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Sure, you don't do anything bad now - firstly, becuase you're by your own admission timid, but also because the state would put you away for shooting an irksome vagrant. Why would I want to take chances with living next to people like you in case the state shifts to be more permissive, though? Would you like to live next to a literal Marxist-Leninist intellectual who is perfectly civil yet a) owns a gun and b) posts on the Internet about all the kulaks and bloodsuckers he'd be putting against the wall if only the revolution came?
This seems to be an unfair comparison. Unless you/Outlaw are a drug-addicted, psychotic, violent bum, you have nothing to fear living next to Hoffmeister in his ideal society. The class which Hoffmeister is describing has very sharp boundaries, which (I doubt) any of us posting here will ever fall into. In contrast, it’s pretty likely that many of us on this forum would be shitting our pants in the Marxist-Leninist’s ideal society.
The situations are not symmetrical. Using a prisoner’s dilemma analogy: Hoffmeister seems to be saying that he will cooperate with any neighbor who cooperates with him and defect against any neighbor who defects against him (where “cooperation” is being a good neighbor and “defection” is attacking one’s neighbors and their property). The Marxist-Leninist has a far more restricted set of people whom he cooperates with. And the psychotic bum is just a plain and simple defectbot.
I want my neighbors to have 0% interest in killing homeless people to simply cull the population of them. That's it - if you have any interest in killing homeless people because you don't like having them around, and they're causing more issues than they're worth as human beings, you're the person I want sent to uninhabited BLM land.
Okay, that’s a great declaration of moral virtue. But how does that play out in real life? I’ll pose the same question to you that I just did to sun_the_second: how much more would you pay to live next to a bum than next to Hoffmeister? Surely, it’d be a pretty substantial portion of your income, if you believe that people like Hoff should be getting shipped to penal colonies rather than bums.
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There are plenty of Marxist-Leninists who describe their enemies using very sharp boundaries. I would expect many of us here to not take them at their word. We've seen how it plays out in reality - power is a hell of a drug, and "exploitative landowner monopolist" today turns into "neighbor who has more cows (means of production) than me" tomorrow.
"Unless someone is directly threatening your life and limb or invaded your home, you can't kill them. No, not even if they're an antisocial, unsightly and incorrigible drain on your taxes" is a pretty strong Schelling fence that I don't want to see broken.
Before going further, I would like to note that I am broadly on your side: in addition to any personal squeamishness regarding the idea of mass executions (which may equal morality or weakness, depending on how you view it), I deeply distrust a state of affairs in which the State has the capacity to carry out such executions, and I fear that if vigilantism is encourage instead, it would lead to a general rise in violence.
But what I am mainly skeptical of is the original claim of Outlaw that Hoff would be a bad neighbor to a similar degree as a psychotic bum (note, by the way, that “psychotic” here is a qualifier rather than a descriptor). I also remain skeptical that your Marxist-Leninist is as bad a neighbor as the psychotic bum or as good a neighbor as Hoff. Even if “exploitative landlord monopolist” reads as clear-cut to you, it doesn’t to me, when compared to a definition of “psychotic bum” along the lines of “repeatedly makes direct/immediate threats against person or property”. (I do realize now, rereading the original comment chain, that Hoff might’ve been using a more expansive definition of “bum”, in which case I recognize that I might be sanewashing here.)
Anyway, like I said, when it comes to homeless hunting season, I’m more on your side than Hoff’s. So, returning to my main disagreement, here’s a question: whom would you rather live next to? Hoff, your Marxist, a palette-swapped online Turner Diaries fanboy wignat, a non-psychotic bum who’s still intrusive (e.g. Hoff’s upthread example of a guy who blocks your entrance/exit to your home with his encampment), or a psychotic bum? If we’re engaging with this question as a serious hypothetical (e.g. you’re searching for your next apartment; how much more would you pay to live next to each group), then I would personally much rather live next to Hoff than the rest of the options. (My full ranking would be Hoff >> Marxist > wignat >> non-psychotic bum > psychotic bum.)
My relative neighbour rating is largely similar to yours, if we assume I'm picking an apartment in USA. However, a regular person who's been instilled with the idea that vigilantism against undesirables is wrong is still >>>> Hoff, and I'd hope that USA is not so far gone that this option isn't on the table.
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