[vorpalhex]

It's worth reading the history here. Usually "your group" would steal from you and tell you it was some outside group. You go burn down and lynch a bunch of people who had nothing to do with it.

Often times this included moneylenders.. who were usually a religious minority. It usually involved their kids too.

[thecoppinger]

I wrote my original comment at the midnight hour as I was falling asleep; I should have clarified that I meant more ancient than that, i.e. pre-agriculture, post-cave dwelling.

More along the lines of:

Jim has a bad habit of being a bit of a dick—harassing & bullying tribespeople, taking an unfair amount from the tribe—Jim gets removed from the gene pool next hunting trip. The quality of the tribe, present and future, improves.

I understand how this kind of thing doesn't track very well as a strategy overall in more complex & modern environments.

[Spivak]

What you describe was literally the cause of the revolutionary war in the US!

[vorpalhex]

No, the British were actually taxing the Americans without representation and running kangaroo courts, though the tea ship the colonists attacked wasn't really all that involved.