“People are in disbelief that they would be making this kid into a hero,” he told Fortune.
Attending a conference for CEOs in New York this week, just blocks away from the site of the shooting, George found that many were shaken and deeply concerned by the reaction to Thompson’s killing. “They’re having plenty of meetings right now to discuss beefing up security,” he said of the business leaders, even as some question how much security coverage is enough. People are asking themselves, “‘What does that say about our society? Where’s our society going?’” George said.
So they’ve learned absolutely nothing.
Plenty of meetings to beef up security. How about plenty of meetings to understand how your greed has caused this? They sound one logical leap (that they are unwilling to make) away from understanding exactly what the problem is.
They managed to find one and only one CEO quote that reflected anything resembling self-awareness.
“When I was growing up, CEOs didn’t make millions more than everyone else in the company. I think we have to reflect on why there’s so much anger and do something about it.”
All I can think of is a TED talk I saw where the speaker had given some presentation to a bunch of billionaires and had some q&a, and one of them who had built a bunker for themselves asked him how they could prevent their security team from turning on them in the bunker.
The TED talk guy responded “Be kind to them?”
And the Billionaire said “But where does that end?”
I’ll try to find it so I can link it.
EDIT: Found it!
I’ll try to find it so I can link it.
Oh god please do.
I’m pretty sure it was the same guy who did the “it could happen here podcast.” Then they were like, can we put shock collars on the security guards. Stuff like that.
Robert Evans? The man is a national treasure.
If you haven’t heard his miniseries “Behind the Police” (ironically a four episode special in a much longer running serial podcast called “Behind the Bastards” which is not only about police) I strongly recommend it.
I managed to find what I was thinking of, but it concludes with a totally different line about them than I remembered. I think @neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com is right, and the “where does that end?” quote might be from a segment in a Robert Evans podcast.
Thank you!
Wait! I found it! It was the same guy from the TED talk, but on a different podcast!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nS3-dQen-YM
relevant part at 4:20
You rock!
I don’t think it was a ted talk, I’m pretty sure it was a seminar put on specifically by the billionaire class asking this guy how best to navigate societal collapse with their vast amount of resources.
This I believe was one of the exchanges at that event.
What’s incredible to me is that they don’t realize that societal collapse will render their resources more or less worthless. Their options are the same as everyone else’s: get a bug out plan, be ready to abandon all belongings, etc. What are you planning to do to keep your bunkers stocked past the first month? How will you pay your security if your banks are gone or your currency is worthless?
Exactly. These people don’t think rationally. They truly believe they’ll have a group of sycophants who will do anything they say because they had them all this time before.
When shit hits the fan, you need to be the only one with the keys to the shock collars. You need to basically become Batman.
You’re right, though I was first introduced to the story from the guy telling it at a TED talk. I phrased it poorly.
And it’s funny because the answer is build an egalitarian compound where your share of the labor is the funding. That’s it. If the guards see it as how they contribute to a shared community then they’re not going to turn on their boss
EDIT: Found it!
Wow, that was actually an extremely insightful conversation. Thank you for going out of your way to share it!
That video was freakin amazing and insightful!
You should make this it’s own post so more people can spread it
The guy is called Douglas Rushkoff and he wrote a book on the subject called “Survival of the Richest: Escape fantasies of the Tech Billionaires”.
Because CEOs are a symptom.
The problem is our investment economy that focuses only on the stock prices continually going up. It’s literally an unsustainable system.
If a CEO puts their personal safety over the investors, the company gets a new CEO.
They’re not the one really making the worst decisions, they’re the ones who agreed to take a shitton of money to be the face of the company and take all the blame.
CEOs don’t get paid for the work they do, they get paid to be the fall guy.
Still absolutely shit people who deserve zero sympathy, but they’re not the real problem, just a symptom
The problem is our investment economy that focuses only on the stock prices continually going up. It’s literally an unsustainable system.
