[tptacek]

It's exactly the same logic. You can't just take your own set of issues, say you're obviously right about everything, and then factor out everybody else's big issues. If you make a consequentialist argument for murdering insurance executives, other people do in fact get to use the same moral logic to stop things you disagree with them about, like gender-affirming care and abortion.

[bdangubic]

being directly responsible for someone’s death is just not the same as having a difference of an opinion (like we are having). I will definitely not try and hunt you down… however, if you are responsible for a death of my loved one - that might be another story…

jokes aside, I am not saying this tragedy was justified in any way but we are not talking here about “opinions” and “religion” for sure

[tptacek]

Sure. Again: if you just hate the guy and have no compunctions about saying why after he's murdered, then whatever, that's not interesting enough to argue about. But if you're literally saying "this was good and more like this would be better" --- and some people are --- that is a notably warped proposition.

[justinclift]

People make excuses for these CEO's using the same logic though don't they?

At what point is defending their murdering of people an acceptable approach? :)

[s1artibartfast]

You can say that you are murdering people by posting on HN instead of working more and donating the money to charity.

>At what point is defending their murdering of people an acceptable approach? :)

We have laws that define where your responsibility starts and ends. For a random citizen, you have 0 obligation to help someone pay their healthcare bills.

For a health insurance company, they have a legal obligation to spend 85% of revenue on member healthcare, with all expenses and profit coming from the remaining 15%. This is codified by the ACA 85/15% law passed under Obama. United meets this obligation.

[tptacek]

By that logic, every health system in the entire world is murdering people constantly. Meanwhile: I'm talking about a guy walking up to an executive and shooting him in the chest.

[justinclift]

> By that logic, every health system in the entire world is murdering people constantly.

Not at all. The US "health care" system has the extremely bad reputation it has for a reason.

This guy seems to (for all we know) have only killed a single person (so far).

The person he shot has likely killed far more. I'm not sure why you're ok with that, or am I misunderstanding?

[tptacek]

That's an appeal to popular culture, but every health system makes decisions that deprive some people of necessary care. Resources are finite.