We need to give our executives the tools they need to protect themselves from these violet threats. Tools like the ability to quickly roll back all machiavellian policies and practices before they can become a real danger to the policy makers.
There are two things that the aftermath of Luigi's action has made poignantly clear to pretty much everybody:
That the vast majority of people no matter their party affiliation and political leanings is feeling the pain and hates the abuses that carry on being committed by a minority of people in our system with total impunity ... until Luigi.
That the Ju$tice System, the Police and most of the Press, unlike what they claim work for that minority of people, not for the rest of us.
It's amazing just how certain parts of the system that are supposed to work for everybody (such as in this case the Police, and in other cases large parts of the Press with their "poor CEO" articles) are pretty much shouting loud and clear for all to hear that "we're not working for you, we work for the ones that abuse you".
Most people just discovered now with this killing of a hated CEO that what they individually felt about certain things was also felt by almost everybody, and then these bought-and-paid-for minions who for decades have been putting a lot of effort in passing themselves as "working for the community" just repeatedly and overtly signal to everybody else their true minion-of-the-rich nature.
Mind you, as a Leftie who has been skeptical of whose those elements of the current system for decades, I'm happy they're basically outing themselves and they should keep on doing it so that everybody sees them for what they really are and who they really serve,
You know how when you go to the police to report a stalker or someone threatening you and they just kind of roll their eyes and tell you there's nothing they can do? And you're left getting a useless restraining order that's going to do nothing but feature in the news and trial after you get murdered?
This is a hotline for rich people to report stalkers and threats specifically to be acted on. But I also wouldn't be surprised if they whitelist their phones to be at the front of any queue for 911.
Except it's not at all. We elect the president and give him/her special privilege with that vote. I don't and would not vote for my tax dollars to pay for billionaires getting special protection.
Remember all that critical theory stuff people were freaking out about a few years ago?
It's basically about how society arranges itself to benefit the people who have the power in a society.
Like how crimes against business and capital are serious crimes, but crimes against workers are usually treated as paperwork errors.
Compare the number of people arrested for shoplifting as opposed to the number arrested for wage theft.
Or about how the murder of one CEO gets weeks of media attention and a potential development of new systems by the police to keep it from happening again, but we've already moved on from the last school shooting, and our official policy is "yeah, that'll happen from time to time"
The specific example of the health care guy says everything about that too. Deny someone health care and they suffer and die? Or maybe hundreds of thousands of people? No problem.
You are totally right but the problem is that the people who could do a revolution are all in front of their cellphone or laptop and they only write, they do nothing. They write on X, they write on Facebook but they don't do anything else. It's a mute revolution and the corporate knows that nothing will come of this, since the US have elected Trump.
All they have to do is enforce law so no other CEO will get killed and learn from all thid and get better at making the people don't do anything except write on the internet.
We still have our bread and digital circuses. But the GOP is rapidly eroding our digital circuses, so it's becoming easier and easier to pull away and live in the real world. They're authors of their own misery, eventually.
If writing on the internet does nothing, then why did we have to come here to do it freely?
Luigi Mangione manifesto
To the Feds, I'll keep this short, because I do respect what you do for our country. To save you a lengthy investigation, I state plainly that I wasn't working with anyone. This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience. The spiral notebook, if present, has some straggling notes and To Do lists that illuminate the gist of it. My tech is pretty locked down because I work in engineering so probably not much info there. I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done. Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming. A reminder: the US has the #1 most expensive healthcare system in the world, yet we rank roughly #42 in life expectancy. United is the [indecipherable] largest company in the US by market cap, behind only Apple, Google, Walmart. It has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit because the American public has allwed them to get away with it. Obviously the problem is more complex, but I do not have space, and frankly I do not pretend to be the most qualified person to lay out the full argument. But many have illuminated the corruption and greed (e.g.: Rosenthal, Moore), decades ago and the problems simply remain. It is not an issue of awareness at this point, but clearly power games at play. Evidently I am the first to face it with such brutal honesty.
This is like the Trauma Team in Cyberpunk. Rich people who can afford the highest tier get a private militarized swat team to go to them any time they're in trouble.
Trauma team charges 100 Eddies per minute from when you call them until they deliver you to the hospital, plus spend ammunition and medical supplies. They waive the charge if they need 7 minutes or more to get to you, though. (Not relevant in gameplay, as their response time is 1d6 minutes). And they have heavy weapons to fight their way through to you. So, their services are sort of reasonably priced for what they offer. And even if you don't earn the big bucks, if you live in a Arasaka living facility and eat kibble, you should have enough saved up to pay for their services if you end up needing them. (Of course, living in an Arasaka living facility may lead to you needing their services)
Point being, "Cyberpunk 2020"'s healthcare system is better than America's.
Well you haven't changed that much then. That killed me. British comedy really is better about social and government stuff.
America needs to play this on every channel at least once a week for the next four years. So we can reference it every time Trump brings up selling off the FBI to the Pinkertons.
If you want to actually look at things quantitatively. I ran the numbers, and by my math, Brian Robert Thompson was responsible for the deaths of 40,000 innocent American souls.
Even by a conservative estimate, he was responsible for more deaths than the 9/11 terrorist attacks. And this figure includes only deaths, not the injuries, pain, suffering, and bankruptcies that resulted from his actions. When these are included, his victims likely number over a million.
