I’m a bit confused about the “illegal more like speeding is illegal than like shoplifting is illegal” analogy—speeding seems clearly worse given how many people die in road accidents; large chains just price in a baseline level of theft.
Society defines operating an automobile over a certain rate of speed (“speeding”) as illegal. We’ve decided there need to be some fairly bright-line rules, and so we’ve made speeding illegal in some circumstances where it is a fairly rational, victimless thing to do. Indeed, we don’t want a ton of litigation about whether someone was driving unreasonably fast for the circumstances, so we’ve defined driving over X mph/kph as illegal (absent special circumstances like a true emergency).
Another offense like this: letting your dog out in public without a leash. It’s often a reasonable enough thing to do, but (at least where I live) the effect of the law is that the police officer gets to decide whether you should be ticketed, and the police officer’s exercise of discretion is essentially unreviewable. The law’s authors perfectly well knew that lots of people would let their dogs off leash, and the cops would generally do nothing or issue a verbal admonition.
In contrast, most people see shoplifting as inherently wrong (lawyers would say: malum in se, rather than malum prohibitium). Although there can be defenses, we do not expect people to regularly break anti-shoplifting laws, or for the police to decide which shoplifters were acting unreasonably.
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.
“How many people die in road accidents” doesn’t tell you much about the badness of speeding without the denominator—which in the US is approximately everybody approximately all the time.
I don’t think this is empirically true. US speed limits are typically set lower than the safest driving speeds for the roads, so micromurders from speeding are often negative in areas without pedestrians.
I’m a bit confused about the “illegal more like speeding is illegal than like shoplifting is illegal” analogy—speeding seems clearly worse given how many people die in road accidents; large chains just price in a baseline level of theft.
Society defines operating an automobile over a certain rate of speed (“speeding”) as illegal. We’ve decided there need to be some fairly bright-line rules, and so we’ve made speeding illegal in some circumstances where it is a fairly rational, victimless thing to do. Indeed, we don’t want a ton of litigation about whether someone was driving unreasonably fast for the circumstances, so we’ve defined driving over X mph/kph as illegal (absent special circumstances like a true emergency).
Another offense like this: letting your dog out in public without a leash. It’s often a reasonable enough thing to do, but (at least where I live) the effect of the law is that the police officer gets to decide whether you should be ticketed, and the police officer’s exercise of discretion is essentially unreviewable. The law’s authors perfectly well knew that lots of people would let their dogs off leash, and the cops would generally do nothing or issue a verbal admonition.
In contrast, most people see shoplifting as inherently wrong (lawyers would say: malum in se, rather than malum prohibitium). Although there can be defenses, we do not expect people to regularly break anti-shoplifting laws, or for the police to decide which shoplifters were acting unreasonably.
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.
“How many people die in road accidents” doesn’t tell you much about the badness of speeding without the denominator—which in the US is approximately everybody approximately all the time.
I would still think the ‘micromurder’ of speeding is higher than that of shoplifting? I still think I’m missing something in understanding the analogy
I don’t think this is empirically true. US speed limits are typically set lower than the safest driving speeds for the roads, so micromurders from speeding are often negative in areas without pedestrians.