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One of the thing that's been on my mind for the last few weeks has been the assassination of Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO. As assassinations go -- as the total viewing corpus of assassinations, both real and imagined, that have penetrated my eyeballs go -- it was pretty modest. If you see something like that in a movie or TV show you don't even blink. If you have kids, you're probably fine if they watch it. Internal radar doesn't even detect anything unusual.
And yet to see it in real life.
And then to wade through the reactions to it.
Many people celebrated the murder, mocking the victim and lionizing the killer. Some were frustrated that health insurance cost so much, and some were outraged that they or a loved one had been denied medical claims. For this they blamed Thompson, the CEO of the US’s largest health insurance company.
An enduring obsession of mine is the collision between people and systems. What those collisions portend, how to think about them ethically and tactically, perhaps strategically. Jesus, it's hard to know what to do when you run into the buzzsaw. It's hard to know what a person's attitude should be.
Anyway, as you might expect, this is a good and thought-provoking article on this topic.
this territory is moderated
Not to romanticize, but I am reminded of L'etranger by Albert Camus, when I read this article. The writer paints the assassin as being somewhat blasé, intellectually curious and having an obsession with the absurdity of a life without "agency."
In Camu's novel, the main character murders and stands on trial unable to account for what he has done. He neither denys nor shows any remorse for his actions. We see in him a character who is devoid of the usual emotive responses we'd expect. Finally, he comes to accept the hand that fate had delt to him, finding comfort in the thought that the universe is quite as indifferent to him as he is to it.
I think the blog locates the pulse of an absurdity similar to what Camus was trying to express in this character study novel.
The difficult to swallow part of this is that I think there is a certain amount of absurdity that each of us accepts, as part of a survival mechanism, when we face the world. If we didn't, and instead let all of the world's injustices penetrate the fibres of our beings, then how could we ever get on with life?
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My wife's been fascinated by this story. Don't you work in the health care industry, to some extent? How are people reacting internally?
Welcome back, btw. You were missed.
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Don't you work in the health care industry, to some extent?
A prior life, to some extent.
How are people reacting internally?
People are horrified to find themselves the enemies for going to their jobs, following the laws and regulations, etc. They recognize the system is fucked, but as long as it's the operating system, what does one do? They go to work. And now people lose no social credit for publicly calling for their execution.
A handful of times I've been privileged to occupy an insider view as I hear the outsider narrative, and every time it's just madness. Bitcoin is one such -- you know what's true, and you know how people who understand nothing talk about it. It makes one uneasy about all narratives of all kinds. Or at least, it makes me uneasy.
Welcome back, btw. You were missed.
:)
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What frustrates me most is that I think many people put the blame in the wrong places. They blame the insurance companies because it's who controls access to the money, but few are looking at the cartel-like behavior of the medical associations and hospitals, or the broken patent system, or the misalignment of incentives caused by a system where the consumers don't foot the bill for their own choices.
Until Americans can look at the healthcare system and its flaws more systematically and holistically, I don't think much progress can be made
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Well said -- all those things, and more, feeding back into each other over and over; and the people themselves, millions of them, directly and indirectly, demanding the dysfunction in various ways: by which assets they own, the markets in which they're embedded, the public discourse that is and isn't allowed, the discourse that can't be had because people can't be bothered to understand, all of it.
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You forgot the state’s little infusions of monopolization and other minor interferences. That the state may have some sort of responsibility for this mess is inconceivable for many people, if not most people. I certainly miss those doctor’s home visits, black bag and all!
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Agreed, the influence of the state is felt throughout all the issues mentioned above
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153 sats \ 3 replies \ @freetx 17h
  • I understand peoples hate of the healthcare system
  • Simultaneously its frustrating because the current system is almost entirely brought on by gov mandates (HMO act of 83, etc.). Watch any TV show from 50s (Leave it to Beaver?). Doctors used make housecalls and people could pay cash. "Medical Warehousing" (ie. Hospitals) is the result of continual regulations.
