[FoRK] Formula for breaking the law

[Jeff Bone]

On May 6, 2008, at 9:53 AM, Stephen Williams wrote:
> Jeff Bone wrote:
>
>>    My earlier formulation was both imprecise and incorrect.  Here's  
>> a  second attempt:
>>
>>    L ~= B / eC + c
>>
>>  L is likelihood of any given person breaking a particular law
>>  B is the benefit *to that person* (in economic terms) of breaking   
>> the law
>>  e is the likelihood of that person getting caught (enforcement)
>>  C is the cost to that person (in economic terms) if caught
>>  c is the cost to that person for breaking the law, independent of   
>> any enforcement
>
> Cool.  Also in c, or perhaps better as an additional variable s  
> (shame), is the likelihood of others in your social circle knowing  
> you broke the law, or probably more accurately, broke the law more  
> than they did by degree or quality.

Yeah, I preferred just to have c;  minimize the number of entities in  
the equation.  Shame is definitely one of the costs I was talking  
about, as would be guilt, lost time worrying about, etc.  It would be  
reasonable to make all these factors explicit in sub-equations for the  
values of each variable B, e, C, c.  Didn't want to obscure the top- 
level formulation by making it all explicit / inline.

> Also, you need a factor for the likelihood that the law is invalid  
> and/or unconstitutional, say U.  An additional minor term would  
> include the degree or circumstance of uninforcement, which I suppose  
> is captured in e, but having opposite sign, might be better captured  
> as u.  Non-zero values of e and u can coexist, which would not be  
> apparent with a single variable.

Sure...

Want to take a crack at defining a formula for any one or more of  
those variables?

jb