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by vitally3643 4 days ago
Actually, the traditional guardrails we've always had are plenty. If a doctor starts trying to kill patients they are removed from society (they go to jail for a long time).

Traditionally this was applied to people in power with the power of a good old fashioned lynch mob. If you obtain great power and use it to start hurting large numbers of people, the citizenry at large would drag that person out into the street and behead or beat them to death.

It worked pretty well for all societies throughout history, including the West. If a person becomes a danger to society, they should be removed from society with proportional prejudice. That's the guardrail society has always had.

Problem is now that those in power have managed to convince large fractions of the population that it's wrong to say mean things about sociopathic mass murderers and child rapists or the guy who is actively trying to kill you personally.

2 comments

> If a doctor starts trying to kill patients they are removed from society (they go to jail for a long time).

Unfortunately we don't seem to have the ability to do the same for corporations. If a person starts killing or robbing people, they get arrested and are removed from society. If a corporation starts killing or robbing people, they maybe get a strongly worded letter, maybe have their CEO say a few words in front of Congress, and maybe get a token fine amounting to 0.001% of their revenue (which they will appeal for ten years). But for whatever reason, we don't seem to have the guts to remove a badly behaving corporation from society--no matter what heinous things they are doing, no matter what laws they are breaking.

> Problem is now that those in power have managed to convince large fractions of the population that it's wrong to say mean things about sociopathic mass murderers and child rapists or the guy who is actively trying to kill you personally.

Actually, civil societies granted a monopoly on violence to the government which vests that in police and military. It’s a far better system than random justice because it’s predictable and you know upfront what’ll trigger it.

That system had its flaws, but despite that it was working pretty well until those flaws were found and exploited allowing it to be captured.