  • Simultaneously I find it abhorrent how the left + msm are cheering this on. This is how fully commie revolutions are born. Don't think they are going to be content with murdering some healthcare CEOs, it will soon move to Real Estate owners, food retailers, etc. The commies will end like they always do with murdering the "kulaks" (farmers) when everything else fails.
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Caliifornia has a home insurance crisis (also condo/renters) as many carriers have left the state or will not accept new customers.
Regarding health insurance, if you want to assign blame, your kill list should be the architects of Obama care and 219 House reps and 60 Senators who voted for it and the 5 Scotus justices who upheld it
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24 sats \ 1 reply \ @freetx 16h
It seems that Obamacare was an intentional scheme to collapse the system, so they can usher us into to healthcare DMV-style.
For what its worth, my UK work colleagues are now fully feeling the rationing of the wonderful UK NHS health system. A friend fell off a ladder and injured his side, also after the fall he has been experiencing random periods of extreme dizziness. He booked an evaluation and after a month was permitted to see the Dr...while explaining his vertigo symptoms he also mentioned that his side still was hurting, to which the Dr abruptly cut him off and said "when you scheduled this appointment you said it was for vertigo, if your side is an issue you will have to go back and make another appointment for that...." - but we are told "rationing won't happen".
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Obama: You can keep your doctor and your plan
add: another curve ball into NHS is immigration. I have read numerous stories about immigrants get priority, their wait times are shorter, they can cut in line
30 day wait is not bad for NHS. I have heard nightmare stories of 6 week or 6 month waiting periods.
Canada has a similar awful system.
If I were a doctor or hospital administrator, I would prioritize cash patients. Cash is king and moves to the front of the line. Then private insurance. Then Medicare. Last priority is Medicaid. Ideal situation would be no Medicare and no Medicaid.
I can think of 3 things that would ameliorate the disaster called ACA:
  1. eliminate mandatory essential benefits
  2. allow catastrophic coverage in the individual market
  3. let organizations like Costco offer health insurance to its members
  4. repeal MacCarran Act so people can buy insurance out of state
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283 sats \ 0 replies \ @oklar 16h
That was extremely well-written and interesting to read a first-hand account. My reaction to the news was not admiration of zealotry, but more like viewing colateral damage from afar. What struck me was at the end of the interaction between the perp and the writer was this ask to help him curate his social media account.
I read the Gurwinder piece about Tiktok after I read that and I had the feeling that social exclusion must be a factor in obsessive-compulsive behavior or fanaticism. I only know Nostr these days. Maybe this guy just needed to unplug? I'm pretty sure 2020 was damaging in ways that we still don't fully realize and have not completely recovered from.
Quite sad to read that many people reacted to the newswith emojis. Makes me feel I understand the theory about his obsession with NPCs, but from the bit about his thoughts on Japan, it's clear to anyone who's become adjusted to living in a different culture, not everyone does or should attempt it. It also made me wonder, would the reaction of a healthy society be a more measured one or an indignant one.
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111 sats \ 0 replies \ @Satosora 17h
"But it wasn’t just Japan. Luigi believed people everywhere were becoming NPCs, increasingly living their lives as a series of reflex reactions rather than consciously choosing their behaviors." I feel this is very true, and you can see it everywhere. It is even here on SN at times. So many people have blind faith in the government, taking poison when told to do so. Morals have become muddied, its hard to tell how people will react to different situations.
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220 sats \ 2 replies \ @ek 17h
going to read now1 and then reply properly to give you a real welcome back, but already regarding:
If you see something like that in a movie or TV show you don't even blink.
When I saw the clip where he gets shoot for the first time, I also thought about movies and replied with this in #795445:
That’s what movies get wrong: your enemies won’t wait to face you head-on or offer you a chance for last words—they’ll shoot you in the back the moment they get the opportunity.