Yup, this is the problem right here. Investments are supposed to generate returns, that’s the whole point. But Milton Friedman and Jack Welch decided that the sole mission of any company was to increase shareholder value, and the rest of the world rolled with that. So whenever these CEOs point to their Mission and Vision statements, unless they say “Our only priority is delivering returns to our Shareholders”, they are lying.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_value
Economist Milton Friedman introduced the Friedman doctrine in a 1970 essay for The New York Times, entitled “A Friedman Doctrine: The Social Responsibility of Business Is to Increase Its Profits”.[5] In it, he argued that a company has no social responsibility to the public or society; its only responsibility is to its shareholders.[6]
Meanwhile, we’ve decided that these corporations are people. Psychopaths who have no moral responsibilities to anyone but their shareholders, but people nonetheless.
Thus our efforts to make social justice a core condition for profits: fuck people over and get a boycott or protests or a label in media as toxic, and lose customers.
It’s not going well, as a strategy. It requires an educated populace.
I mean, every economic model out there “assumes rational actors,” which I’ve always taken to mean informed and educated. Too many of the masses are neither.
Exactly. At some point companies need to transition from investment vehicles to institutions
If a CEO puts their personal safety over the investors, the company gets a new CEO.
How many times will they be willing to get a new CEO before they make changes? How many times will someone accept promotion into that position? I wouldn’t take Brian Thompson’s job for any amount of money right now, would you?
How many times will someone accept promotion into that position? I wouldn’t take Brian Thompson’s job for any amount of money right now, would you?
I absolutely would take the job. I’d do it for a $1 salary even. I would have the power to make sure claims were approved, lower premiums on users, and call out the inequity of private healthcare from the top of the ivory tower. I’d be fired, but not before I was able to make some good happen.
And, in the long term, that wouldn’t even be bad for line go up.
Companies used to invest in their reputation, back when there was that 90% marginal income tax rate.
That’s the thing, you wouldn’t have the power to do any of that before you were booted out. CEOs do have a lot of power over the board, and the board has power over the company. The net result is that if the CEO pushes too fast or too radically they get removed before any change occurs. As the poster above said, in situations like this the CEO is paid to be the fall guy; the people who wield the actual power are the board members and the large shareholders. The CEO deserves a chunk of the blame for being the face of the organisation and legitimizing it, but killing one, or even a few, off wont significantly change the direction these companies are headed in.
Fair, but in the context of a company being willing to just replace CEOs every time they have to fire one (or especially when someone shows up to fire the CEO for them, Luigi-style), I think there’s a small number of cycles they would go through before logic would dictate that they need to conduct business differently.
If you made too much good happen, you wouldn’t be fired, you’d be thrown off of a moving train
thrown off of a moving train
It’s called “dying of an apparent suicide” and the authorities can find no sign of foul play. It’s so sad when this sort of thing happens. The company’s thoughts and prayers are with his family.
Ah yes, apparent suicide with two random, unrelated gunshot wounds to the back of the head
How many times will they be willing to get a new CEO before they make changes
They’d do it on the daily if it makes them more money…
What do you think a CEO actually does?
They listen to what high level management says is best, and then just does whatever brings the stock price up fastet disregarding everything else.
There’s a reason they all get golden parachutes. None of them care past the last board meeting
They’d do it on the daily if it makes them more money…
Sure. They’d run a hundred grandmas a day through a woodchipper, each of them clutching a puppy, if it made them money. However, I am quite sure there isn’t a way that replacing your CEO daily, or even often, makes more money. And yes, I understand hyperbole.
I also understand that the impacts on a company of having multiple CEOs shot in a short period of time, or having multiple CEOs come in, try to be decent humans, and fired for it in a short period of time, would have destabilizing impacts throughout any sizable organization. They would run into problems with manpower and staffing, investment dollars, and generally the ability to do business. It would harm morale and reduce efficiency. And probably a bunch of other things I haven’t thought of in the 3 minutes I’ve been typing this.
Yep, we have a word for continual uninhibited growth - it’s called cancer.
I don’t always agree with what you post, but you’re spot on here.
The “what does this say about society” question bugs the shit out of me. It means that our society is sick and tired of being the only rich nation in the world where getting sick or injured will bankrupt you. If these people were truly concerned about the good of society, they’d quit sucking us dry for every dollar that they can and would advocate for a better system.
Absolutely. The entire article makes it clear that they don’t even have an inkling of what it’s like to have to worry about your health or how much money you have.
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It also bugs the shit out of me because how long have children been being murdered in school in a mass shooting epidemic, but now that the rich are being killed that’s what makes them ask this? Our society has been in bad shape for a long time
We live in a society!!
