The amount of people who died as a result of Brian Thompson’s leadership of united healthcare should be investigated instead
Western democracy is at risk until this is done. We literally don’t deserve to exist if we can’t figure this basic stuff out - i.e. when our own people are dying, maybe the empty private hospital beds and ample staff resources should be used to save those lives. Because people are… gonna die otherwise. The fact that anything else needs to be said is the problem.
‘Western style democracy’ has never been truly democratic because of how money influences elections and politicians. True democracy isn’t possible as long as there exists a capital class in society. The capital class will not give up its wealth without a class war.
Hence the need to remove
- money as Free Speach
- corporations are people
- lobbying is legal
But changes to these policies won’t occur because these policies already exist.
And they are self sustaining, as long as money can buy politicians, no politician would ever be able to stop it on their own.
I asked chatgpt for a solution. It’s not promising:-
Even though U.S. policies like equating money with free speech, treating corporations as people, and legalizing lobbying are deeply entrenched, history shows that even long-established systems can change through persistent, multifaceted efforts. Here’s how such changes might occur:
- Constitutional and Judicial Pathways
Constitutional Amendments: The most sweeping change would come from amending the Constitution. For example, an amendment could clarify that money is not a form of free speech or that constitutional protections apply only to human beings, not corporations. Although amending the Constitution is difficult and requires broad political consensus, it would directly override existing legal interpretations.
Judicial Reinterpretation: Change can also occur gradually by influencing judicial interpretations. By electing or appointing judges who are open to rethinking established precedents—such as those set by decisions like Citizens United—legal opinions on campaign finance and corporate rights can slowly evolve.
- Legislative and Regulatory Reforms
Reforming Campaign Finance Laws: Even without a constitutional amendment, Congress and state legislatures can pass new laws to restrict political spending. Measures might include public financing of campaigns, strict spending caps, and full disclosure of contributions to reduce the outsized influence of large donors.
Regulating Corporate Political Activity: Statutory reforms can be introduced to redefine the role of corporations in politics. For instance, laws could ban corporate contributions to political campaigns or limit their lobbying activities, effectively reducing the political clout that comes with corporate personhood.
Tightening Lobbying Regulations: Legislatures can also impose stricter rules on lobbying—such as enhanced disclosure requirements, limits on the “revolving door” between government and private industry, or even temporary bans on certain types of lobbying. These measures would curb the direct influence that special interest groups can wield over lawmakers.
- Grassroots and Electoral Strategies
Building Public Pressure: Change often starts from the bottom up. Grassroots movements, advocacy groups, and citizen coalitions can mobilize public opinion, use social media to raise awareness, and pressure elected officials to prioritize campaign finance and corporate reform.
Electoral Reforms and Voting Engagement: Changes like anti-gerrymandering efforts, ranked-choice voting, and other electoral reforms can help shift political power towards a broader base of citizens. Increased voter participation and support for reform-minded candidates can gradually reshape the political landscape.
State-Level Innovations: States can act as testing grounds for reform. Successful state-level initiatives—such as stricter campaign finance laws or innovative transparency measures—can provide models that encourage national adoption of similar policies.
Summary
Though deeply entrenched, policies like “money as free speech,” corporate personhood, and legal lobbying can change. Through constitutional amendments, new laws to reform campaign finance and corporate influence, and powerful grassroots mobilization, we can reshape our political system to be more democratic and representative.
These avenues illustrate that while the current biases are strong, a combination of legal, legislative, and grassroots actions can pave the way for meaningful political reform.
And on that score, I often muse if we should be grateful that MAGA and Trump are accelerating the timetable as they have… Capitalism, world economics and geopolitical problems as they were 20 years ago could have been sustained well into the 22nd century. We are so good at avoiding change at all costs!
Now we are headed for a societal collapse, once the ruffians who instigated it are out of the way I think the future for humanity looks quite bright indeed. We may even beat climate change, so long as we… beat all the nasty billionaires, nazis, dictators and oligarchy first… holds head in hands
That’s an interesting thought. In the slow system we might’ve been boiled like a frog, but now that things are changing much faster, we may be able to jump out of the water before we die.
And land in the flames instead.
And on that score, I often muse if we should be grateful that MAGA and Trump are accelerating the timetable as they have…
Capitalism is an inherently unstable system due to the contradictions that define it. Scapegoats are necessary to prevent working class from rising up, and economic conditions in the US have gotten so bad that most people no longer care about sustaining the status quo. So I don’t think the current rise of fascism could have been prevented without a socialist alternative.
Also Biden had already changed the geopolitical landscape when he openly funded an (even domestically) deeply unpopular genocide.
