Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

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. The US hasn't even had a period of high taxes intended to impoverish the rich, as the UK did after WWII.

Occupy Wall Street, the Reparations movement, and its predecessors, such as the National Welfare Rights Organization, went nowhere. Organized labor is barely alive in the private sector. Don't expect much from that direction.

There's the possibility that the coalition the incoming president created might go beyond what he intended and become a radical populist movement. That's happened in other countries when some rabble-rouser got the population wound up, then lost control of them.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42335797

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.

> You don’t get structural change by extreme singular events.

The word _singular_ is doing a lot of work there.

Historically 'propagande par le fait' has had a massive effect on policy.

The implication that you have to not only focus on EBITDA but also on social responsibility (in a real non-PR way) is ever lasting if this propagates to more than a single occurrence.

Which is why mainstream media and authorities are so worried about controlling the narrative of the events (depicting Brian as a loving father etc.)

Historically 'propagande par le fait' has had a massive effect on policy.

What examples are you thinking of, exactly? When, precisely, did a person/group assassinate someone and have that act push forward their cause?

Which is why mainstream media and authorities are so worried about controlling the narrative of the events (depicting Brian as a loving father etc.)

Or, maybe the idea that killing a random healthcare CEO and acting like that will solve the healthcare disaster is a childish idea that belongs in a movie like The Purge or a Marvel film?

The world isn't that simple. It's incredible that people have such a one-dimensional moral worldview.

Being charitable, it's not that it will *solve* the disaster, but that its justice applied. Does locking up a single drug dealer solve the war on drugs, or jailing a murderer solve anything for the victim of the murder?

No serious definition of justice includes shooting people in the street because they committed a supposed crime. This is literally the basis of civilization.

It is illegal, for obvious reasons, but justice is a moral question.

We have trials to apply justice because it's not always clear who did what and it would be terribly unjust to lock someone up for something they didn't do.

And precisely what wise, intelligent definition of "moral justice" includes shooting people on the street?

The answer is: none. This wasn't some elaborate ethical act, nor is the pathetic justification of it online. It is boring old mob mentality, combined with class resentment and a number of other things.

Imagine someone has taken something of yours- would it be just to take it back, even if it could not be proven in court? I'd argue yes, though the trick is convincing everyone else that it was just.

Imagine someone murders your brother. They are friends with the judge so they are let to walk. Have you been denied justice?

Again, the reason not to shoot people on the street is not because it is always unjust but because its not always clear what is just and we would like a fair consistent way to decide that, in a way that's legible to other people.

If you think the death penalty is fair, then you admit that you are fine with people being killed in the name of justice. The only question is, is the person the one who did the crime. Normally a judge would decide that but I don't see why that's a prerequisite

No, the reason not to shoot people on the street is because it undermines a basic function of civilization. Even when someone is clearly guilty, the legal system must still have a monopoly on violence. Otherwise, you get anarchy. This has been a basic assumption of civilization going back thousands of years.

And there's still the question of exactly what culpability a CEO of a major insurance corporation actually has, what supposed crime he has committed, and what the appropriate punishment should be. As far as I can tell, pretty much no one applauding this act has any real understanding of how corporations actually work, or what this specific CEO did that warranted him being murdered. As I said above, there is no intelligent defense here. It's just populist street violence.

I don't see how it divolves into anarchy if you only go after people who ~everyone agrees is guilty. The point of judges is to decide who that is and communicate it so people can convince themselves that justice is done, or at least close enough.

It devolves if its unclear, or someone takes it too far and then there's a reprisal etc.

Because there is no scenario where everyone agrees. Even if someone agrees that the person is guilty, they may disagree on the punishment.

And to use the recent situation as an example: no one other than the shooter decided that the victim was guilty, or what his punishment ought to be.

Yeah totally-

That's why its illegal and I agree it should be illegal.

I personally feel like the CEO was guilty and the punishment was deserved. That it was just. Based on what I've heard, a lot of other people agree too.

This is irrespective of whether the prescident is good etc. All I'm trying to say is that this is what the guy deserved and its a failing of our government that these types live as lavishly as they do on our backs. That is unjust. We willingly trade some justice for social stability and that's a good thing and I hope there's not follow ups to this with more sympathetic targets. I don't want to be subjected to everyone's conflicting ideas of justice.

I'll ask you this before continuing to argue:

Can you imagine any situation where the courts are not willing or able to supply justice? Is there any other country or hypothetical country where the courts are corrupt enough that something could happen outside of the courts and you would approve? Should one ever trade political stability for justice?

Archduke Ferdinand has entered the chat ...

>The US hasn't even had a period of high taxes intended to impoverish the rich, as the UK did after WWII.

Effective US Corporation tax was as high as 50% post WWII. Effective income taxes were between 70% and 90%.

UK: "One for you nineteen for me."[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxman

> There's never been anything like the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution, or the Maoist revolution.

US culture has long actively reviled and denied power to aristocracy.

The story that the rich are in physical danger is used by Trump's supporters to create a paranoid victim mentality among the wealthiest and most powerful. (America - anyone can be a victim!)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com