- Faced with injustice, we’ll try to alleviate it – but, if we can’t, we’ll do the next best thing, psychologically speaking: blame the victims of the injustice
It is called the "Just-World Hypothesis." This came up in various conversations I had in 2004 or so during the election on the main difference between a 'conservative' and a 'liberal.' If you follow a just-world viewpoint to the extreme, bad things happen to bad people and they deserve it. So you are homeless because of... reasons. (Character, you soul is dirty past life failures etc.) This is about the opposite of my outlook, but I like the conversations that pop up whenever this topic shows up in a feed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-world_hypothesis http://psychcentral.com/encyclopedia/2009/just-world-hypothesis/
The idea of justice is stupid, flawed, and leads everyone to think in odd ways in the first place. There is no justice, no deserving something, none of it. Nobody deserves, earns, or gets what they have, they simply are who they are and have what they have. Regardless of circumstances, we should always take the path that leads to the best for all of us. Regardless of if some people deserve better, or some people deserve worse, or some people deserve X or Y or Z. It's not about what you or others deserve, it's about doing what's best. Communism, for instance, would be a very fair system. We all live well, and nobody has to live badly, we all get what we need to live and are free to contribute to the system. However, it's not what works best. Capitalism is.
Assuming any outcome is possible? Society figures out what caused the person to take that action, fixes the person to the point where they no longer feel they will, and will not commit crimes in the future, and forgives that person of what they did. The storekeeper should probably get insurance payments. If the storekeeper dies, that sucks. Keeping a person locked up their whole lives doesn't bring them back, and locking them up won't fix why others do the thing in the first place.So what should happen to someone who burned down a store?