Public criticism of people who aren’t already in the dog house is an act with concentrated costs and distributed benefits. Sometimes those costs are quite high.
As such, we should expect it to be underprovided.
Occasionally criticism will be provided by very prosocial people, or some other prosocial person will cover some of the costs.
But mostly you should expect public criticism to come from people who are being irrational. Maybe they’re generally fragile, or are angry about being dumped for their ex-husband’s secretary.
Therefore, you cannot dismiss criticisms because the person is fragile or has a grudge.
Under many circumstances- when the target is very well loved and the problem lies in a subtle pattern- the only criticism you should expect will come from people who seem kind of crazy or out to get the target.
This is hard to navigate, because those same irrationalities will drive people to make false criticisms too.
But “they’re irrational/out to get them” is a bad reason to dismiss criticism, because public criticism is an irrational act.
Playing devil’s advocate, what are the incentives at play, here?
If tax evaders (following your metaphor) only get caught when they have angry ex-wives, then the vast majority of them don’t get caught and society (presumably) works just fine.
Giving individuals extra power to impose severe costs on other peoples’ lives that the general public isn’t paying changes social dynamics to incentivize sub-organizations with intense preferences for omerta. Alternatively, it drives people apart because it’s harder to trust their peers.
In the general case, it seems like it’s better to build a system that doesn’t work like this. Crimes without immediate victims, even if they’re antisocial, won’t be reliably reported no matter what, and creating incentives for antisocial people to mafia up (and for people seeing the news stories to keep their neighbors at a distance) seems undesirable.
If there are other means of enforcement, better to keep to them. If there aren’t, better to give up and try to rearrange things such that the law can be reliably and evenly enforced. Unenforceable laws are, paradoxically, a lot more authoritarian than ones that get enforced for almost everyone, because they allow pretty much anyone to be targeted by the government at a moment’s notice with ready-made legal justification. This is especially true for the ultra-rich, who benefit the most from evading taxes and can thus outcompete anyone who doesn’t, guaranteeing you end up with the economy run by either a mafia or a bunch of social pariahs with no close associates, rather than by people neatly integrated into the national fabric.
Under many circumstances- when the target is very well loved and the problem lies in a subtle pattern- the only criticism you should expect will come from people who seem kind of crazy or out to get the target.
Angry ex-wives are the best IRS informants
Public criticism of people who aren’t already in the dog house is an act with concentrated costs and distributed benefits. Sometimes those costs are quite high.
As such, we should expect it to be underprovided.
Occasionally criticism will be provided by very prosocial people, or some other prosocial person will cover some of the costs.
But mostly you should expect public criticism to come from people who are being irrational. Maybe they’re generally fragile, or are angry about being dumped for their ex-husband’s secretary.
Therefore, you cannot dismiss criticisms because the person is fragile or has a grudge.
Under many circumstances- when the target is very well loved and the problem lies in a subtle pattern- the only criticism you should expect will come from people who seem kind of crazy or out to get the target.
This is hard to navigate, because those same irrationalities will drive people to make false criticisms too.
But “they’re irrational/out to get them” is a bad reason to dismiss criticism, because public criticism is an irrational act.
Playing devil’s advocate, what are the incentives at play, here?
If tax evaders (following your metaphor) only get caught when they have angry ex-wives, then the vast majority of them don’t get caught and society (presumably) works just fine.
Giving individuals extra power to impose severe costs on other peoples’ lives that the general public isn’t paying changes social dynamics to incentivize sub-organizations with intense preferences for omerta. Alternatively, it drives people apart because it’s harder to trust their peers.
In the general case, it seems like it’s better to build a system that doesn’t work like this. Crimes without immediate victims, even if they’re antisocial, won’t be reliably reported no matter what, and creating incentives for antisocial people to mafia up (and for people seeing the news stories to keep their neighbors at a distance) seems undesirable.
If there are other means of enforcement, better to keep to them. If there aren’t, better to give up and try to rearrange things such that the law can be reliably and evenly enforced. Unenforceable laws are, paradoxically, a lot more authoritarian than ones that get enforced for almost everyone, because they allow pretty much anyone to be targeted by the government at a moment’s notice with ready-made legal justification. This is especially true for the ultra-rich, who benefit the most from evading taxes and can thus outcompete anyone who doesn’t, guaranteeing you end up with the economy run by either a mafia or a bunch of social pariahs with no close associates, rather than by people neatly integrated into the national fabric.
Is this referencing a particular recent event I don’t know about, or is this a general observation?
Consider the Javert Paradox.