I might be being a bit daft here, but why western democracy, not just American democracy? I ask cause on USA has privatised healthcare.
I’m in Australia, which is supposed to have universal health care, that system has been eroded into dysfunction by decades of neglect and downsizing by subsequent conservative governments. Right wingers slash and burn budgets, and then “left leaning” centrist governments come in with the weakest possible reform agenda, never returning things to where they were but preventing others from fixing it either.
I’m not sure where Canada, NZ and other English speaking nations are at, but I assumed that their health systems are negatively affected by neo liberalism and similarly face problems that didn’t exist 10-25 years ago. Even if they have universal healthcare on paper, shenanigans by lobbyists, slashing of budgets and other institutional neglect has led to a breakdown in the care people can access.
The UK has an even worse issue with the NHS. It was already as bad as Australia before Brexit, now it’s been a prolonged period of people on public waiting lists where patients wait for over 2 years, unable to see specialists or book in surgeries. Untold amount of misery, and even death, that was preventable.
Countries like Sweden, Norway and Finland seem to have done a better job protecting the interests of the public from greed. But then there’s western countries that have huge social issues like Spain, France, etc.
My perception is that western democracies are not good at protecting their citizens because law makers, the media and other mechanisms in a western democracy allow for abuse by greed and self interest. It seems like despite strong laws and traditions existing, ongoing campaigning by those with money and allowing those people to earn a profit from essential services results in those services being eroded.
Thank you for this, it’s really well written.
Yeah, I get you. I was being dense.
That’s part of the problem, we don’t have ample hospital beds nor staff resources.
I don’t know if and am not saying there are enough to cover the gap… But there are certainly plenty of unused resources in the private hospital system. Doctors, nurses, beds, medicines that could be put to use saving lives, preventing trauma and improving the livelihoods of people in the public system.
The private medical system has siphoned too much from the public for too long. It should always have been a premium tier for the wealthy to enjoy caviar and have cable TV in a private room after surgery. Instead, people who go to a public hospital for urgent emergency care are being sent home to die in error, instead of the ICU, because public emergency rooms are catastrophically overloaded.
In Australia we’ve taken the disadvantage of the poor a step further, like we often do, and have propped up the private system advantaging it even further, e.g. by forcing people to pay a tax for not having private insurance, labyrinthian bureaucracy of referrals that rack up consultation fees and achieve nothing for patients, etc.
In the US, the system is overwhelmed in large part thanks to the financial side pushing for ever increasing patient loads and reduced staff. So nurses are saddled with more patients than they can safely take care of because an empty bed is lost profit. This has a cascade effect because staff are leaving the industry as a whole because of the understaffing, stress, and poor pay/life balance.
I don’t know if the ACA has the same tax as your system does, but I know my state also has a tax penalty if you’re not covered by insurance. The upside to this, though, is that the state offers insurance. It’s not a great system (before you even get into the plague of issues with the finer points of the system), but it’s better than just leaving people to fend for themselves.
If the courts had intervened to stop Brian Thompson before his healthcare murder spree then maybe Luigi wouldn’t be being prosecuted right now. This trial isnt about luigi, its about covering up the chain of political failures that led us here.
A single death is a tragedy; A million deaths is a statistic.
Luigi killed a dad, husband, ceo, etc, etc etc.
Brian just inflated some numbers…
I hate how the world works.
A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths is record profits for a health insurance company
It’s not a war crime if it makes you money, I’m told.
Love to see it
I have it on good authority from my son that Luigi was in a haunted mansion that day.
The real uplifting news is bootlickers getting kicked in their metaphorical shins in the comment section.
I’d lick a boot if they payed enough, but they’re not. I get that other people are worse off than me, but seriously, what the fuck? The current regime isn’t paying. period. I’m angry and I don’t know what to do with it.
What makes a bootlicker is that they continue to lick the boot even when it isn’t paying off in the slightest.
But you are right, there is no longer any reward for participating in society. The wealthy have forgotten fear.
Life under Capitalism was better while there was a sizable Communist bloc on the other side of the world. The fear that the commoners might wake up and make their voices heard by force of violence resulted in all manner of concessions. Unions were stronger, public services were estabilished, workers’ rights were signed into law. Then the Soviets showed weakness in the eighties, and the Capitalist class was quick to invent Neoliberalism and begin the slow but assured gutting of all those concessions. While manufacturing consent through the media and convincing people that this was what they actually wanted.
Now we see the end result.
As for what to do about it, I don’t fucking know either. Because the only thing that is known to work would require a mass movement of a size that I don’t think even can be achieved nowadays. Society is too fragmented. People are too propagandised.