Footnotes

  1. or at least try to. I am so excited to see a post from you again, I can't even focus on reading, lol
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680 sats \ 1 reply \ @ek 13h
I’m finding it hard to reply because this feels like one of those posts where nothing I say will do it justice—whether to the post itself, the world, or even my own thoughts. The more I reflect on agency, the assassination, my similar tendency to see most people as NPCs, and the term NPC itself and what it does to us when we use it, the more I realize I am just treading water.
It feels like I’m trying to say some things, but I don’t know what they are. I only know that when I say something else, that’s not it. What if we quite literally don't have the words for certain modern feelings, and all we can do is to circle around them without ever explicitly stating them? Maybe that sounds overly dramatic, but that is how I feel. Do others ever feel this way? Is there a specific term for it? Or is it just an intrinsic part of the human condition—so universal that we never even bothered to invent a word for it? I must admit, that would be terrifying. It reminds me of George Orwell's 1984, but instead of eliminating words to limit human thought, we created societies with bigger problems than a single human mind can ever comprehend in full.
Anyway, with this disclaimer out of the way, I want to say that this post reminded me that I dismissed the news about the assassination as "just an American thing." However, I am usually pretty aware that the US basically defines Western culture and whatever happens there, usually also starts happening here in Europe not too long after, at least to some degree. So there is the first conflict. Why did I not really care? I think partly it was because I perceived most reactions as noise: some people were shocked, some were cheering, some people were shocked that others were cheering, but none of them struck me as original, thoughtful or unbiased. I don't blame them though. If someone asked me what I am thinking about the assassination I would probably just have replied: "that's probably not good." Not very thoughtful myself.
But I also didn't care about the assassination because I didn't think that it matters that I do:
Do I have to care about it? I mean, surely it matters that some people care about it, but does it matter if I do?
I think this brings us back to the question of agency. It's pretty hard to be agentic when in 99.99% of the things that happen in the world, what you did or didn't do didn't matter. So much is beyond our control, it's very tempting to just lean into that realization.1
In that sense, I can understand why we take mental shortcuts and dismiss the fact that every single person has an experience as complex as our own by labeling them as NPCs. But it’s also somewhat ironic since thinking of others as NPCs is itself kind of NPC'ish. After all, it’s a mental shortcut, not so different from the mental shortcuts we see in others that lead us to think of them as NPCs.
So perhaps the key difference is that some people are more aware of them than others, as mentioned in the article:
Unlike most people who decry others as NPCs, Luigi showed enough awareness to identify that he, too, lived much of his life on autopilot, confessing that he sometimes wasted whole afternoons doomscrolling social media.
But I’m also increasingly worried that people like me, who try to remain neutral observers, will also end up in the crossfire eventually anyway.
I think that was most of what I wanted to say. I hope there was at least a shimmer of original thoughts in there.
Oh, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to force myself to listen to my thoughts, as the author of the article described it here:
Writing forces you to hear your thoughts. It is a confrontation with yourself. This is its greatest value, and its greatest pain.

Footnotes

  1. I guess that makes me a bit of an existentialist??
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What is agency, to you? How would you define it?
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133 sats \ 0 replies \ @grayruby 17h
Elvis has entered the building.
Great article.
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if this was like, 30 years ago when health care costs, inflation and jobs were ticking along at a different pace, I'm sure the public would be more outraged.
but these days, people are so squeezed and the health care premiums so out of control, that it's not surprising that the guy was a lightning rod. people are fucking pissed and seeing some ultra-rich billionaire get whacked is cathartic.
look what happened when the submarine imploded with the billionaires on, people loved that too. not to say it's right or anything, but it's a litmus test of sorts
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Great article. Thanks for sharing. Lots to think about.
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Welcome back :)
An enduring obsession of mine is the collision between people and systems.
This happens because people create and prefer to live in their own realities. They often don't accept the general reality. The assassination can't be justified and shouldn't be celebrated but people do it for they think that's a win. But in reality, the system is the culprit not the man who got assassinated.
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