I don't think we trust the state to "teach people lessons" (ok we're not talking about public schools here). We trust the state to deter people from causing ph

I don't think we trust the state to "teach people lessons" (ok we're not talking about public schools here). We trust the state to deter people from causing physical harm to others. For example, the united states constitution (not that that's followed anymore) doesn't explicitly charter the government to "teach people lessons" it charters the government to act in the interest of the "general welfare". Because western states have happened to have chosen over the centuries to protect the general welfare by justifying its methods as "teaching people lessons" is neither explicitly permitted in any charter so far as I know (admittedly a small subset) nor necessarily desirable. I think it's not a n unfair argument that over the few centuries of modern history you can point to several incidents, sampled across many different nation-states, where particularly disgusting injustice has been promulgated under the cover of "teaching lessons", as if the general cover of "greater good" weren't bad enough. As CS lewis quipped, "Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."