neo-luddism

[neo-luddism]

Something I was thinking about…

All labor agreements shall require provisions providing the right of the laborer to end the arrangement at any time for any reason, whereas the employer may only end the arrangement for specific and mutually-agreed causes. Employer shall have no other recourse to end the arrangement and must fulfill all compensatory requirements. Any suspected infringements of the arrangement will be investigated by a neutral labor board nominated and approved by the larger body of laborers regionally and nationally, and the laborer shall remain employed throughout the duration of the investigation. All business, logistical, and financial decisions made by the employer are subject to inquiry, investigation, and potential penalty by the neutral labor board. Any decision may be questioned by any member of the employer’s labor force.

[neo-luddism]

What He Did Was Good

On December 4, 2024, Luigi Mangione allegedly shot and killed Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, a massive financial entity with a market capitalization just under $500 billion. UnitedHealthcare is quite infamously known as one of the worst private health insurance companies in America, which in and itself is an achievement worthy of comment. As Mangione notes in his manifesto, a company such as UHC, which routinely declines to pay for life-saving treatments for its patients, is the definition of a parasite on the American working class. It sucks the blood out of hurt and dying people all over this country in the pursuit of financial gain for its shareholders. This is undeniable. As UHG notes in their Q3 2024 financial report, "The company returned over $9.6 billion to shareholders through the first nine months of 2024 through dividends and share repurchases. Return on equity of 26.3% in the quarter reflected the company’s consistent, broad-based earnings and efficient capital structure." This is an anodyne statement, and I include it to underline the dispassionate point I'm leading towards: UnitedHealthcare, as shepherded by holding company UnitedHealth Group is designed and operated in line with capitalist principles with the ultimate goal of financial efficiency and optimizing profits to ensure maximized returns to shareholders.

If you're reading this, you're likely thinking, ok? Seems pretty straightforward. And you would be exactly right. And that's the problem. The ideology expressed in the quoted statement is fundamentally at odds with the purported goal of serving "health care participants", a verbal choice in the report made by Parasite in Chief and Thompson's superior, Andrew Witty, that highlights the perverse inhumanity of executive officers. Ask yourself how they are achieving these financial successes while patients continue to be denied service (acquisition to drive vertical integration and artificial growth within their HC). Pretty simple - keep costs down through denials for "unnecessary services" and turn your hulking, aging healthcare engine's expenses into another of your company's revenues (seems totally legit!). It is a clear sign of American society's rot that these principles and ideas are considered "just the way things are". Capitalism and its adherents display their immorality proudly. The apotheosis of moral turpitude is responding to the uncovering and naming of these tactics with a resigned sigh and internal reconciliation.

The basic structure of health insurance services as a form of risk management, whereby a larger segment of the participating policyholders with smaller usage offsets the costs of a smaller segment with larger usage, has always been fragile, and the active speculation and investment by insurance companies in order to drive further growth is a breach of the social contract behind the entire concept. What is the consequence of insolvency or financial failure? The exact same consequences as financial success: denied claims and unpaid services. Once further risk has been introduced, often married with the rationale of battling increasing costs, which is likely true, but why is the result further risky investment? Are you starting to see the house of cards? They will never achieve full coverage because that would conflict with their number one goal. The contradictions are not sharpening, they are are as sharp as they can be. The question is what do you do about it?

All of us "health care participants" are marching on a treadmill as voices ring out constantly telling us to keep our eyes forward while "participants" around us are regularly and consistently shunted off into the abyss. Keep marching forward, keep paying your premiums, keep calling the support line and waiting for hours upon hours, keep pleading with a support specialist for help (knowing full well in your heart they are marching alongside you and equally at risk of being shunted off), keep on holding on while your body slowly loses the ability to maintain itself and you feel the abyss nearing.

When legacy news media and politicians stick to platitudes and fail to engage with the reasoning behind the death, they are telling us we do not matter. That our deaths do not matter when we do not receive treatment. Thompson's death has become an emotional outlet for us at a time when infrastructure is quickly declining. Our world is rapidly warming, fascists are ascendant across the globe, the costs of goods remains high and wages stagnate, and tens of millions of people were stupid enough to vote for a white supremacist president who will destroy organized labor, deport and kill millions of immigrants, and orient the state to harm all minorities. We are out of time; it is the height of absurdity to attempt to anonymize the rationale into a cloud of "political violence" and not engage any further. Any random murder is worse than a person killing someone responsible for millions of deaths and untold carnage against “health care participants”. It's that simple. The killing was targeted, methodical, and had little collateral damage. We do not even need to condone the murder in order to keep the focus centered on making the ruling class afraid to further harm us.

I'm angry; I'm angry just writing this all out. I was lucky enough to survive a long period of chronic, life-altering pain, and see the other side. But I am informed and changed by it. I will forever be a new person due to what I experienced, and the psychological depths I reached. I know all too well what it's like to deal with denials for service, rapid accumulation of medical debt without end in sight, and the fear of my health never improving. I know all too well what it means to turn and face the idea of death, and reconcile to it. Where Luigi may have turned his pain outwards, my psychology was turned inwards. Even then I still externalized quite a bit - it's natural when faced with the imposing, unknowable face of a corporation that is engaged to deny you what you need to survive. Opinions like, "I have back pain and I haven't tried to kill anyone" are the sloppy drivel of mental infants and should be discarded outright.

