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@RemyBrown
The 8th Amendment doesn't apply to Hell. It's outside US jurisdiction, just like Guantanamo Bay.
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@WyIted
That's called slavery there
Some would call it community service
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@ADreamOfLiberty
George Floyd...was not shot.
Sorry, I mixed that up. Can't edit it now though.
Free market means we don't have to agree on a system.
Well, you'd have to agree to change the law.
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@Dr.Franklin
I doubt most Christians or even Protestants could even describe what double predestination is, much less believe in it. One source estimated that only 2% of Protestants believe in the main tenets of Calvinism, and I can't find anything that contradicts that.
The 70's and 80's in rock music was dominated by hair metal bands. KISS, motley crue, Poison, etc who exercised this Protestant idea of scandalizing life and putting into the hands of disgusting and shocking people and outfits. Then the 90s came with grunge and Oasis and can be seen as a counter-revolutionary Catholic revolt-it put music BACK into the domain of normal people.
None of this is Calvinism. The members of KISS are Jewish, and I'd be surprised if they could even articulate the doctrines of double predestination, total depravity, or limited atonement.
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@Greyparrot
In that case, I'd hope it would expose the bad colleges while showing the merit of the good ones. With acceptance rates out the window, the burden falls on colleges themselves to generate good results.
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Every so often, an event will take the media by storm and direct a lot of attention toward some social issue. This will typically happen when people have a lot of spare time. People had time to care about the shooting of George Floyd since everyone was at home, while the death of Peanut was quickly overtaken by the election news cycle. With Republicans controlling all three branches of the US government until at least 2026, it's the perfect time for people to care about some social issue that doesn't directly concern politicians and that they can't do much about but yell on the internet.
In these cases, the news cycle acts as a zero-sum game. The more attention people pay to one issue, the less attention they pay to some other issue. When people act logically, they will focus on issues they can do something about. But when emotion gets involved, all of that goes out the window. If some shocking event dominates the news cycle, we will often see a lot of hatred toward an abstract enemy (capitalism, systemic racism, etc.) and an absence of feasible policy goals. If there were feasible policy solutions, they would have likely been implemented before whatever the shocking event was. Defund the Police, for example, took off because people were angry, but fewer people supported it when police brutality was a statistic to be analyzed and not a litmus test of social awareness. During the riots of 2020, I have to wonder how much energy was dedicated toward a movement with remarkably few policy solutions, and how effectively it could have been spent on other things.
Nonetheless, the greatest difference between the activism regarding racism in 2020 and the discussion on healthcare right now is that at least the George Floyd protests accomplished something. These things were mostly bad, of course: an increase in crime, underfunded police, and embezzlement of donations. But with healthcare, the fact that the working class is in lockstep is almost a guarantee that no policy will be agreed on. It's clear by this point that the current movement has zero agreement on a long-term policy proposal beyond assassinations as an incentive. Much like Defund the Police, this has obvious feasibility issues: so long as the profits from denying claims exceeds the cost of private security, and so long as companies don't want to motivate future assassins, this tactic won't work on its own. If all anyone can agree on is "raising awareness" or "sending a message" then you've probably already lost, since no one has figured out what to do with that awareness.
If the end goal is to overthrow the government or radically change it, and if that's at all feasible, then where are the large-scale protests, the policy solutions, everything that comes between internet activism and policy change? The working class can choose universal agreement or policy solutions, but until everyone can agree on a healthcare system, one will always come at the expense of the other. If the goal of this assassination was to raise awareness, what were people focused on before, and what's the cost of diverting people's attention away from that? Yet for all these flaws, one positive is that people's anger right now is relatively harmless. If this assassination has had a positive effect, it's in diverting attention away from something worse. Plenty of news cycles lead to wars or riots. So far, all that's happened is assassinations becoming less taboo, and at worst that will only get a few people killed. Maybe the real PSYOP is keeping people focused on the class war to keep them from starting an actual war.
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@n8nrgim
the elites want us fighting culture wars, to distract us from economic grievances
That's just what they want you to think.
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The elites are currently developing a serum to turn you gay. Rage bait about gas prices, healthcare, taxes, and homelessness is all a distraction to keep you focused on the economy and not on the spread of gayness throughout the population. While we argue in the streets about the national debt and the lack of homes, the upper classes laugh to themselves while they turn us gay right in front of our faces. Soon, the population will become 1% more gay every year. But you won't even notice that, because the Marxism vs. capitalism PSYOP has successfully diverted your attention away from the important issues. The gays want you to fight a class war to prevent you from fighting a culture war.