I have basically embraced doomer hedonism. Life will not get better, so I make a point to just enjoy myself as much as possible, I have no intention of breeding more slaves for their flesh-mill, and I personally hope to die young. (to a definition of young anyway, I’m this close to being legally considered ‘middle aged’)
Gonna wanna see the source code on that “Pray” button. I don’t think it actually does anything.
on desktop the button has a counter for how many people have pressed it, so it does something :)
Holy crap! Do we now have the technology to quantify thoughts and prayers?
we have the technology!
don’t go too far into that one and yeah, we’re making progress
I just saw it wtf
slow clap
dude is there a Pray Button on the various controllers. someone is about to try and convince you.
Thats hot
Luigi’s Mansion 2
How a 30k donation to a murderer counts as “uplifting news”? If anything it’s depressing
Innocent until proven guilty.
Before we engage in name calling for this suspect, know that yesterday was blatantly clear the system is stacked against him to the point where the courts did not Los him to go into PA for another legal procedure.
See the thing here is that they were giving evidence even to MAX for the documentary and not his legal team, who correctly called some of the evidence inadmissible in court.
So before you feel like calling him a murderer see. The facts and wait for the events to unfold.
You have evidence he murdered someone? Why haven’t you told anyone?!
He told the dude that made his Filet-o-fish.
How did it feel to type 10 words that make up some nonsense
How’s that boot taste?
Profile picture matches this comment
He didn’t murder anyone.
Oh, go lick a boot, dweeb.
Why are you lying? Nobody’s been convicted of murder.
It’s the best news all day, go back to Reddit corporate shill
You’re asleep at the wheel.
this is like saying donating to a guy who killed someone actively killing others is never uplifting news. Sure leave the school shooters alone
The donation doesn’t go to a CEO who has murdered hundreds, possibly thousands of people.
It is going to someone who acted in defense of others. Or who might not be the person who even did that, which is why he deserves a fair trial.
They’re saying that they find due process to be lacking and the prosecution to be political.
Do you think it’s depressing that someone would donate money to the defense of someone they think is being inappropriately prosecuted?
If you think they’re guilty, you should still want them to get the best defense possible, so that when they’re found guilty it’s airtight. Our justice system is based on an adversarial model. If the prosecution, with the resources of the state, can’t successfully argue that they did it and that their arrest and all procedures were properly followed, do you really want that to still mean someone faces the death penalty?I agree. I don’t think this sub should get political.
It’s uplifting news and has nothing to do with politics. Perhaps Reddit is a better place for you
Everything is political. The sooner you get over this “I’m tired of politics, let me enjoy my doomscrolling” attitude, the more respectable you’ll be.
No it isn’t. This is how subs like r/technology got ruined, the whole thing got filled with “political post that involves technology” instead of just “technology”.
Everything is politically when you have people at the top wanting to take away your rights and be able to have their followers kill you in the streets.
It actually is.
Technology is one of the most politically charged topics possible. Even leaving aside big tech and AI stuff, you have the ideologues behind the open source movement, or the fact that a lot of our modern tech infrastructure is built on conflict resources and manufactured by forced labor. Politics ripple through every aspect of our lives.
Anything can be political but doesn’t have to be. A good technology sub would look something like this:
- New 10TB SSD announced at trade show
- Holograms are slightly better after new breakthrough
- GTA6 preorder numbers are out, will it save the PS5?
And instead it became a shitflinging cesspool of:
- Elon tweeted something stupid at 2am last night
- AOC said something about net neutrality
- Congressional republicans announced a tech bill that has no chance of becoming law
I think you’ll find across the spectrum, people are frustrated to the point where it’s not a political issue
Yeah, because there’s surely not enough political communities on there already
this is uplifting but i agree
Context is hard for you?
Taking out the leader of an evil (corpo) empire is heroism, not subject to murder charges.
What does this mean, exactly? More resources to hire more lawyers or something?
I don’t want to dampen the good mood, but even if this is sent anonymously, is there any risk of the information of who is the donor being hacked, especially by corporate overlords who have every incentive to see Luigi and his supporters get punished?
It’s anonymous to us, not the website. Payments are the most trackable thing in the world
Proxy account or donor is outside US, in a suitable country
Edit: There is legal protection, so if that donor doesn’t have any potentially problematic business it’s safe ig.
such a silly bunch a shit. YOU CAN’T DO THAT. unless you have the intelligence of a human.
When the government fails to protect us, and corporations won’t protect us, we must take it upon ourselves to engage in self defense. Luigi did nothing wrong.
That one will be last against the wall
What are you saying here…?
A true American hero