Well they did learn one thing though
They finally learned how it is to be a high schooler, having to live under constant fear of murder. I can’t wait to watch C level execs having tondo active shooter drills where they have tonhude under bullet proof blankets.
Mind you, murder is bad, and this murder on this CEO was bad, no matter how you turn it. I don’t want to live in a world where murdering eachother is the only conversation left.
Having said that, it is very gratifying to finally see these out of touch assholes having to suffer the same fear as all little kids in America
Great points!
Mind you, murder is bad
Yes for sure.
and this murder on this CEO was bad, no matter how you turn it.
I don’t want to live in a world where murdering eachother is the only conversation left.
Me neither. Let’s see if they are ready for any other kind of conversation now. OP makes me think they aren’t. Let’s not forget this murder happened because of all the other murders.
Same for stealing.
A company steals millions from their employees? Silence.
A guy stealing from Walmart? Police force everywhere.
Yeah, you missed the point
Teo wrongs do not make a right. The murder of this CEO was still murder. This CEO indirectly murdered thousands, maybe even hundreds of thousands and caused untold suffering. He was also apparently already on the hook for tax fraud and insider trading IIRC hearing in a news report earlier this week. He was a horrible man who should spend the remainder of his years behind bars.
That, unfortunately, is not the world we live in and I fully understand why he was shot. That doesn’t make it right, though. I don’t want to live in a world where you can be murdered without judges and juries and due process. We live in a civil society and that means that if you want it done right, everyone deserves a fair trial, even rapists, murderers or criminal CEO’s.
Yeah, I know that the US has a big issue with the justice system being damn near bullshit at this point, still doesn’t make anarchistic vigilante murdering an “okay” thing.
Do you want to live in a move civil society where everyone is treated equal, or do you prefer to live in a post civil society where it’s each for their own and we just murder those that we have a conflict with?
This murder of the CEO, as much as I understand it, is a step in the wrong direction. Maybe, just maybe, this will be the catalyst that will push society in the right direction and the US justice system will be overhauled and made fair for everyone and maybe the government will institute laws that will restrict what companies can do to make it fair for everyone… Doubtful, but maybe. Either way, it still is a step in the wrong direction and I do worry that the US is sliding off into a hellhole it will never be able to dig it self out of. This trump shit will inevitably make it easier for a few to abuse the rest. The few will control the news and narrative, and blame the leftz the immigrants, and at some point more on the left will start fighting instead of talking. Once the scale tips, there is no tipping back. Ask Yugoslavia how well that worked out for them. Oh yeah, millions of deaths later, it no longer exists.
How is that for a kind of conversation?
“Do you want to live in a move civil society where everyone is treated equal, or do you prefer to live in a post civil society where it’s each for their own and we just murder those that we have a conflict with?”
Oh, the first one, absolutely.
But we’re already living in the second one it’s simply obfuscated by an illusion of civility. When the violence is only directed downward, it’s somehow legal and civil, but when it’s directed upwards, they convince the public that it’s wrong.
Some of us disagree with that, and think that mass murderers should be punished even if the law won’t do its job.
How is that for a kind of conversation?
It’s fine, if a bit preachy.
It’s not in any way moving the needle on healthcare though.
Yeah, you missed the point
No I didn’t, I’m just not sure I agree.
Maybe, just maybe, this will be the catalyst that will push society in the right direction and the US justice system will be overhauled and made fair for everyone
In which case it would be a net positive, as it would save countless lives.
That’s a bridge too far for them, especially with particularly oligarch friendly policies of the incoming US administration.
That’s what makes it sooo good, they think they just got the keys to the kingdom but forgot the all the residents can bite back at any time.
Elysium
Have been thinking about that movie quite a bit since all this went down, but don’t remember it in great detail. Might be worth a rewatch.
They literally can’t see the light for all their wealth because they’re calvinists believing: the greater the wealth, the greater the morality.
This was a random killing by a mentally ill person. Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.
How fucking tone-deaf is this person? The bigger issues that we care about are things like going bankrupt from getting sick or injured. Those issues are directly caused by their CEOs. This wasn’t a random killing, which is why people are so happy about it.
Soooo out of touch it’s hilarious.
Please, go ahead and continue to show how little understanding you have for the common man, by all means.
