How does this square with the fact that corporal punishment is virtually unknown, and certainly not even an issue for debate, in most Asian societies, notably China and Japan, and yet they somehow manage to produce remarkably orderly and disciplined adult populations?
The same is true of those Christian sects that practice strict non-violence, including no corporal punishment.
Is there not a risk of corporal punishment teaching kids that one has the right to rule whomever one can beat up?
Nope, Properly measured corrective discipline doesn't actually teach kids that you solve problems with violence. If you beat on your kid out of frustration and anger then yeah, all you're doing is teaching your kid(s) the wrong lesson.
But those of us who were brought up in "go to your room and think about what you did before we come in" families, that was actually parent code for, "give us time to cool down so that what you get is measured corrective discipline and not a whoopin' out of frustration."
I had the ol' wooden spoon. I knew from a young age that if that spoon came out, I was getting one lick for whatever it was I did wrong and one lick for every year of age I was. Crap like being grounded is pointless. If the kid says fuck it and does whatever anyway, what are you gonna do, ground them again?
It's as stupid a punishment as suspending students for three days for skipping school. "I didn't go to school yesterday and now they won't let me go to school for three more days? Wow, that sure straightened me up," said no kid ever that got suspended for skipping school.
Most of the "imaginative" methods of punishment simply reinforce the idea that there's no real consequences for their actions. They'll just get a time-out or something equally lame. And then they reach adulthood and "boom" they can't figure out why they're not just getting a time out. And they usually react pretty badly. To be more accurate, they act like spoiled little children.