Why Are People Against Personal Accountabilty For Individuals Who Behave Badly?

[Kameburger]

This has been something that has been bothering me for a long time.

Couple years ago, I had a thread complaining about stupid people. There was a flood of people using twisted and tortured logic to justify how these stupid people I was talking about wasn't actually being stupid.

So, there is another thread right now, where a bunch of people are defending a guy who acted obnoxiously stupid. Which inspired me to ask this bigger question in that thread that everybody has ignored.

Why do so many people complain when someone acts obnoxious, rude, and/or criminal gets punished? Why are so many people against personal accountability for stupid jerks? They want companies, police, politicians, and even people who were protecting themselves and their property to be accountable. A lot of people just don't want to hold people who are committing criminal acts against companies, police, and people who were protecting themselves and their property accountable for their actions.

I honestly want to know. No judgement. I want to understand the logic and rationale of this behavior. Even though, I have a theory that this attitude is governed more about feelings and knee-jerk reactions.

Honestly, you know the answer is very simple right? The statement that Stupid, offensive, badly behaving "jerks" deserve what they get, is in itself a rather uncontroversial statement. What people don't agree on is what qualifies as stupid, offensive bad behavior.

In the case of United, should the guy have gotten off and left? At the end of the day you need to just do what the police tell you to do, and if they step out of line, you have the freedom to take them to court. But, the reason no one is looking at this doctor and saying "what an idiot, he got what he deserved" is because ultimately, while not illegal, United violated the social contract by essentially suddenly refusing to provide a service that was paid in advance for. It may have its reason for doing this, and it may offer some consolation for the inconvenience. But, regardless of the doctors reaction, no one is happy to be treated this way. If you went to a restaurant and were seated, but then suddenly kicked out of your table because the restaurant wanted to seat a VIP or part owner of the restaurant, no matter how much you understand their reasoning there is still no way in hell you're going back to this place, knowing that you'll be possibly moved or kicked out before being served.

In short, people aren't really defending "the doctor" as much as they are saying that United is untrustworthy, and you should only fly if you're prepared to make adjustments around their incompetence. "the doctor" enters the outrage picture when you draw the conclusion that failing to compensate for Uniteds incompetence will result in having the shit kicked out of you. That is a scary proposition, that really has nothing to do with the "jerk" or his behavior.

 

[Drathnoxis]

This very post excluded the idea of context. Ofcourse much of the first page of this topic is why we think you jump to conclusions.

I re-read the first page again. I used the word "criminal" a lot. I can understand how some people could interpret that as "jumping to conclusion". However, it was just short-hand of me saying cop and a person who is not a cop that the police is engaged with. That last description is kind of awkward. So, I made a reasonable short-hand of "criminal". Since, more times than not, that is who the police are dealing with.

The word you are looking for is "civilian."

That you would even equate "person who is not a cop that the police is engaged with" with "criminal" is mind boglin!
This is just wrong on so many levels:

For one, criminal implies guilt:

Criminal
...
2. guilty of crime.

dictionary.com

To say that almost everybody who engages with the police is guilty is in flagrant discordance with the legal system, which is to say "innocent until proven guilty"

For another the police deal with the community a huge amount. Responding to a noise complaint is not dealing with a criminal, picking up a reported missing person is not dealing with a criminal, giving talks at classrooms is not dealing with criminals. Arresting criminals is not exclusively what cops do. You are oversimplifying the role of the police to a staggering degree.

Labeling everybody that the police engage with as criminals is not reasonable in the slightest.