They’re not out of touch, they’re just trying to control the narrative.
“If we pay these professional mouthpieces to spout enough nonsense, perhaps the upwelling of public vitriol will be tamped down until next quarter’s bonuses.”
All the labor agreements of the past century were the tenuous detente of these more severe options. Now they’re relearning their own history.
We are 100% not saying Boo-Urns.
/NYTimes staff writer
The bigger issues that we care about are things like going bankrupt from getting sick or injured. Those issues are directly caused by their CEOs.
I think that depends very much on where you live. Here in Germany we don’t usually go bankrupt from getting sick. I at least worry much more about the climate catastrophe or right wing propaganda on social media. Issues that in a funny coincidence are also caused directly by CEOs.
If he is mentally ill, the majority of the US might be as well and they are tired of the system that makes them ill.
Here’s an idea, make human life more important than line go up. I’m pretty sure that would get alllllll of your asses off the firing line.
What if the line going up wasn’t money, but the value of human life? 🤔
We measure what we treasure!
You mean, it’s all just about the lines we meet along the way?
Okay but what if we just sent everyone some stickers with our logo on it?
I mean EVERYBODY loves stickers. Then w we can keep making money, you can keep dying and you’ll have some great bling for your toddlers coffin!
Everybody wins!
Think of how few stickers are on the average toddler’s coffin?
I was thinking pizza party myself, all our employees (except the ones we fired for being negative nancies) love pizza parties.
But my capitalism!
But the cult of the line goes up says the line must go up, are you even paying attention to the line and whether it’s going up?
“Journalists look for heroes and villains; life is not that simple. Why is the killer getting 10 times as much press as the person who was killed?”
I agree with the last part of this quote, but probably not in the same way they wanted.
Why aren’t we hearing more about the policies the CEO supported that caused so much pain and suffering?
Why did I have to learn about them having double the industry-standard claims denial rate through a meme and not through news articles everywhere?
Why am I not seeing more articles about how much money these people made by denying coverage? Why am I not seeing articles about their political contributions to keep healthcare privatized?
You know why, we all know why. Modern corporate journalists are more narrative drivers than journalists. They attempt to control the talking pints and conversation, and steer clear of anything that would promote asking the right questions.
Because if they show all that shit, then they’re going to be agreeing with everyone else…and won’t be able to pull a “why did this happen” routine
One part of the response is that since the 80s, the media were financialized. One consequence is that the media quality dropped and medias reports go in the way of the finance.
Most people don’t hate CEOs.
Uhhh, that actually might not be true.
If you were to do a poll in the US I think you can crack 51%, especially if you phrase it by mentioning that they have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit regardless of morality.
Edit: just had a thought. Given how much more money they make than the average worker, and that the average worker puts their health at risk by sitting at a desk so much, this might actually make sense in terms of risk/reward structure.
If the ultra wealthy make more than 1000 than me, shouldn’t they take 1000 times more risk of dying (I’m not supporting violence).
Why would anybody hate CEOs?
(Btw this is just in the past month)
For the curious: https://musictech.com/news/industry/the-musicians-club-ceo-fires-99-employees-reddit/
This guy ran an online musical instrument business, exploiting unpaid remote workers. There is nothing of value lost here.
I would think that the title of CEO might not be appropriate to every organization either. I know a rather big org where the CEO is basically someone who begs for investors, and the CAO does what a CEO usually does. There are orgs where that’s the CFO, or the COO. Regardless of the title, it’s all executives we’re angry about because of the incredible income disparities versus actual responsibilities.
The executives I’ve met are essentially hype men or thumbs up thumbs down types. All of them were finance types or management types. To me, if your only qualification is many years of managing with barely any experience in the actual product/service your org provides, then that’s a problem.
Hospitals run by management types? Engineering services run by accountants? It’s all middlemen extracting piece of the pie from the people actually doing the work.
As a society we need to purge the system of middlemen period. The internet made middlemen obsolete, yet they are still exploiting labor in ridiculous ways.
I don’t hate somebody just because they’re a CEO.
I hate all rich people though that aren’t using their wealth to improve the lives of others as much as possible.
I mean, the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could end world hunger with a snap of their bony fingers, and they’re not doing it, despite the fact that they would still be wealthy beyond comprehension if they did.