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@Lemming
a 'single teacher, ought have the right to refuse service to anyone they want
It's not the teachers deciding who gets accepted, it's the college. Also, plenty of teachers post their lectures online but only the university can offer certifications.
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Imagine a bookstore that only accepted 5% of customers. If you want to buy a book, you need to fill out an application showing how well-read you are and how likely you are to use the knowledge from the book to advance your career. Every bookstore implements this system, and they become more popular the more people they turn away. Furthermore, bookstores have no reason to build additional locations even when they are filled to capacity, because they only want the most intelligent, well-read people to buy from them. No top-tier bookstore can deviate from this system, because it would cause their rankings (which are inverse to acceptance rates) to plummet. Many bookstores reinvent the wheel, investing in effectively equivalent resources and then limiting access so that no one but a small few can pay to access it.
This is bad for the bookstore, because they don't make a lot of money and have to charge more to each customer. This is bad for customers, because most of them don't get the chance to read, and when they do, the price is extremely high. In this case, much of the curriculum is an artificially scarce resource, because it could hypothetically be offered to everyone online without raising expenses significantly. Yet all the best authors and best publishers work for bookstores with the lowest acceptance rates, since those have the most money. Only the bookstores with low acceptance rates have money, because they have the best authors and publishers.
This is how college works in the United States. While not everyone can have the prestige that currently comes with attending a top-tier university, it's hypothetically possible for everyone to receive a Harvard-quality education via the internet. So what if every university were forced, by law, to offer certifications (online or in-person) to everyone who applied? (Not for free, of course.) Not everyone must attend in-person classes, but all lectures must be recorded, and everyone must be allowed to get some form of degree. And if a government decree is too much, then universities that don't comply receive a harsh tax penalty.
If universities are given some time to comply, with increasing tax incentives by year, what would happen? With many times more customers and relatively stable expenses, I expect prices would become very low at top universities. Colleges would need to be ranked somehow, but with acceptance rates out the window, this would have to be based on how much students improve over the course of their studies at the university. Students would need to be ranked too, but with everyone allowed to attend any university they want, this would need to be based on performance, or some third-party offering standardized exams.
The point is this: everyone can have access to the top professors and best lectures in the country for much cheaper. The best colleges can collect money from more people and invest in more resources. Instead of 1,000 different colleges giving the same lecture, we'd have about a dozen giving different lectures at a much lower price for each student. And as for ranking colleges and students? The market will find a way as it usually does.
If this is the most efficient way, why hasn't the market forced the top colleges to do this? Prestige, ill-executed non-profit ventures, and so-far ineffective government intervention. Get rid of the obsession with status, and we'll have a more educated populace.
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@RemyBrown
It is illegal to do this.
Yes, the idea is that the company was breaking the law but wasn't getting punished for it.
Everyone knows the military is dangerous; if you don't want to risk getting your limbs blown off, then don't join the military.
Politicians are funding wars that get civilians killed.
He says it's, "to take out the cartels" much like the war in Iraq was to, "take out ISIS". At least Ukraine is far enough away and all we're doing is sending money; Mexico is right next door!
The point isn't that Trump is good as much as it's "no politician is without sin." And a hypothetical war seems less pressing than a real one.
The cult like loyalty lets you get away with shooting someone on the street.
But the point is that just because he can get away with something doesn't mean he will. That's an assumption.
Arguing with them is pointless...If Trump does policy X, then MAGA DART member immediately backs policy X
I don't think you picked the right thread title then.
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@RemyBrown
Killing and letting die are different to me.
Rejecting legitimate claims is illegal and in violation of contract. If I intentionally cause my employees to die because I know the fine will cost less than safety measures, I'd be killing them.
Being a draft dodger is only ok if you're anti war.
Trump hasn't instituted a draft, and he's less pro-war in Ukraine than the Democrats.
I can say anything within the overton window and they would eat it up.
That's a comment on his supporters, and it's the job of a politician to have supporters. Getting people to have cult-like loyalty is weird, but it's not the same as using that loyalty to then shoot someone in the street.
he wouldn't market himself the way he does if he didn't want people to love him.
Every politician wants people to love them, see above.
MAGA is a religion for most of it's supporters and it should be treated as such.
You can just stop responding to MAGAs then. Unless you hate getting pinged that much, blocking them doesn't accomplish much since they can still respond to you, you just won't be tagged.
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@FLRW
borrowed computational power
You mean stealing? Like their power goes out whenever we run a quantum computer? Or their sun gets destroyed so Google can solve a math problem?
