Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are underestimating how effective a "management" technique is demonstrating that you can shoot underperforming minions. I am somewhat skeptical of this take. I think if heaping abuse and threats of worse on people worked magic, there would be no homeless people in the US. Threats only work if the capacity is there -- or almost there -- and it's feasible to extract X with sufficient pressure. But you still can't g…
If police starting executing 10 random homeless people every night, it wouldn't necessarily "solve" homelessness but the homeless would get very creative, very quickly to figure out how to not be where-ever the police were looking. As with any management technique, it's about making sure you're focusing people on the right efforts, for values of "right" in terms of getting what you want. A horrifying police state has…
That would rapidly cut back on the obviously, highly homeless population. Over the course of a year, that would be 3650 fewer homeless in the area.
When I was homeless in San Diego, there was an estimated 10k homeless on the streets of that city. Such a policy would tentatively eliminate the population of street homeless in just three years.
(Couch surfing is another form of homelessness but it is less obvious than people out in the street. Also some homeless float from cheap hotel to cheap hotel, being bled for more money each month than rent would cost but unable to arrange permanent housing.)
In the meantime, lines at homeless services would get shorter. This would leave more resources to go around for the remaining homeless, making it easier for them to solve their problems.
It would be draconian and have other effects, like normalizing the idea that police can play Judge Dredd and be judge, jury and executioner -- at least if you commit the crime of being very poor. Personally I would rather see us resolve the dire shortage of affordable housing that is a known root cause of homelessness in the US.
My point being: If that policy were instituted and the homeless suddenly began getting their act together, it wouldn't be solely due to people being "more motivated" by fear. It would in part be because of reduced burden on limited resources for solving the problem in question.
It might also be because fear of execution would free people up to try things that are currently "unthinkable." It would cut through their own internal red tape concerning "acceptable" behavior and likely also have other people looking the other way because "Well, hell, I would do that too in order to avoid being executed for the crime of being poor."
It might also make people decide they strongly disapprove of this outcome and make them more likely to donate to homeless services or volunteer, thereby adding more resources to the system to solve the problem.
Having written the above, it makes me wonder if these monsters were effective in part because they were operating in a low resource environment and reducing the burden on the available resources helped the remaining people be better fed and more effective and/or helped people decide they didn't care about looking foolish or breaking some social taboo. They cared about not being shot.
Of course, it's politically incorrect to analyze it and then say that's what happened and thereby "justify" their abhorrent actions. So people say they were monsters and say that we just don't understand why anyone put up with them.
Ideally, in a humane environment, we find ways to think outside the box without having to shoot people to make that socially acceptable.