[Nomentatus]

Without a working and well-funded criminal justice system, "Don't with me or my clan EVER" may be the best you can do, alas. As mentioned in another comment, if you're living in a U.S. inner city where talking to the police is taboo, similar conditions can develop.

"Irrationally" disproportionate responses to small problems ("display" in ape terms) may prevent worse problems and greater violence. It's not ideal, it's a fallback.

[usrusr]

Optimization to a local maximum pitfall, it is very much acknowledged in the article that the systems criticised make sense to those inside.

[Nomentatus]

But to the individual, it's not a local maximum; they are trapped in a first mover's dilemma (later called Nash Equilibrium), and everybody simultaneously moving to very different norms is statistically unlikely.

[usrusr]

That only addresses the depth of the hole (even deeper), not the fact that the hole is a trap.

The whole discussion here was surprisingly devoid of how to get out (individually or as a society) and so was the article. From a solution-oriented crowd such as this I take that as a sign that it is indeed difficult. Even acknowledging it as a problem seems to be a struggle with an open outcome.

[Nomentatus]

Again, let's please be precise, not return to imprecision. For the individual, it is a local maximum. For the population, it isn't, it's a trap/local maximum. However moving whole groups to new behavior is insanely tough for a simple reason: culture-retainment (cognitive herding) is high in the list of what humans do best, for good reason. Ironically perhaps, the history of colonization provides the best evidence of how to initiate change. Building a new prestigious culture within the old one does work. Maybe not in a delightful direction, but it has been demonstrated to be effective.