There’s a wide range of behaviors and responses that are better framed as “protect yourself” than “seek justice” or “punish defectors”. I’d argue that the majority of thinking (for non-universal, non-government topics) should be framed in terms of exclusion to avoid costs, rather than punishment.
Amazon should check if you’re producing fraudulent products and ban you. This is because they’re unusually skilled and experienced with this kind of thing, and have good info about it.
Amazon could be skilled at this kind of thing, but they’re famously frugal and are optimizing for throughput, not for justice or even safety. They do, in fact, ban sellers and customers who are significantly negative-value. But their precision-recall balance is -way- different than a criminal investigation or personal decision of retribution would have.
Transit systems should ban non-payers, not to punish them, but to save the expense and hassle of trying to monitor them, and to prevent the waste of resources in having more people in the system who aren’t contributing. (IMO, first, ban anyone who reduces value by acting badly on a bus or train, even if they paid).
Likewise for infrastructure—the first goal is not justice, or even fairness. It’s protecting the infrastructure itself. If someone is harming your mission, exclude them. At some scale, if the infrastructure is an effective monopoly and is necessary for life, then the simpler exclusion mechanisms become infeasible, and more legible/coercive mechanisms (law enforcement) comes into play.
This is one reason to prefer that infrastructure is distributed and no single piece is critical and irreplaceable for people who won’t cooperate with the complex of expected behaviors in that community. It makes it possible to exclude people, and they can find other places where they fit better (or if they piss off EVERYBODY, then maybe it’s ok they don’t get many services).
⇒ banks/transit agencies/Amazon ban you because you’re a bad person
… which is appropriate in this case because they have good info + specialization in evaluating that type of badness
but that’s not what’s going on at all; the entities in question aren’t trying to evaluate someone’s overall character or enforce norms for social benefit.
Banning someone to protect infrastructure just doesn’t extend to banning someone because they abuse their family, it doesn’t create a question of where to draw the line.
It seems to me like the OP tacitly assumes (& is confused by) something like ‘all punishment/enforcement-like actions should be justified in terms of universal morality, not particular responsibilities and interests’.
At some scale, if the infrastructure is an effective monopoly and is necessary for life, then the simpler exclusion mechanisms become infeasible
How exactly do they become infeasible? The fact that someone can’t live when excluded doesn’t prevent you from excluding them. And since the goal takes priority over justice or fairness, you wouldn’t care that they can’t live.
There’s a wide range of behaviors and responses that are better framed as “protect yourself” than “seek justice” or “punish defectors”. I’d argue that the majority of thinking (for non-universal, non-government topics) should be framed in terms of exclusion to avoid costs, rather than punishment.
Amazon could be skilled at this kind of thing, but they’re famously frugal and are optimizing for throughput, not for justice or even safety. They do, in fact, ban sellers and customers who are significantly negative-value. But their precision-recall balance is -way- different than a criminal investigation or personal decision of retribution would have.
Transit systems should ban non-payers, not to punish them, but to save the expense and hassle of trying to monitor them, and to prevent the waste of resources in having more people in the system who aren’t contributing. (IMO, first, ban anyone who reduces value by acting badly on a bus or train, even if they paid).
Likewise for infrastructure—the first goal is not justice, or even fairness. It’s protecting the infrastructure itself. If someone is harming your mission, exclude them. At some scale, if the infrastructure is an effective monopoly and is necessary for life, then the simpler exclusion mechanisms become infeasible, and more legible/coercive mechanisms (law enforcement) comes into play.
This is one reason to prefer that infrastructure is distributed and no single piece is critical and irreplaceable for people who won’t cooperate with the complex of expected behaviors in that community. It makes it possible to exclude people, and they can find other places where they fit better (or if they piss off EVERYBODY, then maybe it’s ok they don’t get many services).
Yes, this. That part of the OP reads to me like
fraud / fare-dodging makes you a bad person
⇒ banks/transit agencies/Amazon ban you because you’re a bad person
… which is appropriate in this case because they have good info + specialization in evaluating that type of badness
but that’s not what’s going on at all; the entities in question aren’t trying to evaluate someone’s overall character or enforce norms for social benefit.
Banning someone to protect infrastructure just doesn’t extend to banning someone because they abuse their family, it doesn’t create a question of where to draw the line.
It seems to me like the OP tacitly assumes (& is confused by) something like ‘all punishment/enforcement-like actions should be justified in terms of universal morality, not particular responsibilities and interests’.
Don’t you need to monitor the ban if you ban them? That sounds to me like hassle as well.
How exactly do they become infeasible? The fact that someone can’t live when excluded doesn’t prevent you from excluding them. And since the goal takes priority over justice or fairness, you wouldn’t care that they can’t live.