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@RemyBrown
Blocked.
This has to be the equivalent of covering your ears in order to win an argument.
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@RemyBrown
What if Trump said he could shoot someone and not lose voters?
Honestly, this seems like one of the least offensive things Trump has said. I think a lot of people would still vote for Trump if he shot someone; to some extent, it's just a fact. If Kamala or a Democrat said "Trump could shoot someone and not lose voters," that wouldn't make them guilty of shooting someone. It's not Trump's fault his supporters love him so much.
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@RemyBrown
Not a "MAGA person," but I do have a question for you.
Based on recent events, it would seem that being responsible for a thousand deaths is at least as bad as shooting someone in the street. Given that almost every politician has caused a great number of deaths by funding wars, would you still vote for any of them? What if they said they were going to start a war or implied they might draft people if it came to it?
Given that Trump is a draft dodger, we can assume he's opposed to the draft, at least for the moment, and might not send Americans to die against their will. We can also assume the politicians who criticized him for being a draft dodger are fully prepared to send Americans to die. Would you still vote for those people?
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@WyIted
Get into his circle pretending to be a reporter interested in his philothranpic efforts, gain an interview and then PEW PEW, or poison a coffee and get away.
If you're going to that much trouble, why not go after the company itself, not an individual CEO? Record them admitting to illegal activity, get records exposing how they deny claims, etc. If the CEO is dead, you can't subpoena him.
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@WyIted
They really need to be eliminated then.
How do you eliminate the CEO with private security?
I would support a more free market approach to fixing the issue.
Lol, so everyone thinks that once the CEOs are all dead, their preferred method will be implemented to fix the problem. Once the revolution is over and the Reign of Terror begins, some people are going to be very disappointed.
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@WyIted
No, they'll hire security. As soon as they do what the assassins want, there will be more assassinations.
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@WyIted
Yes, that's why abortion clinic bombings have successfully ended abortion. /s
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@WyIted
No, I think it will cause them to hire private security and rates to go up. Every assassin wants a different thing, and they're not the kind of people you can negotiate with. This guy got caught, so CEOs don't care what he considers ethical.
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@Best.Korea
Mussolini could have killed 6 million Jews and didn't. Terrorist groups don't usually get as much power as Hitler did. There's a reason Hitler is infamous, killing a huge percentage of his population for no reason.
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@Best.Korea
Prejudice is usually followed by violent acts. Its not random.
Hitler was uniquely insane, even among dictators. Mussolini killed Jews in the thousands. Hitler killed them in the millions.
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@Shila
It was a global phenomenon.
Yeah, caused by Hitler. The gas chambers were because of him.
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@Best.Korea
Prejudice is one thing. Throwing people into gas chambers is another.
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@WyIted
"Well congratulations, you got yourself caught. Now what's the next step of your master plan?"
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@Shila
Killing him as a child would not have stopped the Holocaust. Someone else would have followed through with it.
It was his idea.
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@WyIted
Why do so many people claim they would kill baby Hitler
Because killing Hitler saves the people he would kill in the future, while killing a CEO means he will be replaced by another CEO. I think you can pretty easily call Hitler the "root cause" of the Holocaust, while all we can really be certain of is that the CEO was the face of the company and approved policies that killed a lot of people, hence bearing the blame for most of them while the board falls under much less scrutiny. A better comparison might even be killing the CEO as a child, if that retroactively prevents UHC from growing. At this point in his life, much of the damage had already been done. Also, Hitler started a war, which makes him a legitimate target for being shot per international law, while the CEO can only be legally punished through the court system.
And besides that, it's not "so many people" who were against the CEO being shot. Almost everyone is cheering for the shooter. As for the small amount who are against it, I suppose they'd rather live in a society where healthcare claims are denied than a society where healthcare claims are denied and assassinations are legitimized. If intentionally denying legitimate claims was a capital offense and the CEO was executed through the court system, that would be very different. I can't blame everyone else though, because not everyone has time to care about society and most would rather that someone responsible for a lot of deaths is punished regardless of how.
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@Best.Korea
He had to pay lots of money for things which didnt help at all.has a motivation to sell as much services as possible, even if not really needed
That sounds like a good reason for the insurance company to deny claims, if they're for services that don't help...
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@WyIted
If it's real, then maybe. I've seen a lot that suggests his mother isn't suffering from chronic pain, that his manifesto is shorter than this, and that his family is rich. On the other hand, I could easily see someone making a fake letter like this.
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@Shila
No one cared who I was until I put on the mask.
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When I try to search debates and the forum by keywords, I'm unable to get results.
