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 wouldnāt 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 donāt want to get into whether speeding or shoplifting is actually worse (though you and Will are welcome to keep exploring that!) since what Iām gesturing at is only about how people generally think of the offense; Iāve edited the comment to change āspeedingā to ājaywalkingā.
Iām not convinced the social cost is low, and Iām not convinced for shoplifting either; hence the āarguablyā. I think insurance fraud, though, is often quite a lot like shoplifting? Youāre 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 wouldnāt 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 donāt want to get into whether speeding or shoplifting is actually worse (though you and Will are welcome to keep exploring that!) since what Iām gesturing at is only about how people generally think of the offense; Iāve edited the comment to change āspeedingā to ājaywalkingā.
Insurance fraud has low social cost? Explain?
Iām not convinced the social cost is low, and Iām not convinced for shoplifting either; hence the āarguablyā. I think insurance fraud, though, is often quite a lot like shoplifting? Youāre 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.