No one is advocating punching anyone in the face. The journalist is essentially advocating public shaming, i.e. &quot;Hey, look at this asshole who dumped the whole complimentary bowl of lollipops in their bag.&quot;<p>I find the Hacker news response to this pretty interesting. I think you&#x27;ll find that many&#x2F;most programmer&#x2F;engineer types will think about this from a &quot;does it follow the rules of the system&quot; perspective: He&#x27;s following the law as it exists, so if there&#x27;s a problem, the issue is with the system. Many&#x2F;most other people, however, will approach this from a social expectations perspective: This person is acting in a socially unacceptable way, so they deserved to be shamed.<p>I&#x27;m not saying which way is better or right, but as someone firmly in the programmer&#x2F;engineer camp, it&#x27;s been important for me to understand how so many people approach the &quot;rules&quot; of the world from a very different perspective.