We’re asking them to do the bare minimum and utilize their wealth in a responsible manner, and they’re not even doing that much.
the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could end world hunger with a snap of their bony fingers, and they’re not doing it, despite the fact that they would still be wealthy beyond comprehension if they did.
I’m reminded of this line Citizen Kane:
You’re right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I’ll have to close this place in… sixty years”.
I mean, the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could end world hunger with a snap of their bony fingers
Bullshit.
World hunger, which has in fact decreased drastically over the past century, is not a problem that money can solve, because cost is not the reason it persists where it does.
One major issue: food donations to poor areas tend to be hoarded and distributed unequally by the most powerful people in those poor areas.
So we’re one sentence in, and already we need to fundamentally understand local political dynamics and either use force to ensure equal distribution, or to change local leadership structures. This is already out of control.
You can’t just throw money at the problem and expect it to just be solved. There are real underlying societal and infrastructure issues in a lot of impoverished countries that need to be solved in order for hunger to be solved. You could ship a billion tons of food to a single starving region and there would still be millions of starving people.
Additionally, simply handing out food would kill the domestic food industry (because who would buy food when billionaires are giving it away for free) and would make the country even more problematic.
You should know what you’re taking about when you make ridiculous claims like this.
You can’t just throw money at the problem and expect it to just be solved. There are real underlying societal and infrastructure issues in a lot of impoverished countries that need to be solved in order for hunger to be solved. You could ship a billion tons of food to a single starving region and there would still be millions of starving people.
That’s a strawman. No-one said “they should just, like, buy enough food to feed the hungry”.
When people say it would cost x to solve world hunger, they are talking about those “underlying societal and infrastructure issues”.
So, yes. Everything can be solved with money. You can hire people to “fundamentally understand local political dynamics”, invest in research, pay to fund the programs that will enable impoverished regions to develop the means to build the infrastructure to feed themselves.
Additionally, simply handing out food would kill the domestic food industry (because who would buy food when billionaires are giving it away for free) and would make the country even more problematic.
Just because this is the idea you have in mind for how to solve hunger, and it is, as you rightly stated, a fucking stupid idea, doesn’t make it the only idea.
When people say it would cost x to solve world hunger, they are talking about those “underlying societal and infrastructure issues”.
And those issues cannot be fixed simply by throwing money at them, making “the likes of Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos could end world hunger with a snap of their bony fingers” a deeply ignorant statement.
So, yes. Everything can be solved with money. You can hire people to “fundamentally understand local political dynamics”, invest in research, pay to fund the programs that will enable impoverished regions to develop the means to build the infrastructure to feed themselves.
And then the warlords steal the food and redistribute it as they see fit.
You’re deeply naive about the reality of the circumstances in places where hunger is still a major problem.
The bottom line is, you can’t truly solve world hunger until you solve world peace, and you can’t solve world peace with money.
There are still places in the world where slavery is legal, for fuck’s sake. Do you really, truly think things like this could still be true in 2024 if money and what/who you can buy/hire were actually the solution?
And then the warlords steal the food and redistribute it as they see fit.
No, you are willfully misunderstanding my point.
There are still places in the world where slavery is legal, for fuck’s sake. Do you really, truly think things like this could still be true in 2024 if money and what/who you can buy/hire were actually the solution?
Absolutely.
Throwing money at solving the surface layer issues / symptoms is moot, but yes, for every new layer of problem you uncover you can ask “so what are the causes for that” until you reach something that can be fixed wit money.
Og, and I do not believe that this has anything to do with world peace. The nations on earth without hunger problems aren’t peaceful utopias either, after all. But on the other hand, hunger does seem to cause a lot of instability…
for every new layer of problem you uncover you can ask “so what are the causes for that” until you reach something that can be fixed wit money.
This is just a naive assumption.
The statement that a single billionaire’s wealth can not only solve world hunger, but do it so easily as to compare it to a snap of the fingers, is frankly, comically absurd, and exposes not only a massive ignorance of the root causes of the starvation that is still occurring in the modern day, but even for those issues which CAN be solved with an injection of funds, a massive ignorance of just how MUCH funding it would take.
As one tiny example, the US, a single country, spends over 1 TRILLION on welfare, not once or in total, but annually. And a mere FOUR percent of Earth’s population lives there.
