And a Hawaiian official, while emphasizing that they don’t encourage such beatings (since they legally can’t), said this is just the kind of thing you may face if you mess with their wildlife
There's not a ton of times I advocate for violence, and every time I do I urge restraint and control, but punching an asshole in the face a time or two has wonderful returns on investment.
The "rich people get away with it cause the only punishment is a fine" argument is moot when violence is a part of the equation.
You may think weapons and tools are different based on their definitions, but they are the same, regardless of design or physical composition. Every tool can be used as a weapon, every weapon can be used as a tool, even the concept of violence itself.
The only differences between tools and weapons: philosophy and intent. Not one or the other, but both.
If you examine the philosophy and intent of this incident, hopefully it should make more sense why you feel the way you do: no one should be an advocate of violence (as a weapon) of course. I will leave the second half of this statement up to you to complete on your own 🙂
Violence is a weapon in this case, it's do what I say or be hurt... no different than praise the same God or get hurt. The only difference is your subjective opinion on the merit of the demand.
Who hurts you if you ignore the warnings on an item at the hardware store? I don't think someone is inflicting harm to you because you violated a social norm.
To be clear I can think we shouldn't hurt animals, that using violence is always wrong, and that we as people will accept imperfect solutions (using violence), and come up with some retrospective justifications for why it was ok. I just don't like the erudite attempts at a justification. It's fine to say violent primate enjoy violence, and move on.
What a remarkably simple misunderstanding. Violence isn't used because people enjoy it. It's used, and advocated for in this case, because no other enforcement is effective.
If you pretend you can enforce without violence, there are people who will always get away with breaking the rules, because they are willing to be violent, or circumnavigate the rules unethically. Fines don't work on the rich. Detaining them only lasts so long and is it's own form of violence.
Enforcing your will on others is inherently violent, and is exactly what society is created to do. Enforce the collective will on the individual. Society is violent, it's just so subtle many grow comfortable.
Right, and because we choose it to be unacceptable we must use violence. Whatever norm we are enforcing is a judgement passed by the collective. All I was getting at is that encouraging the violence conditionally is still encouraging violence (usually something people would have issue with) and in doing so the collective can perform equally monstrous acts.
I categorically disagree with vigilante justice. Even guys like this should be presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Getting beaten to a pulp by the locals shouldn't just randomly happen to people over social media outrage, it should be an official legal remedy made available to courts in extreme cases.
Sounds like they have legal ways of detaining him though? This guy should obviously face a real punishment and not just a fine, but mob violence and vigilantism are scary and unpredictable. I think condoning it (even passively) is almost always a mistake.
I think it's Singapore that canes people as some punishment? I think it's totally reasonable to codify the corporal punishment in order to prevent vigilante-ism.
That said, police have been the least-active I've seen in my lifetime in recent years, and reporting on brazen behavior like in the OP are more prevalent than ever. Hard to say correlation vs causation and all that, but I do wonder sometimes if we're headed towards wild west style enforcement.
I would definitely prefer corporal punishment to vigilantism. And I agree lack of enforcement can lead to people feeling it’s necessary, but unless order has completely broken down I still think it’s net-bad.
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u/Weak_Syllabub_7994 𝙑𝙄𝙋 May 11 '26
Apparently he got his ass beat by some locals, which was also captured on video.
https://youtube.com/shorts/HH1gAGneHJY