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Comment by brigadier132 | Hacker News Reader

So punishing innocent people is justified?

Innocent in what sense? In China it's not always enough to not break a law to be innocent. You might also have to act in the spirit of the law (as interpreted by the CCP) to be sure to not become the target of the justice system.

This is very different from the western system. But I think most people would agree that sometimes complete "rule of law" can also lead to perverse outcomes where very immoral business behaviours go unpunished.

I think this misses half of the purpose of 'rule of law'. Some laws are to protect interest of citizens in the state and the state itself, sure, and in that sense the importance of 'spirit of the law' could be cultural. But the other aspect of law is minimizing surprise. Efficiency of commerce depends on a certain amount of consistency around laws. The more consistent the interpretation around a body of laws the more efficiently commerce can occur. In this sense relying on 'spirit of law' is wildly unhelpful because in order to understand legal cause and effect you have to read tea leaves, understand the leaders in office, etc. The west is not immune to this problem but we depart from strict written law to our peril.

Minimizing surprise is definitely more efficient. However, preventing bad actors from abusing the system also makes for a more efficient system because it reduces incentives to do zero sum or even negative sum investments (such as causing harm to others to increase your own profit).

I don't think the question was about the interpretation and specifics of the law but about the ethics. Wether an action is not unreasonable is also a question wether the action is should be a valid option.

We are playing a game about people after all.

> In China it's not always enough to not break a law to be innocent. You might also have to act in the spirit of the law (as interpreted by the CCP) to be sure to not become the target of the justice system

So people that are family members and friends of fugitives are not acting in the spirit of the law and deserve to be punished?

> deserve to be punished?

Deserve doesn't factor into it. The world isn't fair.

When we declare war on some country most of us can't even find on the map, some barber in it who gets a Hellfire missile in his shop's window didn't 'deserve' it, but he still receives his share of collective punishment, because the ends justify the means.

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