[TheWastelander]

(06-23-2015 09:50 AM)turkishcandy Wrote:  

Quote:

It is incumbent upon all parties within a civilized society to uphold the law, and to take appropriate measures when they see those laws being broken.

You guys are talking about civilized society AND taking the law into your own hands in the same sentence. Unbelievable. These two are mutually exlusive.

Civilized society is a society where people agree upon some laws and they choose an authority (state) to enforce those laws and another seperate authority (courts) to punish the offenders. Human's natural state was when there were no laws, only power and conscience. People were able to protect their only right, their property, as much as their strength allowed them. And each individual punished the other individual according to his conscience. This is considered a state of chaos by many philosophers like Rousseau, Locke and Hobbes. Individuals can't be objective about their own rights being violated. They abandon rationality and give in to anger. That's why they crated state, a high authority that is objective and independent. State can be as small as a tribe chief and can be as unnecessarily big as USA. Only when they created state were they able to live together in order, that's how civilization started, with the first social contract.

According to your logic, if everyone punishes those who break the law ''appropriately'' meaning according to their own conscience and whims, we are by definition abandoning a civilized society and going back to our natural state. Then only the physically strongest can ''punish appropriately'' and we no longer have the basic rights. Everybody buys a gun and take watches in their houses in case someone breaks in.

This seems like exaggeration by I'm only following your logic and extending it. You have no right to go around and shoot down murderers. You have no right to catch thieves and beat up douchebag drivers. Your rights go as far as self defense, report crimes, protest and choose politicians to pass laws you think should be passed. By living in a society and paying taxes you have agreed to this social contract. You have abandoned your freedom to punish outlaws in exchange for more protection and order. The fact that the police in Russia is incompetent or negligent doesn't give you any right to go out and stick stickers on driving cars.

You absolutely do have a right to catch thieves and if the police ask you to (or even command you in some states) you could be asked to help stop a murderer or assist them in all sorts of other ways. This used to be more commonplace but as American society became more atomized, lawsuit-happy opportunists ruined it.

Furthermore, I'm sure these kids probably called the police many times. I could be wrong, but I doubt they give much of a shit in Russia.

You can have all the laws on the books you want but if the government's unable or unwilling to enforce them they might as well not even exist. At that point you have to do what you need to do within reason to put a stop to irresponsible, dangerous criminal behavior. If this includes publicly shaming these people by putting them on camera and slapping stickers on their car, that's fine with me.

If they didn't drive on the fucking sidewalk like assholes there wouldn't be a problem.