While it’s very unlikely that someone has a definitive answer, this question popped into my head after the assassination of the UHC CEO and it’s been bothering me that I can’t shake off this feeling that more is likely to happen (maybe not in higher frequency but potential).
Usually I could provide counter-arguments to myself in a realism/(should I buy apples or oranges comparison) kind-of sense but this one I feel more unsure about.
I wish I had more diverse exp in systems analysis as these kinds of questions that linger in my head really irritates my OCD brain as I just want to know what’s the most likely answer.
Aren’t we primarily ok with this guy being assassinated because he was the face of a terrible company not because he was CEO in general? If someone from middle management or even low level worker who personally denied this guy′s insurance claim would have been assasinated, would we suddenly feel sorry?
Also remember that people like surgeons or dentists also can be considered ″filthy rich″ by your average Joe standards.
We wouldn’t feel sorry because we wouldn’t know it happened, the only reason anyone is talking about this is because the guy was rich.
There is a gulf between people who are paid well for their valuable labor (even into the millions of dollars) and the capital class who primarily profit on the labor of others.
Rent seeking is a big driver of “eat the rich”.
“If someone from middle management or even low level worker who personally denied this guy′s insurance claim would have been assasinated, would we suddenly feel sorry?”
Absolutely! Who is making the decisions that lead to a mass loss of life? Not a random worker at the company.
Not just CEO. I would say he might have known even less of procedures in detail than middle management. You wouldn’t pardon all Nazis just because Hitler was on top, would you? If what you do willingly is non-ethical even if you don’t call the shots, you are just as bad.
Well yeah there is a gradient of culpability but it roughly follows the gradient of power and compensation, which is an exponential curve with the lion’s share of the area under the curve contained within the very very top.
If you want to get technical about it, if the average CEO earns 300 times the average (not the lowest) pay of employees at the company than sure, the average employee has culpability but it is 1/300th or less of the culpability of the people truly at the top and that is likely a conservative estimate of gulf between those two values.
Obviously one doesn’t somehow nullify the other but the structure of culpability here has to be taken into account in order to make an honest analysis.
I would argue anyone participating in the company, even someone washing the floors at night is helping to perpetuate it. Definitely not to the degree of the CEO, but every single worker there is helping to sustain the system.