Even the wealthiest human being on the planet’s net worth is nothing compared to what it would take to solve even the small minority of issues cold hard cash can solve. You have no sense of perspective and scale on this.
Most, if not all, CEOs are rich though and I’m sure most people follow your sentiments too. It’s just that CEOs are currently the flavour of the month.
especially if you phrase it by mentioning that they have a fiduciary responsibility to maximize profit regardless of morality.
Also regardless of mortality.
United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot on Dec. 4, 2024. The public response was generally not sympathetic.
The public response was generally not sympathetic.
The words they use are an attempt to weaken the impact of the hit. The public response wasn’t sympathetic, it was generally celebratory.
The elite cannot fathom being anything other than better than those below them. Deserving. They “got theirs.”
Maybe it was the significant amount of lead in the atmosphere for a long time that caused widespread brain damage, but it’s so obvious how disconnected from reality they are. Thompson’s death highlighted that reality applies to them too, and they can’t handle it.
I would like to believe people are poisoned and that excuses their idiocy, but approximately 15% of humans seem to be hardcore authoritarians by genetic lottery. They will believe that wealth and power are evidence of merit, no matter what. We just have to learn to work around that.
“Our industry is built around devaluing human life for profit. Why aren’t these people valuing our lives?”
It’s like a sketch comedy show. They can’t be this dumb.
It is a comedy routine, and they aren’t dumb, but blind. They see most humans as worthless animals. They could not give a fuck what happens to you, because your existence is irrelevant to their lives.
— “My challenge is keeping employees engaged. How do you maintain a sense of purpose if you think your customers hate you?”
Your customers DO hate you. It’s not just what you think, it’s reality.
Maybe rather than trying to maintain a sense of purpose for what you’re doing, you should take a step back and question WHAT you’re doing, and whether it has any purpose in society at all other than making you money?
if you think your customers hate you?”
They were under the impression that the customers didn’t hate them? How out of touch are they?
Very. Most don’t even know how much a dozen eggs cost, much less how much rent costs, much less how little disposable income people have. Money is just numbers to them. It’s not necessary for their survival only for their status. So it’s a totally different reality for them.
it’s a totally different reality for them.
Oh I know. I used to work in middle management for a franchise and it was so bizarre to be at the corporate meetings. You have the people from corporate talking about how profit is up from last year, and franchisees complaining to them they need to increase prices more because minimum wage increased and profit percent is down.
It does not matter to them that they are receiving more money than ever because the actual money doesn’t matter. All that matters is they are getting a bigger portion of the money than anyone else. It’s just a high score for them to run up.
Classic narcissist trait. Complete and funnily honest bewilderment at how it is possible that some people don’t love and admire then. My dad who is estranged from the whole family (because of that) was one level below the C suite at a huge corporation. Treated everyone like shit, surprised Pikachu face when one by one the family abandoned him. I guess it takes to be such a psychopath to make it that far on the corporate ladder.
Even more out of touch to phrase this as a new development for the employees. Guaranteed the people on the bottom have fully understood this for an eternity.
Helping them come to accept this thing they’ve always known is “my challenge”.
keeping employees engaged
Not the problem.
if you think your customers hate you?
They do not hate them. They hate you. The C level.
Hoy fuck the disconnect in those people.
Hoy fuck the disconnect in those people.
Amen to that.
Listen to these guys talk about how they’re proud of what they did… NO recognition that all those ‘denials’ are denying real people the care they need.
Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.”
Bigger issues? Like the health care bills they are drowning in? Also, I think most people loathe CEOs, these bitches have zero awareness.
“I keep taking more from them and they don’t like it?!”
Hate is the cost of squeezing those extra dollars. Extra profit isn’t free, they’re lowering another game slider for it, and that slider is how much your customers support your actions. They’re only still around as a customer because all the other options have been bought out or run out of business.
The only reason customers are engaged is because the service sucks, the product sucks, the support sucks, the tos sucks, the sneaky fees suck, the greed sucks, the CEOs suck.
Well, corporate America is made up of hardworking Americans who do their best to reward the investors, and many times those investors are pension funds
Ah yes, every day I wake up to go to work just to do my best to reward the investors. Not because I need to pay for living expenses, just because I love pleasing the investors.
JFC these people are living in a fantasy world.
It’s fortune magazine, so yeah they’re full-on delusional in their pandering to “business leaders.”
