This doesn’t work if you have a clash of cultures, though. How do you enforce that on people with a different culture and is that even okay?
For example, I read books to and with young kids in the local library once a month to help them learn the language (German). I have a hard time explaining to some of them and their parents(!) that it’s not okay to just take the books and, for example, sell them online.
I had a discussion with a woman who took an entire stack of identical books and she thought, since no one is checking her bags and she can easily take them, why shouldn’t she?
The same with rules for walking over a red light or driving your bike like a crazy person. There is no police in sight, why shouldn’t you walk over a red light or speed through the shopping street?
Cultural rules seem to be good on a first glance. But they are a fickle thing. And people who aren’t used to them are confronted with potential pitfalls.
You need police and fines because at one point just relying on cultural norms won’t work anymore. Police can be done much better, though. And instead of fines people should use community service more.
The solution for everything you mentioned is education, not punishment. Punishment is the answer of the xenophobe.
That is why I wrote community service as the better solution.
There is nothing to educate about why people shouldn’t steal the books from the library to sell them just because “no one checks my bags”. At that point, talking doesn’t work. Believe my, I tried. Having to work for the community might work, because it has a chance of giving the feeling of accomplishment and belonging when done right.
The only other thing that works is to ban her and her kid from the library when they keep stealing books. Which isn’t a good solution at all.
You have a fixation with hurting people, you just think that community service is the acceptable punishment in this case. Education is the solution. Just because you suck at talking to people outside of your culture doesn’t make it automatically ok to hurt them because you are too bigoted to understand how it is properly done.
