I think the end of the article roots for the "holding individuals accountable" argument. From my perspective, as someone interested in utilitarianism, there's a through experiment that challenges it that is similar in nature to this argument. Utilitarianism, at its most basic, is a moral philosophy that says any decision made should cause the greatest happiness possible. I would highly suggest reading up on it- I could not do the full argument justice.

One challenge to utilitarianism is this one: Well, if we are trying to create the most happiness, think about organ doners. If one person can save seven lives with their bodies, shouldn't we be harvesting that one person to save seven people? Their happiness (and those of their loved ones) will exceed that of the one!

The response is that, well, if we're going around harvesting people, it will create mass panic, and will actually create widespread fear and terror.

This article references the experiment that people would cheat more when faced with the idea of determinism. Although you cannot try to expand this to the entire population...you kind of have to haha. Without repercussions there was cheating. What would this mean for all of society? In the thought experiment harvesting organs first seems like the "greater good," but it causes terror. This may not seem similar to some people, and I'm happy to hear better (much better) analogies than I can come up with, but it seems similar to me. We need some kind of repercussions to avoid chaos, at least for the short term. I'm not sure what the long term affects of not holding people accountable would be...but I know I would not want to be around for the short term.