Punishing cheaters is a necessity for sustaining a functioning society. As such, it is a moral obligation for all responsible members of society to do so.
Given the necessity for human beings to be a member of a cooperating society to survive, human beings have evolved (via ruthless Natural Selection) over vast stretches of evolutionary time the hard-wired behavior to resent and to punish cheaters. To do otherwise would be to jeopardize an individual’s chance for survival and reproduction. To not punish cheaters is, therefore, a failure of the responsibility of an individual to themselves, their kin, their friends, and to all the non-cheaters in society.
Cheaters are defined as those individuals in a society who, despite being capable of honest work and cooperation with others, choose to exploit other members of society for their own benefit. They take more from society than they contribute. They transfer the costs of their survival and reproductive success to others. They are parasites on society.
Cheaters have a reproductive advantage over honest cooperators because they use societal resources without suffering the same reproductive or survival costs of the honest cooperators. The inevitable result is that the proportion of cheaters in society will increase. No society can survive with too high a proportion of cheaters. Civilizational collapse is a certainty if the proportion of cheaters gets too high.
Unfortunately, too many people in modern Western society no longer understand the urgent necessity to punish cheaters or the dire consequences of not doing so. These unthinking people seem to prefer to practice the irrational, suicidal behavior of pathological altruism.
They seem to be blind to Reality.
Unfortunately, Reality is a harsh mistress.
Stupidity has consequences.
“Stupidity is more dangerous than evil.” … Eric Bonhoffer