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This post is going to be my collection of thoughts on the news story that happened a few weeks ago, regarding the shooting of the UHC CEO and more specifically the reaction to that event.

Let’s start with some basic information. Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthCare (a health insurance company) was killed in NYC. A couple days later, Luigi Mangione was arrested as the suspect in that shooting.

At first, people were shocked at the shooting of an executive in plain sight in a public space. But then as people realized why the shooting occurred and why Thompson was the target, public sentiment shifted to start supporting Luigi Mangione.

And then other people started reacting to that reaction, by wondering what was wrong with people who would support a killing.

So now I’m going to react to that reaction to a reaction.

First up, are you allowed to be happy when a bad guy gets killed? Proverbs 11:10b says “And when the wicked perish, there is joyful shouting.” And in general Americans were rejoicing when Osama bin Laden was killed. I don’t remember anyone saying the shooter was the bad guy and the victim was not the bad guy in that case. But that doesn’t make it right, the Bible is saying there what happens.

Second up, it is believed that Thompson was the target because he was the head of one of the largest (and worst, in terms of denying claims) health insurance companies. And that’s enough for some people to consider that Thompson was not an innocent victim.

Third up, the government is allowed to take out bad guys, but can individual people? That question is left as an exercise for the reader. I would argue it is not.

Let’s consider the various evil guys that everyone is glad are gone – Pol Pot, Saddam Hussein, Idi Amin, etc., etc. You should be able to get a pretty good consensus that those were bad guys. But as far as you know, did any of them personally kill anyone? No, they were bad guys that the world was glad to be rid of, because they led their organization and directed others to cause people harm or to suffer or to die.

Now if we take that statement and apply it to health insurance CEOs, you can say they haven’t personally harmed anyone, but they lead their organizations and direct their subordinates to cause people to suffer or to die.

“No,” you may say, “their organization is meant to help people.” Which is ostensibly true. But CEOs don’t get profits and bonuses by helping people, they look out for the well-being of the company, which means directing their employees to find ways to charge more and pay less. And we saw that with lawsuits and such against UHC for increasing their denials of claims. More claims denied = more people suffering, the leader of the organization causing an increasing in the suffering of people is a bad guy = UHC CEO was a bad guy. And that’s the thought process by which people thought the killing was not all bad.

And one could argue that the CEO is helping all the employees in the company by making the company perform better. But does that excuse the CEO from harming other people, or does that make the company’s employees complicit in the harm?

I will argue that both people did wrong, in that both were doing things that God does not like.

Proverbs 3:27 – Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due, When it is in your power to do it.
The UHC CEO certainly had the power to provide good to those who deserved it, or at the very least provide the services that people paid for, and yet he withheld it.

Proverbs 6:16-17 says that the Lord hates hands that shed innocent blood.
This one is a stretch, as I just argued that Thompson was not innocent. Ok, how about this verse?
Romans 12:19 – Never take your own revenge, beloved, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,” says the Lord.
I suppose one could argue that Mangione was the method by which God exacted His vengeance. That would be a tough one to prove, and I’m not even going to try. Because my point in this post is to show why people are siding with Mangione, not to agree with what he did.

In summary: he took out a bad guy, heroes take out bad guys, therefore he is a hero to the people.

Now that no one is talking about the Fontopian font anymore, it’s time to announce that Font Grill has released a new font.

Introducing: Thorndyke Font

Go download Thorndyke.

I was inspired by the opening credits of The Love Bug movie. Like this:

The story of why the font is called “Thorndyke” is at the link to the font. But I will take this space to say that both the first and second Herbie movies had an great set of cars. Someone should have preserved all the cars that were in the races. Not because they were in the movie, but just because they were fun cars.

There was news recently that Jeff Bezos was to spend $600 million on his wedding. He denied it, which these days is part of the PR script for modern celebrities or companies – something gets leaked, the main character denies it, then it turns out to be true. But in this case the supposed wedding date came and went and there were no follow-up reports of said wedding actually happening. Which if a wedding did cost $600,000,000 you would think it would be hard to hide it.

Anyway, before it was denied and subsequently didn’t happen, there were a lot of reactions to the news. So now you’re getting my thoughts on the matter.

