Ask Lemmy

I certainly hope not, given how an “eat the rich” society generally becomes an “eat your children” society in short order.

Hopefully

I’m honestly just glad it brought the left and the right together! 🥰Give more CEOs bunnies, get more unity? Working class solidarity, ya’ll. 🥳

Don’t eat shit, mulch the rich.

No

No.

The killing of the CEO was a one-off event.

There would need to be readily apparent will to revolt, or a slow buildup of tit-for-tat escalating action/reaction between have-not and the rich…. More killings and active attacks, more police trying to crush any protest or anyone rebelling, harsher and harsher punishment for resistance or protest, and a wealthy class protecting themselves as much as possible while telling everyone (most likely through the press and government they own) how bad it would be for everyone were they to be killed or the system disrupted.

Short answer: no.

One CEO getting shot is not going to change much. The American public's attention span is two weeks, if that. Another CEO in the endless line of corporate douchebags will take the spot of the murdered one and so on. All the lousy crap that led to our fucking useless health care system is still in place: CEOs with no heart/conscience, health industry lobbyists, spineless politicians for sale to the highest bidder.

For sure, this was an exceptional event, but it's not going to lead to any lasting change. Disagree with me? Post your prediction for what will change one year from now and let's see what happens. My guess is NOTHING.

There are plenty of alternatives to eat the rich.

UBI does not make the rich any poorer. It just decentralizes power so that all can survive and eliminates crime.

While our electoral politics is divided between either "pro business" or "hamas supporting communist radical left", it could seem reasonable to constrain oligarchy and Israel first rule while still being pro economic growth and prosperity. This requires an "eat the media stooges" who refuse to tell the difference along with a forceful message that the DNC doesn't support.

Understanding that DNC are worthless pig fuckers meant to fundraise and not empower ordinary people is step 1 to progress.

as an outsider I would think no. you don't have much political force to cultivate this sentiment. democrats are already acting shocked and devastated for their buddies. they're on the side of ceos, don't forget. insider trading party can hardly pretend to give a shit about the average person. they will wait for the flame to burn out. return to business as usual: protecting the rich, losing elections and all that.

Hopefully we will move towards a more equitable society, but Fascists also have a track record of exploiting the sort of instability American society has been faced with during this century so far. If we don't handle this carefully, it could go badly. Which is saying a lot, given the last decade.

I doubt it. There's a good chance that we will see copycat killers. That's a well known phenomenon, but it is not a change in society.

High-profile events can catalyze changes. Violence has been committed. A person died. That creates a sense of urgency. Americans have discovered that there is a broad consensus that something ought to be done about health care. We'll see.

But I do not see any appetite for a societal change. Americans look at individuals, not at systemic factors. The USA has, by far, the highest incarceration rate in the world. It costs the taxpayer a lot of money to feed and house all those people, not to mention that the rest of society misses out on all the productive labor they could do. The US likes to punish individuals for perceived wrong-doing, but it does not look at systemic factors.

US society now wants more bad guy CEOs punished. That's not a change and it will not lead to a change. People aren't even thinking about how the law could be changed to punish these bad guys, or what they personally could do alone or by collective action. They are waiting for heroes.

Americans want V (for Vendetta) to save them while they watch the show. Many think that Elon Musk is Ironman. That's part of the malaise.

People want individuals to take care of things and so individuals need the power to do so. Well, billionaires are people who have been given the power to take care of business (excuse the pun). And if they don't do it right, it's because they are greedy or have some other individual flaw.

Look to history for some answers.

The Denver Post had a opinion piece that talked about how America has seen something like this before.

The Gilded Age, the tumultuous period between roughly 1870 and 1900, was also a time of rapid technological change, of mass immigration, of spectacular wealth and enormous inequality. The era got its name from a Mark Twain novel: gilded, rather than golden, to signify a thin, shiny surface layer. Below it lay the corruption and greed that engulfed the country after the Civil War.

The era survives in the public imagination through still resonant names, including J.P. Morgan, John Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie and Cornelius Vanderbilt; through their mansions, which now greet awestruck tourists; and through TV shows with extravagant interiors and lavish gowns. Less well remembered is the brutality that underlay that wealth — the tens of thousands of workers, by some calculations, who lost their lives to industrial accidents, or the bloody repercussions they met when they tried to organize for better working conditions.

Also less well remembered is the intensity of political violence that erupted. The vast inequities of the era fueled political movements that targeted corporate titans, politicians, judges and others for violence. In 1892, an anarchist tried to assassinate industrialist Henry Clay Frick after a drawn-out conflict between Pinkerton security guards and workers. In 1901, an anarchist sympathizer assassinated President William McKinley. And so on.

As historian Jon Grinspan wrote about the years between 1865 and 1915, “the nation experienced one impeachment, two presidential elections ‘won’ by the loser of the popular vote and three presidential assassinations.” And neither political party, he added, seemed “capable of tackling the systemic issues disrupting Americans’ lives.” No, not an identical situation, but the description does resonate with how a great many people feel about the direction of the country today.

It’s not hard to see how, during the Gilded Age, armed political resistance could find many eager recruits and even more numerous sympathetic observers. And it’s not hard to imagine how the United States could enter another such cycle.

Never underestimate the laziness of a disaffected but mostly not quite yet starving population.

tl;dr: Patience, grasshopper.

Nah. That won't happen until the Resource Wars begins in earnest.

Nah, we're going to see more anon violent terrorists, some of them might even do a little good, but for the most part it's not going to change a single thing about our system of laws or how the majority of people navigate that system.

White supremacists groups have been kidnapping, holding government buildings hostage, and threatening politicians for decades and they don't get their way, don't expect it to be any different from any other groups or individuals.

Aren't we primarily ok with this guy being assassinated because he was the face of a terrible company not because he was CEO in general? If someone from middle management or even low level worker who personally denied this guy′s insurance claim would have been assasinated, would we suddenly feel sorry?

Also remember that people like surgeons or dentists also can be considered ″filthy rich″ by your average Joe standards.

Maybe not eat. Most of them are old and probably way to tough to chew.