[Zak]

My dad tells me that when he was in high school, students who fought would be given heavy boxing gloves and put in the ring until they were too tired to fight anymore. The heavy gloves prevented any significant injury and were exhausting to use. He says it usually put an end to the the fued.

There are obvious problems with normalizing that kind of thing, such as giving extra social advantages to people who are aggressive and good at boxing, but it doesn't sound like an entirely bad idea.

[williamdclt]

I can see how it makes sense. Rather than repress the violence, make it safe enough: it still works as an outlet, it facilitates it so that hunger for violence doesn’t reach high levels, it provides rules and boundaries implicitly accepted by both sides which helps avoiding revenge and escalation…

It applies to many undesirable -but-hard-to-eliminate things really, eg drug use probably ?

[Zak]

It's usually called "harm reduction" in the context of drug use, but I hadn't made the connection that this was an example of the same thing until now.