Just wanted to comment on these two.
“I have to wonder if the demonization of corporate America and the wealthy over the last four years planted a mind virus in the assassin’s mind.”
Fuck you! You have the mind virus. A virus which leads you to believe that the rest of us should suffer because you’re better. Eat shit anonymous CEO.
“If you walk by the place where it happened, it’s business as usual, which gives me some perspective. This was a random killing by a mentally ill person. Let’s not turn a tragic incident into a trend. Most people don’t hate CEOs. They don’t care about CEOs. They have bigger issues to care about.”
Then light some candles and put out some flowers you fucking cowardly parasite. Hold a vigil, gather your CEO buddies and sing Kumbaya. Be sure and post the date online so all of the healthcare CEOs know when to be there.
Most people don’t hate CEOs.
The public reaction to this event disagrees with this claim.
Social media is used by a tiny minority of the population.
Thinking you can extrapolate what you see on social media into “the public” at large is the chief reason people on Reddit and Lemmy were so baffled when Harris got her ass kicked in the election.
Be more mindful of what’s true of “the public”, and what’s true only in the echo chamber.
95%+ of posts and comments have been in support of a murderer, barely any opposition, even on more conservative social media like Facebook… Sure, the general public is different, but even if it’s 60%, that’s still a lot…
Even if it’s 40%, that’s still a lot lol
That’s literally like take 10 people off the street, and 4 people agree. It could be 60%, it could be 80%, etc.
Mind virus.
Lgbt.
Left.
Right.
Wokeness.
Immigrants.
Distract
Depose.
Deengage.
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Even left/right/center is scapegoating. Or rather divide and conquer.
And suddenly the divide is a commie one - proletariat vs borgouis.
Sorry about your daughter.
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I hate CEOs, landlords, royal families, and anybody else perpetuating the status quo.
Why don’t you love your oligarchy overlords? All our surveys say you’re happy to have no choices other than the ones our questionnaire leads you to. You didn’t cancel your subscriptions after we jacked the prices up a half dozen times in the last five years and/or shoved ads at you, so you must be happy.
The disconnect between public perception and personal humanity has been striking, with some commentary bordering on dehumanizing.
Yeah it’s a lot easier to humanize someone who makes six figures than someone who makes seven. Why don’t you start there?
Or maybe just make it so the CEO doesn’t make 700x more than the lowest paid worker. You don’t even have to reduce the CEO pay to do it! Just lift up those other people.
That’s actually been studied. Turns out that about 40 is the tipping point for most people, as in CEO earnings 40 times more than the lowest paid workers. Up to that point people think they boss earns it, above that resentment starts to grow.
They’re at 700. Yeah, that’s dangerous. People are very sensitive about relative earning for work. Fairness is just hard wired into all animals and it’s dangerous to ignore this, although humans react a bit later and that gives a false sense if security for those at the top.
But it’s inevitable as a successful business grows, and the population grows. A CEO of a company of 100 people does not have the same level of responsibility as the CEO of one employing hundreds of thousands (Google says UHC employs 440,000, for example).
Working conditions were inarguably much worse a century ago, but the gap wasn’t anywhere close to 700x back then, was it? The gap was smaller not because the CEOs were more generous, it was just because the largest businesses were much smaller.
So you’re saying large corporations need to be broken up into smaller businesses I avoid concentrating too much wealth in upper management.
No, arbitrarily punishing a business for being too successful is both nonsensical, and has a chilling effect on new entrepreneurship. Also, it makes literally zero difference to someone earning $10/hour if one CEO is earning over $4000/hour, or if ten CEOs are each earning $400/hour.
Ultimately, the ratio itself doesn’t matter at all. The actual number is what actually matters. Who do you think is more likely to be more resentful, someone making $10/hour under a CEO making 50x that, or someone making $100/hour under a CEO making 50x that? Obviously the first person…if they can’t make ends meet, it’s not going to make any difference to them if the CEO gets a pay cut, the fuck do they care?
Businesses that were too successful are also called monopolies, and have a chilling effect on entrepreneurship all in their own.
Median wage in USA is about $20/h, so the actual numbers say there are a lot of people being closer to having trouble making ends meet. Even then, the ratio matters a lot. It’s the difference between “we’re all in this together” and “some of you won’t make it but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”. In the latter situation there is a lot more resentment and sympathy for violence.
