This is a genuine question.
I have a hard time with this. My righteous side wants him to face an appropriate sentence, but my pessimistic side thinks this might have set a great example for CEOs to always maintain a level of humanity or face unforseen consequences.
P.S. this topic is highly controversial and I want actual opinions so let’s be civil.
And if you’re a mod, delete this if the post is inappropriate or if it gets too heated.
Morality is subjective, no real system can definitively decide what is evil. But in this case we’re talking about, it’s pretty clear cut that the CEO was a willful threat to the health of millions. This isn’t some abstract slippery slope of dubious vigilantism, might as well be claiming that the assassination attempts on Hitler were a gateway to Mad Max dystopia.
Exactly, what makes an act evil or not is a really complicated question unless the action in question is mass murder. In that case, there isn’t a debate, it is evil, there is no slippery slope. The CEO undeniably caused the deaths of countless people and maimed and permanently hurt many more. At least the person who killed the CEO actually carried out the act of taking someone’s life themselves and bore witness themselves to the horror of taking a human’s life. The healthcare CEO on the other hand was the most cowardly kind of murderer, someone who has killed far too many to name but simultaneously would be utterly shattered by exposure to actually witnessing first hand even a tiny fraction of all of the people they murdered suffering and dying right in front of them.
It is the ultimate form of violence to kill without a desire to know, to understand, to emphasize or even to remember because it zeroes in and underlines what makes violence horrific, the erasure of beautiful things that had a history, a past and a future… and that is all healthcare CEOs really do at this point, kill without a desire to know.