The simplest thing we require in the social world, after food, water and shelter, is safety. Without safety, everything else is precarious and to live in constant fear destroys people’s psyches and health.
The basic rules required for a safe group are as follows.
First: each individual must not prey on others. Under no circumstances must they hurt another person or take from them just because they are weak and they can.
Second: anyone who does prey on others must be removed from the group. This may mean ostracism; it may mean confinement; or it may mean death.
Anyone who will prey on someone else who is weak, just because they are weak is a threat to you. One day you will be weaker than them, and if you have something they want they will take it. That could mean theft, violence or rape.
Whenever you encounter a predator or abuser, they are someone you cannot and should not trust. They have already said what they are, the only question is who they will do it to.
There are some complexities to this, mostly to do with “property” and “accumulation.” In a good society, the only time anyone would go hungry or without shelter is if there wasn’t enough, and only in cases where there was not enough would those who can “work” be prioritized. (Working means creating that which people need. Wall street jobs are almost all predator jobs.) In a vast surplus world like our current world, there is no reason for everyone not to fed, have a home and medical care.
People who have way more than they need while others don’t have enough are predators: abusers who prey on the weak. We have built up entire ideologies about why this OK, the most recent of which is modern capitalism.
Basically, you can’t, ever, tolerate predators or predation. Predation includes every job which preys on other people: health insurance in the US; most pharma jobs (except creating the drugs, and even many of those, since they create palliatives rather than cures in most cases), most financial jobs, almost all lobbying, the vast majority of the military-industrial complex and almost all “intellegence” agency jobs.
It is less important that everyone work, than that jobs be positive sum: creating more than they destroy, which includes not destroying the environment. It is better that a million people are supported, doing nothing, than that Jamie Dimon has a job.
The worst predators in most societies are the very rich and politicians. They kill and impoverish the most people with their actions and inactions, and they work for other predators.
Again:
First: each individual must not prey on others. Under no circumstances must they hurt another person or take from them just because they are weak and they can.
Second: anyone who does prey on others must be removed from the group. This may mean ostracism; it may mean confinement; or it may mean death.
These rules and guidelines may seem to be about ethics, but they are also the only way to create good prosperous societies and groups which last, which aren’t “suckers” (no violence ever) and which last. Any society or group which tolerates predators is eventually taken over by them, and any “prosperity” built in such ways is built on blood, bones and misery, and will eventually be lost.
Anyone who preys on others, will prey on you if they decide they can get away with it and your misery or death will benefit them.