A group of investors sued UnitedHealthcare Group on Wednesday, accusing the company of misleading them after the killing of its CEO, Brian Thompson.
The class action lawsuit — filed in the Southern District of New York — accuses the health insurance company of not initially adjusting their 2025 net earning outlook to factor in how Thompson’s killing would affect their operations.
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The group, which is seeking unspecified damages, argued that the public backlash prevented the company from pursuing “the aggressive, anti-consumer tactics that it would need to achieve” its earnings goals.
I’m old. 53. I never gave too much thought to the whole capitalism vs communism vs socialism debate until my early 30’s.
But at my age, it’s become blatantly, obscenely obvious that unregulated, laissez-faire, free market capitalism is evil. That “fiducial duty” to prioritize stranger’s money is more important than human lives.
Putting investors above common, basic decency is abominable, and irredeemable.
I don’t give two fucks about shareholders, or their “investment.”
Adam Smith was the biggest proponent of free markets.
However in “The Wealth of Nations” he makes clear that if all participants cannot choose NOT to participate, it is NOT a free market and should be regulated.
He also proposed regulation, and limits.
He also died 235 years ago…
Like, if you asked any of those “great thinkers” if people 200+ years in the future should still be relying on their opinion and not a single one would agree.
Humanity’s greatest strength is exchanging ideas and building on them, the rate we do so has skyrocketed since then. So much shit has changed that what people said back then should really only be useful on trivia night or when learning history.
If it’s still applicable it means we stagnated, and that’s a bad sign for society.
We should understand the framework and what came before, but under no circumstances looking to them for literal guidance from the ancients type shit. We live in drastically different worlds.
Oh, I’m in agreement.
It’s the reason “The Founders” of the Great American Experiment included the device of Amendments to The Constiution. They knew things would change, and need to be “amended.” Most of them were also rich land owning white men who thought only they deserved to make any important decisions, and a lot of them were slave owners.
I’m in no way fanboying anyone.
Yeah, didn’t mean it personally, just in general it gets old debating centuries old economic plans like we can’t figure out what works.
But amendments was the compromise, lots of the framers wanted to start from scratch every 20 years with a large vote on what makes it in the new.
Agreed.
So, how did he envision his ideal free market in which participants could choose not to participate? How was that supposed to work?
Like at my local store. I can choose to buy a bottle of water or I can get water somewhere else.
With healthcare or utilities, for example, you don’t have an option so they cannot be considered free markets and should be regulated.
Clean drinking water, of course, is not something you can choose to be without, so maybe not the best example. Also, fuck Nestle.
We can’t exactly opt out of capitalism.
You arnt old. And I also feel the same as you. I am becoming anti consumer. I hope as a last chance Gen x get to go out in a blaze. I am becoming more activist. We have been fighters all our lives. Time to use it for good.