Businesses that were too successful are also called monopolies
No. There is no inherent relationship between the two things. A business can absolutely be very successful while there is competition, simply by being the best ‘competitor’ in the eyes of the customers.
the ratio matters a lot. It’s the difference between “we’re all in this together” and “some of you won’t make it but it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to make”.
The vast majority of people don’t know or care how much the person at the top is making, at all. They care only about if they’re in good shape themselves. Someone who’s making $100/hour and is living comfortably is, in 99% of cases not going to really give a shit if the CEO is making 50x what they are, or 500x.
That’s the reality.
15% of people make $100k in the USA. That means 85% care and a large part of them are not in a good shape.
What infuriates me is that there are those that make 6 figures as being able to potentially make 7. And sure, some of them might.
But are they brain surgeons that have such a specialized life saving surgery that by the nature of economics pushes the value of their skill exceptionally high? Nope.
Hell, I make 6, and I’ll admit, I have a lot more than a lot of people. I’m 2-3x the median of my area. I can’t buy a house. I own a 7 year old RAV4. If I was better managing my money and not having to pay out my ass for my ex wife, sure, things would be better.
It’s not at all difficult to find how just a little less income makes life much harder. It is VERY difficult to see how someone who has so much money can be remotely ok with people having it harder than them.
Those pulling in 7 figures without highly valuable skills should be dehumanized. Because they have abandoned what has helped humans survive at all. Each other.
Also, as if many CEO’s and upper managements humanize their customers and not see them as numbers in a spreadsheet.
Awww poor billionaires. So sad.
Good. Money can’t buy happiness and if they try, we need to take their happiness. Billionaires already have everything, they don’t need peace of mind.
US income distribution is on the same level as fucking Russia. Bring back the tax brackets from the 1950’s and 60’s.
Really? It feels worse than Russia.
You haven’t been to Russia.
I haven’t been to America either
It’s different people. Those in US still own real things and do something with them to get such incomes.
Those in Russia steal.
In other words, in USA connections are means to help actual power and tools to actual power. In Russia it’s the other way around, actual power is all dependent on connections, which ultimately all go to one ruling group.
It’s nowhere as bad. But it will get as bad as Russia, of course, if Americans don’t learn something.
Hahaha. Just because it’s “legal” here doesn’t mean it’s not stealing. Taking billions in insurance premiums and then spending it to lobby to make it harder and harder to qualify to receive money for a claim is “legal” but so unethical and morally bankrupt that a guy just killed a CEO because of it and the entire country just shrugged and said “Yeah that’s about right.”
It’s legal in Russia too at this point. That’s not what I mean. Wealthy people in Russia own nothing really - they are just pockets of Putin. Less wealthy people are just elements of various mechanisms, legal and not, able to steal according to their status. Less wealthy than them - those who do honest business, but pretend the competition is not stifled by various invisible limitations by connections. The lower it gets, the more it is like normal stuff, but one can feel that something is wrong even arriving from Yerevan to Moscow, and Armenia is quite oligarch-owned too.
In Russia there are no CEOs to kill. People in such positions are kinda normal and everyone knows where real power lies, and those holding it can’t be so easily caught.
I misunderstood the core of what you were saying. Thank you for explaining it like this.
Dude, you have a self selecting Elite in the US and most other countries. It is the same shit. How many “rags to riches” stories still happen? And these ultimately also involve the right connections at the right time.
Look at the lauded “started in a Garage” tech billionaires.
Bill Gates?
His father was a prominent lawyer, and his mother served on the board of directors of First Interstate BancSystem and United Way of America. Gates’s maternal grandfather J. W. Maxwell was a national bank president.
At age 13, he enrolled in the private Lakeside prep school.[14][15] When he was in eighth grade, the Mothers’ Club at the school used proceeds from Lakeside School’s rummage sale to buy a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer for the students.[16] Gates took an interest in programming the GE system in BASIC, and he was excused from math classes to pursue his interest.
Zuckerberg? Haward student
Bezos? Princeton and then various banks, albeit his family background actually was lower/middle class.
Musk? Fucking apartheid mine owners.
No, I get how it’s in the USA. Matches your description. Still radically different from Russia.