My first thought was how do you spend that much money on a wedding? Maybe buying a private island and making that the destination for a destination wedding, but the reports said it would happen in Aspen CO.

After digesting various reactions, my conclusion is that it would have been good for him to spend that much money on a wedding. Yes, it is ridiculous, but he has ridiculous amounts of money so that should be par for the course.

No matter what you think of Bezos or other billionaires, the fact is that he has that money. The options now are he can keep it or he can spend it. Of those options, isn’t spending it the better choice for the general economy?

I imagine the money would have gone to a number of local businesses in the Aspen area. Certainly not all the money, but even a small percentage of half a billion dollars would be noticeable to area businesses. And yes other areas besides Aspen would probably need it more, but my point is the money is moving from a billionaire to non-billionaires.

Some of you may be thinking that sounds like trickle-down economics and you don’t like trickle-down economics, but again what’s the alternative – you’d rather Bezos keep that money to himself? I know some people may have other ideas of what should be done via new laws or such, but I’m looking at this based on how things are today.

And yes, he could give the money away to charity like Gates or Buffet are doing, but I see that as a subset of the spending option. Or maybe I should call it the not-keeping option. Either way, you’re giving money to someone else for them to do something with it. The difference between charity and not is if the giver receives a tangible benefit. But to the general economy, there’s not much difference – $600m moves from one person to an area. Better the money moves that direction than the other.

Today is a holiday, and I’m not posting anything today.

There are some things that are tradition at Christmas but are not correct. Here is what I have noticed, either on my own or once someone pointed it out to me. Hopefully this doesn’t come across as bah-humbug-ish.

• The wise men came from one country. They are not from different countries. Around here they are usually portrayed as 3 guys of different ethnicities, which implies they were from different places but came together on their mission to follow the star. But they were from the same place so they should have been of similar features. Historically they were thought to be Persian, so that’s what I think of them as.
• I’m not going to correct the idea that there were three wise men, because everyone already knows that we don’t know the number. But if you’re going to have wise men in a scene you have to pick some specific number, so you could argue with any number that’s chosen. Except one. If someone says there was 1 wise man then you can argue that. So let’s just stick with 3 and not argue about it. Feel free to argue about if the wise men were at the Nativity though.
• The angels did not sing. They spoke to the shepherds. As far as I can tell, angels are not the singing type. I even checked Revelation, and there it describes the angels as speaking not singing.
• We do know that Jesus was born at night. This point is not to correct something that’s traditionally wrong but rather pointing out that the tradition is factually correct. It’s not just because of the star, although the star is why all the Nativity scenes are portrayed at night. That, and enough other things portray the Nativity at night (such as the carol Silent Night).

Now you too can be a hit at parties and step in with a “technically” or “well actually” to keep things right.

Now that no one is talking about the Fremby font anymore, it’s time to announce that Font Grill has released a new font.

Introducing: Fontopian Font

Go download Fontopian.

I was inspired by the logo of The Autopian website. I didn’t think much of the logo before this, but they ran an article about how the Autopian logo came to be and that got me nostalgic about the process of making a font so I decided to give it a go.

It seems that everyone knows the lesson from the Spider-Man origin story – with great power comes great responsibility.

There is a similar quote from Eleanor Roosevelt though that I’d like to focus on today.

For freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility.

It makes sense – if you’re not free to decide something, then you’re not responsible for it. It happens at work: the corporate policy tells you to do something, then it’s not your fault if it turns out bad. But if you are free to decide something then you have the responsibility for its outcome.

In this election year, I notice many of the ads are pushing for something called “reproductive freedom” but I also notice that no one is pushing for “reproductive responsibility”. I say they are two sides of the same coin. People want freedom with no responsibility. And in many ways this modern world appears to allow more freedom with less responsibility.

Consider what the end result is, not just of reproductive freedom with no responsibility, but of general freedom without responsibility. Is human nature such that people will do what’s good for them and others? That’s the benefit of natural consequences – it keeps peoples’ behavior in check.

I think the internet provides a glimpse of what happens. Consider the internet to be a virtual society with no physical consequences: people do and say things that they wouldn’t do in person. If we keep removing natural consequences from personal behaviors, it won’t be progress. And “reproductive freedom” is just the current example of that.