Not just tyrants. The Roman legions used this as a punishment for capital offenses. Take ten soldiers, have them draw straws, and the one who drew the short straw was stoned or clubbed to death by the other nine. This is where the word “decimate” comes from, from the latin for removal of a tenth. Apparently, it was effective.
The problem is that now you have a group who hates you instead of a few individuals. I’m not sure if that’s a long-term win most of the time, so it probably will win the battle but lose the war.
What if the passenger doesn’t get off? Are you going to wait for him to starve? If you’re not, then you’re in the same position of needing to use force, but now with fewer witnesses.
Make an announcement that 4 people have to be bumped, then have everyone on the flight indicate the dollar value for them to take another flight. Then pick the lowest bidder.
How the hell do you plan on preventing someone from leaving without touching them? Do you plan on shouting “Stop … or I’ll yell stop again!”
Anytime you use violence to enforce your will, you’ve found a good way to end up in jail. The police have a monopoly on legally beating up civilians, and they really hate competition.
Since the question is about alternatives to using force I assumed we were talking about alternatives used by people who are legally authorized to use force. How could this discussion make sense any other way?
If the passenger refuses to get off the plane, you can in fact fly the plane to its destination and arrest him there when he gets off.
Force is the solution to the problem of making something happen right now. But many many problems don’t actually require that kind of solution.
If you define the problem as “a rule breaker temporarily gets his way, once”, then you’re going to end up with disproportionate responses (I would argue that using force to drag a guy out of a plane also counts as “disproportionate”). If you define the problem as “rule breaking becomes the norm and society doesn’t work effectively”, there are lots of possible solutions that don’t require disproportionate responses because they sometimes let rule breakers temporarily get their way.
There really are problems that have to be solved right now, but most rule infractions do not. The problem is that our dispute resolution procedures seem to treat all problems as though they were imminent threats.
You do realize that that is not how auctions work, right?
If that was the psychology of even a small fraction of the public, then no auction would ever happen.
And keep in mind, we are talking of a flight of at least 70 people, so even if you have the statistically remote chance that 95% of the flight is unreasonable people who do not understand basic logic, strategy or game theory, there will still be enough people who do understand these basic concepts that will accept the auction and the results of the auction, that bob and carol’s ignorance of how the world works will not hold up anything, as those who do understand the most simple ideas will make off with actual money, while the idiots who think they can hold out for vast sums of money keep their seats and dream of vast sums of money.
The idiots are not part of this equation.
I was responding directly to the idea of preventing someone from leaving simply by positioning yourself in front of them, e.g. as noted in this very thread,
and I was only responding to the idea that this would be illegal, which I am not sure one way or the other, but I would think that it wouldn’t be, if there is no physical contact.
But the use of violence is rarely needed. It is the theoretical threat of violence that, most of the time, works.
As has been pointed out, sometimes that threat of violence can be quite distant indeed. A lot of things might have to happen for, say, a refusal to obey the speed limit must become a use of force - indeed, that could take years to play out if it ever does.
The difference between a country you’d want to live in and one people flee is that in the former, force is rarely used; the theory of it is enough. In the latter, it’s too often the first resort.
Focus people, focus! The thread is not about passengers on airplanes. It’s about motivation and coercion in general in the context of minor infractions.
That’s not a terrible idea either. If the law actually puts the airline in the position where they are in the right, and that the passenger is legally required to get off the plane, and refuses, they can say, “Sir, if you refuse, we will not force you to give up your seat, but you need to know that this refusal comes with it a $x fine, along with a potential for x days in jail. A police officer will be waiting at you at our destination to arrest you.”
Guy refuses to gt off at that point, flight attendant shrugs and pulls another seat out of the lottery. I am sure that there are those who would very quickly give up their seat, if it avoids being arrested and charged with a crime, even if it doesn’t come with it the immediate threat of force.
This is more draconian measure than I would prefer, as I would prefer what I’ve advocated before in that the airline avoids involuntarily removing people from their seat at pretty much all costs, but at least this is not something that will cause these sorts of incidents, and would take very little time.
Can’t be done that way. Rules, regulations, contracts, space, time constraints, safety-all of these and more factor into what can and/or should be done. I don’t think there are general rules that will work anywhere.
And guy refuses to leave his seat when they arrive until they drop the charges and fees. How can you justify force at one end of the trip and not justify it on the other end?
We had a guy who kept coming by our house, wanting to discuss fracking. My gf (the homeowner) did not want to talk to him. He repeatedly stopped. I told him never to come again, and talked to the local cops about it.
He came by one more time, during a major snowstorm. I came up our private lane and stopped behind him (he was stuck). I ignored him and took my dogs for a walk in the woods, then went into the house.
Three hours later, he knocked on the door (he is dog phobic). I told him to call the cops if he had a problem. He did, the local chief of police came out and wrote him up for defiant trespass. I put my Jeep in 4WD and drove around him to put my vehicle in the garage. The cop left. I suggested the guy call a tow truck. He asked to borrow my phone, I declined (his battery had died).
How do you get a guy off the plane if he refuses to get off until they give him a pony?
You’re reaching into ridiculous territory here, but I’ll bite on your hypothetical.
Can you tell me what the difference is between a plane full of passengers waiting to leave to go home or to their destination, and an empty plane sitting on the tarmac with one person on it?
You ignored the hypothetical that is a direct result of your “solution”. You’ve told this guy that he will be fined and arrested at the other end of this trip, but you’ve already shown him that he can get what he wants without fear of arrest by staying in his seat so why shouldn’t he believe that can stubborn his way to a solution on the other end? BTW-that plane doesn’t usually just “sit there out on the tarmac” once it arrives. It is usually cleaned, checked, refueled and rush to the gate for another flight. I guess the solution is to tell the passenger that “All is forgiven-Be on your merry way!”
Right?
I did not ignore the hypothetical, I directly addressed it, in the very same post that you are currently quoting.
That would be A solution, but not one that I have advocated for, just one that for some reason, you think is the only possibility.
So, you see absolutely no difference in the situation when yo have a can full of people who are all impatient and emotional, and a situation where you just have one guy sitting in a seat, and the only other people are flight crew or law enforcement? If you can’t tell how the two situations are very different, and how the two situations will play out very differently, then I can’t help you any further.
Force and/or violence is always under every compulsion. The government keeps a monopoly on the use of force, and discourages people who are not authorized agents from employing it, but it is always there, at the bottom of many other layers of obligation and enticement for following the rules.
A good measure of how civilized society is, is how many layers of non-force compulsion it can employ before it actually has to resort to violence.
Sure, there will come a time when all else fails, and force is needed to force someone to comply, but it should not be resorted to nearly as quickly as many seem to accept.
So, it’s o.k. to use law enforcement if no passengers are there to witness it?
Or is there some other difference between an full plane and a pretty much empty plane with no civilian witnesses that I am missing?