At least in the US there are some illegal activities that are very common and socially accepted. Learning that someone made a habit of going a small amount over the speed limit, jaywalking, or consuming marijuana at home probably wouldn’t make most people think poorly of them. Other things, even ones with arguably low social cost, are seen as pretty unacceptable: shoplifting, insurance fraud, going through red lights when you can see no one is coming.
I don’t want to get into whether speeding or shoplifting is actually worse (though you and Will are welcome to keep exploring that!) since what I’m gesturing at is only about how people generally think of the offense; I’ve edited the comment to change “speeding” to “jaywalking”.
I’m not convinced the social cost is low, and I’m not convinced for shoplifting either; hence the ‘arguably’. I think insurance fraud, though, is often quite a lot like shoplifting? You’re getting something for free from a large company, they have budgeted based on a non-zero amount of it, the costs are spread across all their customers, risk of death to anyone is very low, etc.
At least in the US there are some illegal activities that are very common and socially accepted. Learning that someone made a habit of going a small amount over the speed limit, jaywalking, or consuming marijuana at home probably wouldn’t make most people think poorly of them. Other things, even ones with arguably low social cost, are seen as pretty unacceptable: shoplifting, insurance fraud, going through red lights when you can see no one is coming.
I don’t want to get into whether speeding or shoplifting is actually worse (though you and Will are welcome to keep exploring that!) since what I’m gesturing at is only about how people generally think of the offense; I’ve edited the comment to change “speeding” to “jaywalking”.
Insurance fraud has low social cost? Explain?
I’m not convinced the social cost is low, and I’m not convinced for shoplifting either; hence the ‘arguably’. I think insurance fraud, though, is often quite a lot like shoplifting? You’re getting something for free from a large company, they have budgeted based on a non-zero amount of it, the costs are spread across all their customers, risk of death to anyone is very low, etc.