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No, Red Lobster won't call the police immediately when they see 10 people eating 1 buffet option.
In a civilized society it's a series of escalations:
Fine print in the menu will say the buffet deal is only available for 1 person, and the restaurant reserves the right to cutoff any customer at anytime without a given reason.
Now when Red Lobster sees 10 people eating from one buffet option, they have a contract justification to have an employee go over there and gently say, please don't do this.
When that doesn't change behavior, Red Lobster has justification to charge the table for 10 buffet meals with the cheque at the end.
When the table refuses to pay, then Red Lobster has justification to take the table to the small claims court.
When the table refuses to pay in court, NOW finally the cops get involved over criminal behavior
Now jail becomes an option because of breaking big laws
This process can break down at any point due to the enforcers lacking will or ability to straightforwardly enforce the law.
However when the system works, it can enforce numerous arbitrarily small contracts (Red Lobster buffet fine print) with the threat of overwhelming force.
#4 isn't a scalable option, if at all. You'd have to know the person's name and address, which RL would not know when a random group of 10 enters RL. Then you have to have the capacity to file the complaint. The average RL manager might be just competent enough to do that. B serve the defendants (expensive) then you still have to win that case. This takes the time of the manager, plus whatever employee who has to testify. And the employee probably has moved on from the job by then.
Plus cops don't get involved in people not paying small claims fees most of the time. We're at best some sort of hold on a person's bank account, and I suspect most of these red lobster fellows prefer the currency exchange and pillows.
Hmm good point.
If this is a serious problem maybe the company would require legal identification and/or a bank account demonstrating sufficient funds before they engage with customers. Which would be inconvenient for everyone if the policy was applied equitably.
Or maybe Red Lobster could cooperate with one of those governments that have a facial recognition based social credit score to identify non-cooperative persons.
It's okay to take time and expense to punish wrongdoing. The whole basis of revenge is that it's kinda non-rational after the crime is already committed. But the ability to pre-commit to revenge means that rational agents won't mess with you to find out.
The higher levels should get far less usage because the threat of higher-level punishment prevents rational agents from non-compliance. I concede that this doesn't seem to be how current legal systems are setup. Also I'm not a lawyer and I'm just spitballing fantasy systems on an internet forum.
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