There is an odd grain of truth in the punisher’s statement: “This hurts me more than it hurt’s you.”

For example your driving down the street and you make a minor driving error. Another driver gives you the finger. Clearly he has just shown himself to be a jerk; i.e. the cost of the gesture (intended to push you) on his reputation is larger than any value he can possibly hope to capture (i.e. none).

He is making a sacrificing his reputation as a reasonable pleasent guy to help encourage a better regulated traffic system. This kind of behavior is deeply wired in we primates.

“Waal trained capuchin monkeys to take a pebble from them; if the monkeys gave the pebble back, they got a cucumber. Then they ran the same experiment with two monkeys sitting in adjacent cages, where they could see each other. One monkey still got a cucumber, but the other one got a grape