Egregoros

I went to Walmart today, and I had to let a man who should be in a retirement home look at my receipt so I could leave, after buying something that needed to be unlocked and carried to the register.

I drove down the road, and saw a McDonald's that was basically abandoned, as the entire parking lot was filled with a dozen or so homeless people camping there.

Then I get online, and I see a video of a woman being beaten while carrying a get well present, seemingly for no reason. And the general reaction is "we need to punish the gosh darn animal who did this!!1"

Punishing one guy will not save the next victim from another random assault. It will not save the next business from a massive homeless camp. It will not make it so I can buy stuff without waiting for someone to unlock it. It will not make it so an 80 year old isn't looking at my receipt when I try to leave. This is like suggesting you start taking an aspirin when you have stage four cancer. I can't believe people are okay living like this.

There's a fairly decent solution to this, and it doesn't even require going into a civil war and putting heads on pikes...

What needs to happen is, one way or another, low trust people are excluded from the places where you're going to live.

It doesn't really matter how you get there, as long as it works. There are definitely things that can be done at the town level. One obvious idea is you hold property owners liable for hooliganism of people who live at their properties. This alone would eliminate the slumlordism pretty much overnight.