Perhaps you think this will lead to further violence and reprisals from the state and right-wing paramilitaries. Perhaps you're right, but you miss the point - Thompson's death did not happen in a vacuum. It is not the start of this thread. What do we teach the next generations when we allow these companies to continue to hurt and kill us year in and year out? The state and right-wing paramilitaries have been conducting a cold war against the left for at least the past 10 years, if not more. There have been numerous instances of outright violence and murder against left-wing activists, while the media and politicians decry "violence on both sides". If the procedural avenues are riddled with obstacles, and media attention is fleeting, it is the right of the people to use violence to effect change to save ourselves and prevent further harm. That is a distinct and moral outcome.

Time will tell if Thompson's death is a structural piercing of the ruling class's armor and leads to a true movement of the people. It has galvanized wide swaths of working Americans, including the nurses and doctors that have to deal with health insurance services. The enemy is clear and obvious, and that is an unequivocal good. We are united across many class and cultural lines against the executives that treat us as rounding errors. Health insurance is just one tentacle in the American capitalist system, but it is the right node for this awakening. The campaign against mistreatment must expand to all areas that threaten our lives and health.

Executives like Thompson deserve to feel afraid to go outside. The commons belong to us.

[neo-luddism]

Something I was thinking about

We live in a permissive society; a gnawing flaw at the heart of our rot. This is not a conservative screed, but rather a pointed criticism of our permittance of bad behavior and moral degeneracy, especially as a value to be upheld, our so-called “life, liberty and pursuit of happiness”. What it permits (read: promotes) is reactionary attitudes and behaviors at all levels of society. It provides them room to plant and flourish. I observe these behaviors in both micro and macro-societal environments: the casual high risk/low reward carelessness of car drivers risking the lives of others; the mask of dogged pursuit of singular goals covering for simple rudeness and arrogance; the class solidarity amongst the upper-middle classes and their superiors, evidenced in the elevating of political idols, the rampant poverty smoothed over by encampment clear-outs, the fear to express the simple term of genocide and terrorism in identifying Israel’s actions, the far right enacted violence that permeates at the seams of public activity, the abdication of anti-racist programs to protect all peoples of color, the efforts to alter the historical record and erase the original sins of America, the neglect of the impending doom we face from a rapidly changing climate.

[neo-luddism]

Some things I'm thinking about

Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people is a particularly horrific and vicious example of the global Right Wing's long-standing plan to eradicate undesirable populations in pursuit of its white supremacist vision of a lobotomized Western Civ society.

The growth of generative AI applications around creative pursuits is a purposeful attempt by certain actors to preclude users (and eventually the general population through coerced participation) from developing critical thinking skills.

Short movie reviews

Civil War is a tiring, dumb, poorly-written, substance-less film, with few redeeming qualities. I hated it.

[neo-luddism]

Several things I'm thinking about

Here's what I think*...

You were already going to vote for the corpse of an old man. Deal with it. Nevermind.

Objectivity. Is it real? Who cares. It’s not real, but it’s also kinda real. We create the conditions for it. There often is a true depiction or right answer, sui generis, the value of which lies within the contextual meaning provided by the issuer.

you're usually wrong, tho. 

Israel is a fascist state.

It’s long past time for the end of the nation-state. The political projects known as the United States of America, and Israel, can start the process with their termination.

A democratic lever is not made moral by its use. It is a good thing to have, but it is not good in and of itself. We must utilize the power in these levers while not losing sight of their fragile nature and requisite continuous care.

Some movies are good because they are thoughtful and meditative; some movies are good because they are consistent kinetic motion, and leave little room for extensive meditation. I think this is pretty cool.

Brussels sprouts and horseradish go really well together. Most of the time brussels sprouts are seasoned too sweetly or char overpowers the seasoning, or both. Just an opinion. Whatever.

The colonial power asserts control of the historical narrative by dominating the sources, creators and distributors of media, dictating the narrative through official statements, and proceeding to tighten the noose ever further with each reporter murdered, and piece of equipment confiscated, and finally, making their presence illegal. Silence and eradication is the goal.

It seems possible to me that we in the US have been living in our own version of the Italian years of lead. Obama is the resurgent far right’s JFK analog, and our center-right liberal opposition party happily complies with the effort to create a communist boogeyman. The contradictions are exponentially heightened, a low-level civil war simmers for the better part of two decades…it feels like a particularly stupid time to be alive.

🎶The hills are alive with the sound of stupid. If you want to view stupid, simply look around and view it.

We must navigate our morality through this swampy morass in order not to be captured by controlled opposition. We do seem to have some sense of the stage we are forced onto, both audience and performer, yet we feign surprise at the existence of puppet masters.

Our rights as travelers are to leave as minimal strain on our hosts’ as possible. To understand and respect our hosts, to learn as much as we can while there.

Maybe astral projection and other CIA projects were in and of themselves a form of mind control for capturing the curiosity of individuals that sought the Truth. 

Once they pursue these esoteric rabbit holes they put themselves at risk of disassociation and loss of self.

Under the silver lake is representative of a particular male melodrama and nightmare: that of exclusion from ruling class vices as life milestones. Its relational fear is that of in-group exclusion. The “true” feeling is moral, but the social context is relational. He perceives a lack of belonging. What is truly revealed? The ontological patriarchy? It is the exclusion that lingers. What happens in the tunnels. You are not a part of.

I’d prefer to not have AI, to be honest. Maybe no internet, either. Probably for the best.

Short movie reviews 

Furiosa - good movie.

Hitman - I don’t like this movie.

*Right at this particular moment, and after re-reading it a few times, too. So, it's not like it's just that one point in time. But also, sometimes I do change my mind, so there's that.