There's an inherent fundamental creepy grossness to punishing someone for misbehavior by pushing a button from afar.
If we had an all pervasive surveillance system that instantly reported any crime it would be bad for the same reason. A world where power is wielded opaquely by distant controllers in a unilateral and instantaneous manner is not a world we want to live in, and it cultivates an even worse world the longer it exists.
Rules and laws that might be fair and just when they were first written can become very unjust and dystopian when the ability to enforce them dramatically increases.
Your argument is the same one made for justifying credit systems, especially ones like the social credit system enforced by the CCP. "If you wanted to have access to the tram you should have just been a better person and earned it."
I largely agree with the point about opaque use of power.
However, the current situation isn't much different. It's not the bank manager coming down to evict you or repossess your car. They distance themselves by outsourcing the enforcement through third parties like repo companies and sheriffs. This doesn't create the type of accountability you seem to want and makes it easier for banks to wield their power.
>It's not the bank manager coming down to evict you or repossess your car. They distance themselves by outsourcing the enforcement through third parties like repo companies and sheriffs.
I don't think the current status quo is good either. The distance between the one with power and the one who is effected has been very far for a very long time, but pushing it even more distant and cemented is worse.
The consequence of using power unjustly is decreasing. If a dictator wanted to prevent a protest by arresting all attendees before they arrived, it would require enormous resources and be extremely visible and unpopular, and inspire future resistance. If he can instead push a button and drive all the attendees cars to an out of the way lot (or simply immobilize them), the overhead is much lower.
This reminds me of the idea that the nuclear codes can only be accessed by the president if they personally kill someone to get them. The idea is that it takes the idea of abstract power and translates it to a much more emotional decision.
I think there are certain aspects that appeal to that as a natural bulwark against power. But I’m not so sure we should want such decisions to be emotional. Just like we want justice to be blind, I think it may be a good idea for it to be dispassionate as well. This is why we generally frown on countries that let the victims determine the sentencing of their perpetrators.
If we had an all pervasive surveillance system that instantly reported any crime it would be bad for the same reason. A world where power is wielded opaquely by distant controllers in a unilateral and instantaneous manner is not a world we want to live in, and it cultivates an even worse world the longer it exists.
Rules and laws that might be fair and just when they were first written can become very unjust and dystopian when the ability to enforce them dramatically increases.
Your argument is the same one made for justifying credit systems, especially ones like the social credit system enforced by the CCP. "If you wanted to have access to the tram you should have just been a better person and earned it."