NOTE: These methods are applicable to all leaders. The only limit is how much power they have to take away others’ power. It doesn’t matter if they’re a government, corporation, or club.
“Fear Points”
- If an organization doesn’t have the power to safely destroy someone’s image publicly, they’ll often create a “points” system to scare people away from more punitive measures.
Image Destruction
- A public declaration of someone’s misbehavior.
- Usually the most common rule method, and only impacts someone’s reputation.
Rights Suppression
- Broadly, taking away inherent human rights such as free speech, the right to assemble, or the right to privacy.
- Most of these are considered immoral unless they’re a response to someone doing it to someone else (e.g., a rapist going to prison).
- Often, detainment is within a small community of other people who have also violated others’ rights, and often for a set period of time.
Forced Labor
- Any situation where someone is required to do something against their will.
- Since people would prefer not to do it, it’s typically unskilled.
- The quality of their work is always inferior compared to any creation with the same technology and the creator’s desire behind it.
- Can technically incorporate bureaucratic runaround as well.
Taxes and Fines
- Requiring that people give up their money, frequently by fulfilling specific conditions, and can involve a wide variety of transactions.
- The easiest way to transfer power without any loss in the transaction, which is necessary to keep that group operating.
Destroying/Taking Property
- The act of taking or demolishing something someone has, frequently to symbolically humiliate them.
- This isn’t always physical, and can sometimes be intellectual property rights or ownership of organizations.
Incarceration
- Placing criminals together in a confined or restricted space.
- Can range from complete detainment to casual monitoring of their behaviors.
- Without closer supervision, becomes a de facto training center for criminals to learn from each other.
Bodily Damage
- The most dramatic form of punishment, where the authority will try to cause pain to that person, either permanently (e.g., branding) or temporarily (e.g., beating).
- Most forms of torture connect to something in that person’s mind, while a few of them (e.g., flogging) are meant for public humiliation.
Exile
- Ejection from the group, sometimes forcibly, and frequently to a specific location if the organization has the power to keep them alive.
- The purpose of exile over death is either from grace by the leadership or from political purposes.
Death
- Death is the most severe form of exile, with the person prematurely sent to whatever is after this life, using various means to cease organ function.
- The method of killing can range from quick and painless (e.g., lethal injection) to as torturous as possible (e.g., drawn and quartered).
Punishing Connections
- Forbidding contact with a specified individual or group.
- Any of the above, but to family and friends close to the person.
- All the above methods are meant as a deterrent to future behavior by others, but civil resistance can motivate the authorities to act proactively.
- While it may be useful to coerce the person (e.g., debtor’s prison), those other people are often victims of the organization’s evil.