[MarketingJason]

Reading this, I was assuming that this behavior was enforced by reference checks for new hires being commonplace. However, the few sources I found in a quick search make it seem like asking/requiring references is a more recent practice due to western influence.

I'd guess it's just guilt and shame?

[presentation]

Just guilt and shame, companies don’t have a right to do it but people just comply anyway.

[lr4444lr]

I too was struggling to understand the problem described herr: does unilaterally quitting a job actually harm the employee's future employment prospects inside Japan, or is the problem here just a matter of culturally enforced social stigma?

[rtpg]

There are documents that your former employer often needs to provide you for stuff like health insurance. And now suddenly it's some direct confrontation to get a document, while your future employer (Who could still just let you go!) is asking you for a document to move forward. So you're facing a bunch of time pressure in gnarly cases, without many people around to help you out.

There are procedures to get around this stuff but since it's not the common case, when it does happen suddenly you get to learn about labor law.

I think anywhere in the world, when there is active antagonism causing bureaucracy to not be able to move forward, most people freeze up like a deer caught in headlights. Turns out that being a sociopath can be quite helpful for exploiting workers!

[shiroiushi]

Sometimes I wonder what a society would look like if they could very reliably identify sociopathy at an early age, and then either euthanize those people or at least blacklist them so they can never have any job higher than a janitor. Would such a society work better than current societies? Or would it be like that episode of Star Trek where Kirk gets split into good and bad versions, and the good version was too ineffectual to be a decent captain without his bad side?

[zdragnar]

More like "It's a Good Life" from the Twilight zone. Have unhappy or bad thoughts? Off to the "corn field". Disagree with the decision makers? Want to do things differently? Want to just be different? Off to the corn field!

Sociopathy is no more a single thing than cancer or the common cold are single things. Even less so, because it is only defined by subjective interpretation of outward symptoms.

[shiroiushi]

I'll have to go rewatch that episode; it doesn't sound familiar.

However, I thought sociopathy was pretty well-defined as having a complete lack of empathy.

[zdragnar]

In the episode, the main character is the sociopath. My use of it is to say that giving people the power to execute or blacklist sociopaths will inevitable create more, only they'll be the ones in power.

"Lack of empathy" can easily be interpreted in many ways. What you are upset about are the actions of those you accuse of not having empathy. You think that killing anyone without empathy is the solution. You clearly have no empathy for those without empathy.

You are the monster you fought against.

[Dylan16807]

At least three of the four things you listed are things we can already detect. This doesn't make much sense as a reply to "what if we could detect sociopathy". And that's on top of it being a bad analogy to swap different traits and actions arbitrarily.

[zdragnar]

Suggesting we murder ("euthanize") people who are predisposed to a lack of empathy is probably the least empathetic reaction I could think of. The proposed answer to sociopathy is itself sociopathic.

This inherent contradiction is evidence enough that no sufficiently objective metric may distinguish "sociopath" from "not-sociopath". The power offered is great enough that it would be immediately abused.