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@WyIted
He's got right-wing posts on social media. Let's see how well my prediction ages:
He's based because he's anonymous, so you can project all your beliefs onto him. The worst thing that could happen to this guy is getting caught and having to advocate for some policy position. Universal healthcare? He just lost a big chunk of the Republicans, many of whom will now condemn him as a psycho murderer. "Probably a commie" is leagues away from openly advocating a Democratic policy. The shooter is a Trumper? He just lost everyone on the left, who will call him a violent insurrectionist. Someone said Kamala could have won by a landslide by shooting a healthcare CEO instead of supporting any policies, and I don't think that's far off.
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@WyIted
The serial killer's family members or rich friends who want to send a message or keep him quiet.
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@Shila
There is no healthcare revolution in America.
Well then that defeats the point of the shooting, doesn't it?
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@Shila
The point is that if you actually want a violent revolution, those have a pretty high failure rate. I'm not implying the CEO was on trial (he wasn't).
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@Shila
If we get the revolution people are calling for, the two situations will be comparable enough.
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@Shila
King Louis XVI was killed by a lone executioner. But let's not ignore all the people cheering his death.
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@WyIted
If the jury lets him off, I wonder if he'll be shot by one of the CEO's family members or a hitman hired by the insurance industry. I really hope not, but the precedent has been set, and it's hard to control what comes from that.
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@Best.Korea
What could go wrong?
King Louis XVI was condemned to death by a majority of only 1 vote. Amongst those who voted in favor of the execution was the king's own cousin, Philippe Égalité, whom the king did not have positive relations with. Philippe himself would be guillotined on the same scaffold a year later.
There's a lesson here, but it seems most people haven't learned it.
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@Greyparrot
That's the only route everyone seems to agree on. But until people can agree on what policy changes they want, lobbyists will be replaced by other lobbyists. I don't think vigilantes can keep CEOs or lobbyists in line forever as long as they have institutional power. French Revolution worked because everyone committed to completely overthrowing the government. But as soon as they stopped agreeing on the levers of power, they fell into chaos.
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@Greyparrot
How do we keep insurance lobbyists from rewriting the laws
By breaking the law, obviously
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@WyIted
It's the free rider problem. The common good requires that everyone (or at least most people) agree not to do extrajudicial killings. People are fine with that as long as those who do extrajudicial killings are consistently punished. But as soon as it seems like some people in power are skating by and taking advantage of everyone else's participation in the system, others will resent them and stop abiding by the common law.
This can happen to any society, because there will always be someone who manages to get around the system (like O. J. Simpson). And the more everyone else resents those exceptions, the more likely a snowball effect becomes. If one person breaks the law and gets away with it, and 3 people see them and manage to do the same thing, and 3 people see each of those people, etc. Right now criminals are easy to catch because most smart people don't decide to break the law and most crimes aren't premeditated, but that can change. If most of them get away with it, we have laws in name only.
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@Lemming
You can believe that no murder is justified or that this murder is justified, but holding both positions together is inconsistent. I'm just saying that "cool motive, still murder" and "murder I like isn't murder" are both common positions. That doesn't make everyone a hypocrite, but a lot of people don't seem to know what they believe.
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@WyIted
Will people finally stop using the "cool motive, still murder" meme now that they agree some motives excuse murder?
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@WyIted
They also gave us cop nullification, which is where a cop can nullify due process by shooting the suspect.
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@WyIted
literally took no policy positions
"I wouldn't do anything different from Biden" implies a lot of policy positions, even if she didn't mean to.
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@WyIted
he is a based commie
He's based because he's anonymous, so you can project all your beliefs onto him. The worst thing that could happen to this guy is getting caught and having to advocate for some policy position. Universal healthcare? He just lost a big chunk of the Republicans, many of whom will now condemn him as a psycho murderer. "Probably a commie" is leagues away from openly advocating a Democratic policy. The shooter is a Trumper? He just lost everyone on the left, who will call him a violent insurrectionist. Someone said Kamala could have won by a landslide by shooting a healthcare CEO instead of supporting any policies, and I don't think that's far off.
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@WyIted
I am not rich unless I make 500k a year
The Party has decided you are rich. Now face the wall.
I will be forced to do insider trading
And when that gets leaked, someone will shoot you on the street and become a hero...
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@WyIted
goes across party lines
Yes, disparaging celebrities and rich people on the internet goes across party lines. It has since Al Gore invented the internet. Yet there the celebrities still are.
just like hating landlords
It's a free country, not a rent-free country.
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