The slippery slope
Some great questions for those who cheered on the killing of a healthcare CEO:
- Are we allowed to assassinate the CEOs of other industries you view as harmful (e.g., fossil fuels), or is it open season only on insurance executives? – Murdering Brian Thompson will do literally nothing to increase the availability or affordability of healthcare.
- Is it justified to shoot someone in the back simply out of frustration with the industry in which he works?
- How far down the corporate hierarchy can we target? Are all employees of insurance companies valid targets for assassination, or only senior executives? What about mid-level executives? Managers? Actuaries? Entry-level analysts? The custodians who clean their offices?
- CEOs are hired by boards of directors, who, in turn, are elected by shareholders. If it’s morally acceptable to assassinate the CEO, it should also be fair to kill the shareholders who appointed him, no? If this is the case, what level of ownership is required to merit inclusion on the kill list? Are the 10 shares I own in a Robinhood account sufficient? What about if I don’t own shares directly but I own mutual funds that hold shares?
- As a society, we generally agree that murder is a more serious offense than other violent crimes, such as carjacking, assault, or kidnapping. If it’s acceptable to murder an insurance CEO, is it also acceptable to violently assault him, steal his car, and hold him hostage?
- The largest insurance operator in the US is the federal government, via Medicare. Is it therefore acceptable to kill political officials, since Medicare also denies some claims?
- Who determines the industries for which assassination is justified and merited? For example, if a religious extremist murdered the CEO of a pharmaceutical company that produced abortion drugs, how would you be able to condemn that in a logically consistent manner?