It's not bad, even if the premise is utterly retarded. At least it has the backing of humanity, and how believable it is that people may think and behave this way.
@kwendy You could say that about our world now. No point in speculating about that kind of stuff from my point of view due to the largely ambiguous nature of reality.
The point is that they acted firmly on it as if it were true. In addition, there seems to be relatively little basis for positive impacts of such beliefs yet seemingly obvious negative impacts, regardless of reincarnation. Hence, I think the backdrop (i.e. society) is utterly retarded. I suppose using the word 'premise' was too broad in the original post, but it seems the beliefs would be more important than the actual system of reincarnation here.
I'd also think there is meant to be a parallel to real-world punishment mentality since weighing the positive and negative of such a system is quite difficult - the exaggerated reincarnation system could be used as an effective highlight of the ideas.
Those beliefs already exist in various forms in real life. Ideally, this story will prompt readers to examine cultural and personal beliefs about “deserving,” things like the just world fallacy, double predestination, and so forth.
Let's discuss philosophy here. Assuming that reincarnation is definite, can a sin be so large that the next incarnation must suffer their previous life's punishment even if they neither remember nor committed it?