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I suppose by 'minor crimes' you mean the necessity to steal food from the lower classes to survive, not the killing of unarmed helots as part of the krypteia (which would not be a crime at all, as far as Spartan society is concerned)?
Bret makes a rather convincing case that the modern version of the agoge is the child soldier.
I am not saying that your statement is factually incorrect, but even the worst possible hypothetical fraternity I can imagine (say, one where committing rape is part of the initialization) pales in comparison to the horrors of the Spartans, because initiates are older, have contacts outside the group and are always free to say "fuck this fraternity, fuck university, I will just take a job repairing cars instead".
Murdering a Helot was very much a minor crime in Spartan society. One couldn't simply go around murdering Helots on a whim, and when done as part of initiation it had to be done in secret for a reason.
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No, in practice they are not. 18 year old boys from old money do not have the ability to tell off their parents like that. If they embarrass themselves badly enough in front of the plan that's been made for them they have to go to community college+podunk state and become an accountant or something where prestige doesn't matter all that much, not just go fix cars(which they do not know how to do, and learning is very expensive when it isn't knowledge embedded in the community- especially the sorts of classes that get you a career in fixing cars and not just a job at a random shop, because the typical mechanic is poor and has no job security).
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