Author is... Not great. Content is good but repeats themselves for paragraphs at a time, weird religious shift at the end, generally very high ratio of words to words that convey a new thought.
Repetition is often necessary in this kind of thing. You have to repeat yourself, lest you be accused of supporting vigilante murder. The intention was to thoroughly explain the methods and assumptions. As far as the religious bent, that's deliberate. I'm agnostic myself, but I decided to take a very religious "fire and brimstone" framing to the piece. I've read so many pieces condemning Luigi as a monster and irredeemably evil. And maybe it's just my own religious upbringing, but I know of no way to more thoroughly condemn someone than to state that they are literally burning in the fires of Hell itself. That's not the kind of language one is to use lightly.
I think we could use more fire and brimstone rhetoric against the oligarchs. That's always been one of the core traditions of Christianity. It's the money changers in the Temple. The belief that even if the powerful escape accountability in this life, they are still to be shamed, as they will burn in the Pit forever. In today's world, it's primarily only the right that uses this language of Damnation, almost exclusively against LGBT people. But I think the left really needs to reclaim this rhetoric. It is a powerful thing to look an evil man in the eyes and to calmly say, "you are going to burn for what you have done in this world."
Also, this issue is something that appeals to people on all sides of the aisle. I could have written the article from some sort of Marxist class analysis, but that really doesn't seem appropriate for the moment. I mention a policy solution, Medicare for All, that is usually considered left wing. And I wanted to balance it out with some very traditional religious condemnation.
Don't they make enough money that they can pay their own security or set up their own hotline? Why does the citizens have to pay for it? Maybe their insurance can pay for it since it's a high risk job.
Watch Congress turn bodyguards into something you can get a tax break for, like they did for private jets under Trump's tax reform. In the end they'll find a way to make sure we pay for it, not them.
Yeah fuck this, a special 911 enables the rich to snitch on the poor without any good reason, citing "threats". No specific class of people in a society should have special access to law enforcement.
But who am I kidding. When the SCOTUS ruled that the police protects property and not people, this was the next logical step: protect those with more property than others.
One more step towards a Cyberpunk dystopia. And one more step towards class consciousness, a general strike, and revolution, hopefully.
Yeah fuck this, a special 911 enables the rich to snitch on the poor without any good reason, citing “threats”. No specific class of people in a society should have special access to law enforcement.
to be clear, this isn't new, this has been a thing since celebrities were a thing lmao
"Hi yes I'd like to report that a CEO is about to make a decision that could hurt themselves or millions of others. Yes i would like to have them committed and watched for the minimum amount of time. Thank you for your help."
I'm confused. Was there another CEO killed or harmed? Or was it still just the one? I mean, if CEOs were falling like flies in NY state, then I guess it would make sense to have a special hotline for a task force or something.
But if it's still a tiny number of CEOs, then something like this would be a giant waste of government resources.
The only other one I know of is Bob Lee, the Cash App one a year and a half ago. The circumstances were completely different however, as His brother-in-law stabbed him in a 'scuffle' after Bob supposedly became manic (from drugs and/or alcohol) and attacked the guy.
The case has been ongoing since, though the jury is supposed to read a verdict in a little under 7 hours (9:30am PST)
It's more common in high population areas, but it does happen.
The obsession with running government services like a business results in some notions about efficiency where someone getting paid to work and not being busy all the time is worse than people regularly waiting for critical time sensitive assistance.
It also has the zesty side effect of making the dispatch operators overworked and rushed. This usually just manifests as mistakes, but sometimes results in anger and critical mistakes. The famous example of the operator who yelled at a kid for calling because his mom had a seizure in the bath and she didn't believe him comes to mind.
Just wow. I mean everyone has a really shitty day and stuff can happen,we're all just human.
But dispatcher is one of those jobs that should never be understaffed nor overworked. Like docs or nurses or EMTs or....
Jeez...
Where I live not only do we get put on hold but sometimes they don't answer (not enough dispatchers) and response time (except for shop lifters which is quick response) is about 4.5 hours for serious stuff and 72 hours, if they do show up according to my own experience and those I know in the community.
Their budget is right over $4 Billion/year. The area I live in gives a boost of around $60 mil/year on top for expanded help so we don't have to have our own city PD.
Also I wanted to add it's the Sheriff, so we do contribute to the 4 bill/year via county tax like everyone else and are in their jurisdiction already.
Wtf? You're us-american, right?
4.5hrs? Why even call at all. Makes it totally useless.
At one store of mine, robberies were regular. I had an automatic alarm,which called for cops and they were there not 3 minutes later. Granted their station was just 3 minutes away, but still.
Robbers usually managed to find a general direction for what they wanted by that time.
But I always had pristine new windows thanks to that 😁
4.5hrs...i could've gone there myself. After watching a movie, meeting some friends, doing the taxes and....
I am still pissed at Trevor Noah that he paraded the corrupt criminal reactionary ex-cop Eric Adams around as some sort of great achievement for black people, after Adams won the mayor election in NYC.
I couldn't see how anyone paying attention during 2020 could bring themselves to elect a COP as Mayor of NYC at the next available opportunity. No idea whether to think this learning experience will do any good for next time around. I'm guessing not based on the state of the country overall right now.
An excellent notion! In the spirit of compromise, I'd be willing to accept exiling them to the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. We could call 'em the Garbage Patch Kids!