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When the price of getting caught spray painting cameras is you and your family getting executed, or being sent to a 're-education camp', would you still do it?

When the price of getting caught spray painting cameras is you and your family getting executed, or being sent to a 're-education camp', would you still do it? No matter how 'incredibly fragile' you perceive the system to be? This is already a daily reality for certain minorities in some countries already. https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-app-no-encryption-china-force-install-urumqi-xinjiang https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ne94dg/jingwang-a...

logfromblammo 8y ago
If that's the price for spray painting cameras, the marginal additional punishment for getting caught murdering those who are arresting the spray-painters is no longer sufficient to deter me from attempting it. Once you go full family execution, that's pretty much the limit of escalation against an individual. If you're willing and able to destroy everything and everyone I care about, there is no longer any bound you can control on what I might be willing to do to prevent that, or avenge it, and you are now relying entirely on my own ethical reticence and my resource limitations to avoid me engaging in acts of terrorism against your nation-state and its loyalists. And that's the practical argument for proportional punishments, if your government is so dysfunctional that there is no moral argument for them. If you lock up all the Uighurs just for existing, for example, you may find that the ones who escape your pogrom are more willing to fight, and to fight dirty. Realistically, we should probably be talking about vandalism of surveillance equipment in terms of how many cameras or camera-equivalents you could be compelled by force to replace whenever you are caught destroying one. And that is balanced by how likely you are to be caught when destroying one. Which depends somewhat on how many cameras/snitches in the area are fully operational. There's probably an optimal camera-destroying algorithm to be discovered in there somewhere.
- eponeponepon 8y ago
  > you may find that the ones who > your pogrom are more willing to > fight, and to fight dirty. ...neatly justifying your continuing oppression of them and others and investment in your security machine. This stuff is frequently by design.

logfromblammo 8y ago

If that's the price for spray painting cameras, the marginal additional punishment for getting caught murdering those who are arresting the spray-painters is no longer sufficient to deter me from attempting it. Once you go full family execution, that's pretty much the limit of escalation against an individual. If you're willing and able to destroy everything and everyone I care about, there is no longer any bound you can control on what I might be willing to do to prevent that, or avenge it, and you are now relying entirely on my own ethical reticence and my resource limitations to avoid me engaging in acts of terrorism against your nation-state and its loyalists. And that's the practical argument for proportional punishments, if your government is so dysfunctional that there is no moral argument for them. If you lock up all the Uighurs just for existing, for example, you may find that the ones who escape your pogrom are more willing to fight, and to fight dirty. Realistically, we should probably be talking about vandalism of surveillance equipment in terms of how many cameras or camera-equivalents you could be compelled by force to replace whenever you are caught destroying one. And that is balanced by how likely you are to be caught when destroying one. Which depends somewhat on how many cameras/snitches in the area are fully operational. There's probably an optimal camera-destroying algorithm to be discovered in there somewhere.

eponeponepon 8y ago
> you may find that the ones who > your pogrom are more willing to > fight, and to fight dirty. ...neatly justifying your continuing oppression of them and others and investment in your security machine. This stuff is frequently by design.