Sunday, February 01, 2015

Appeasing Rude Selfish People Just Makes them Behave Even More Selfishly

My comment on HackerNews, about Why are so many animals now in places where they shouldn't be?

People with genuine impairments who depend on actual service animals are infuriated by the sort of imposture I perpetrated with my phony E.S.A.s. Nancy Lagasse suffers from multiple sclerosis and owns a service dog that can do everything from turning lights on and off to emptying her clothes dryer. “I’m shocked by the number of people who go online and buy their pets vests meant for working dogs,” she told me. “These dogs snarl and go after my dog. They set me up for failure, because people then assume my dog is going to act up.”
It is sad how we allow rude people to get away with selfish behavior and make life for difficult for everyone else. Doing so encourages rude people to be even more selfish and we get the kind of behavior you see discussed in the article.

Addressing the issues directly is often challenging. That is my guess on why we allow degenerate behavior to impose costs on others until it reaches epidemic proportions when we finally attempt to address it.

It also encourages people to isolate themselves in enclaves where people that share certain expectations of behavior can shut out others and deal with those that are at least somewhat considerate of whatever behaviors the group cares about.

Allowing the rudest people to abuse society degrades the public square and tears at the benefits that can strengthen the social contract. Sadly it seems to be a pretty dominate trait in our society these last few decades and it seems likely to just keep getting worse. Hopefully I am wrong.

Related: Acting Considerately - Reasonable Accommodations Becoming Unreasonable - If You Create a System That Includes The Perfect Conditions for Scandals, Expect Scandals to Happen

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