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Notes -
Disincentivizing low-level antisocial behavior
There's a recent reddit post about someone, who contextually sounds like a woman in her 20s or 30s, living in an apartment complex and paying for a reserved parking spot. According to her, some guy has repeated parked his car in her spot, and she finally wrote a polite note and tucked under the wipers asking him to not park in the reserved spot. Minutes later, when she's inside her unit, the guy comes to her door and beats and kicks on it, and then leaves a note that says don't touch his car.
I'm sure billions such peccadillos take place every day around the world. I'd guess 95+% of these don't amount to anything consequential, and only result in hurt feelings, and that in turn explains to a large extent why they keep on happening, because it's unserious enough to amount to any consequences. People respond to incentives, and if you don't disincentivize peccadillos, well, they keep multiplying.
In this specific case, the reddit thread mostly has people suggesting she call the apartment complex to tow the car next time this happens, and to file a complaint so there is a record of potential violence and intimidation. Another upvoted comment says to put up a camera near her car so she'd know if he retaliates, maybe by keying her car or something.
Here's the thing, all this sounds like a major headache for the poor woman. It sounds like a major headache for a man who has a life he values, too. Most apartment complex reserved spots merely mean convenience, and if yours is stolen, you can just park in an unreserved spot and walk a few more feet. Inconvenient, and perhaps infuriating, but if the alternative is stressing over an angry man beating on your door or keying your car, I mean, is it really rational to stand your ground? If she were my daughter, I think my system-level advice would be to try to escape that environment entirely, which might mean moving to a safer city/town, or paying more to go to a higher end apartment complex, etc.
There was a post high up on reddit featuring a clip from Jack Reacher season 2's opening, where a man deduces that a woman in front of him at the ATM is being held hostage by a carjacker. For extra morality simplification in case the audience is thinking too hard, her kid is in the car too. The hero then walks over, smashes the window, and beats the shit out of the carjacker. Very cathartic, and the reddit post is titled as something like this is every guy's fantasy.
Well, this is very dramatic, but I'd rather wish more lower-level heroics took place. Instead of beating up a carjacker to save a child, can we have a hero who beats on the door of the reserved parking spot thief and leave a note that says to never intimidate the poor woman ever again?
My point is this: society has systems in place to disincentivize felonies, and to a lesser extent, misdemeanors. We don't end up with too many serial killers because it's so egregious. We suffer misdemeanors, especially in blue cities, because it's tolerable. We breathe in peccadillos because no one can be bothered to do anything about it. And that seems incredibly inefficient and unjust.
Because it's almost never worth it to be the hero to enforce low level rule breakers. Ah, some "teens" are acting obnoxious on public transit? What are you gonna do, speak up? What if they stab you? What if some activist records you, edits the video to make you seem suspect, and gets you fired? In what universe can the rational incentives ever be right for an individual who's not a superhero to intervene? The problem is that once everyone acts rationally, the low level rule breakers take over public spaces, and everyone is worse off. And the victims won't be the upper class or middle class intellectuals, but working class women, children, seniors, and any man who doesn't want to escalate at every turn, and also can't afford to pay to leave the failed environment.
The formal legal system is useless here. The guy's sticky note on the poor woman doesn't directly threaten violence. But she's now strongly disincentivized to escalate because there is an implication of retaliation. All the guy has to do is to come across as a little unhinged, and a little willing to throw his life away, and every rational man or woman backs off, and rightly so. This strategy works brilliantly in a society that's just safe enough--if the apartment is known to have multiple unhinged individuals, each unhinged individual may think twice about beating on the wrong door. But if everyone else is a law abiding citizen, well, it's free real estate!
How are you supposed to prosecute this? Cops and DAs have bigger fish to fry, and most apartment complexes aren't typically managed by brilliant problem solvers who go out of their way to attend to residents' needs. All I can do is to send thoughts and prayers to the poor lady.
I can think of three divergent environments that manage this problem.
Surely a rich society has a fourth option?
I think the problem with tolerate the bad behavior is that it pretty much normalizes that behavior. And this guy has been emboldened to act like a bully and intimidate this woman because it has worked numerous time for him in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future. So my answer is that the bad behaviors are stopped by either the apartment complex owners, or the cops enforcing a fine for parking in a reserved spot.
I’m firmly in favor of broken windows approaches to social norms — if you tolerate low level breaking of norms, you’ll eventually get higher levels of norm breaking. And ideally starting young. Don’t let your kids or anyone else’s kids be rude to you, or to be rude to other people. Insist on not only minimal expectations but higher ones. Teach your kids to call adults sir, ma’am, and Mr/Mrs Last Name, and insist on being called that yourself. Don’t let them go out looking sloppy. This is what happened in the high societies of the past. People respected themselves and others because it was something that was drilled into people with a high degree of formality. You can read the etiquette books from privous eras, and while some of it is probably outdated (like having house uniforms for your servants) a lot of it would create the social norms we actually want. A society where it’s drilled into your head to not be late to the movie and not climb over people during the show is likely one where people will respect others enough to not have conversations, chew loudly, or pull out their phones. And a child who learns at five to not touch other people’s stuff and faces a couple of groundings for doing so isn’t going to take people’s stuff or park in their spaces without permission.
What we’ve done instead is create a slovenly slacker culture in which expectations are basically in the toilet. There’s no insistence on any social norms. In 1950, informal was clean blue jeans. In 2024, it’s pajama bottoms. In 1950, no kid would be allowed to talk back to an adult, in 2024, it’s normal to argue with them. And it doesn’t actually shock me that a culture that has very few social norms around showing respect for other people somehow is creating a culture of entitlement in which if you can get it or intimidate others into giving it to you, then you get yours and screw everyone else.
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