Message from cmayfield

[Anonymous]

According to my school, the Mohists, I should take two actions. First, I should report my father's violation to the government because Mohists believe in a strong government.

A government can not be strong without social order, and compliance with significant laws must exist in order to maintain social order. Without social order, government would have to spend too much time and resources on policing and clashes with civil (and perhaps criminal) unrest. Mohists place a premium on the usefulness of one's behavior to Chinese society. Violating significant laws is not useful, in Mohist's eyes, because valuable governmental resources would have to be diverted to policing individuals who have the individual capacity to behave properly. Therefore, in order to keep the government strong, by avoiding wasting resources on unnecessary law enforcement, I would report my father so that larger numbers of individuals are discouraged from engaging in the same behavior and causing sub-optimal use of government resources.

The second action I would take, however, is to petition the government to assign my father to productive use to atone for his violation of a significant law. Incarcerating my father in a way that would cause him to lose his vitality would also waste resources (namely, his ability to contribute to Chinese society).

Undoubtedly, my has some combination of intellect, physical capacity, and experience that could help the government operate more efficiently than the country would without his participation in society. Incarcerating my father in a way that would prevent him from doing anything would actually drain China's resources because the government would have to provide others to care for him (by providing food and housing, for example). Instead, by putting my father to work in some way, he can actually contribute to China's functioning rather than detract from it. Thus, assigning my father to participate in some sort of productive activity would make his punishment useful to China instead of taking utility away from China.