereas a police shooting is a “justified” killing to prevent harm to others. In the former the goal is killing, in the latter the goal is to stop a threat and the outcome is killing.

The killing of Bin Laden and Soleimani were justified, in my opinion, as declared enemy combatants and leaders of hostile State and non-State military forces. They didn’t “deserve” to die for justice. They were taken off the battlefield. Whether I agree with that decision or not, I understand the justification.

Killing a rapist and murderer via the death penalty is wrong, in my opinion. It is killing in cold blood as a punishment, not to protect others or prevent harm. I do not think government should engage in retributive killing. But that is just me.

As for the United CEO, I don’t think he deserved to die or earned a death. I do think that a compelling argument can be made that government institutions have failed to act to protect human life at the hands of the American healthcare system, and that an individual could see his killing as a justified means to force change and protect American lives. It is the eternal question of when is someone a terrorist and when are they a freedom fighter?

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